Zorde, that's exactly what I keep trying to tell people, so thanks for the confirmation. 1. Launching a site by itself isn't newsworthy. Tie it to something bigger, or be doing something entirely unique that will appeal to a broad enough group to be worthy of coverage. 2. You don't need to spend a fortune on distribution (especially if it's automated). If you're spending $1000 on it, you'd better be using a service that will target your niche and/or region, and sending the release directly to journalists, or you better be getting some manual distribution done (with someone you can trust to find the right editors and journalists rather than just sending it to an outlet's general contact info). 3. Anyone that "promises" coverage is either a newbie or a liar. You can never guarantee honest pickups (as in the media outlet actually being interested) in PR, b/c it's impossible to control the media. 4. Don't use press releases if your main goal is traffic.... that's simply not what they're for. They're about getting your name out there, building a bit of buzz, and getting you exposure. Traffic comes naturally (but the best won't come instantly), but only if you do the rest right.
I have tried many things for my network and PC cable ecommerce site. One thing that surprised me (because it has worked so well in other business ventures) was that my direct mail (in this case, postcards) drops did not work. I had a special, timed call to action (a special code giving a 10% discount on our website), nice graphics, easy to read, etc. The mailing list was pretty good in that it was former cable buyers from another business, but it was kind of small (about 1,500) so it could just be that the mailing was not statistically significant and, therefore, the results should not be relied upon. But, all in all, it produced really lousy results.
How come you used tracking? You should track the visitors from your side at least get a link which spiders can follow
Tracking was done on the post only, not the links. If you read the post, I did track using my sites statistical software.
Purchased Million visits - LOL Not a single conversion. This was last year - bought it first and last time. MySpace bulletin - not a single conversion. PR - Brought very little traffic - no conversion though. PPC - little traffic and very little conversion. Banner Ads on multiple niche related sites - good traffic, terrible conversion rate. All of the above was done during early stages of an infant website, i.e. within 3 months of the launch. Cost me arm and leg and I am still paying my CC because of that. Then got in to link submission and article submission. From first article submission onwards, no looking back - good traffic and good conversion rates.
Well, I'm glad to see some of these things backing up some of my points over on the FadMarketing blog. lol
People who did myspace bulletins did you pay someone to do it or do it yourself? If you paid someone thats probably why it didn't work. Don't know how people can say about myspace not working, its the single easiest way to make money online imo.
I hope you readers are not concluding that because MySpace didn't work for me it won't for for you either. Myspace marketing is very selective meaning it doesn't work for anything and everything. One should have to have a a good well defined strategy to make myspace marketing work for them. Otherwise it is sure waste of time and money IMO.
PR release didn't worked (I think the site was not worth a PR release, but still I learned alot. I also learned that Free PR releases are useless) 100's of directory submission didn't worked - No traffic(that I knew it before I started) but they also didn't improved my serps ranking. It's just better to go for one link from either yahoo/alive/aviva than to pay for 200 links. Article submission didn't worked - Somehow I managed to screw this too. Again, I think this depends alot on your niche. But Even after so many fairlures, I have learn something new from each of my mistakes and what can work and what not, so I guess I am happy with it overall.
article submission failed for me initially, but then I got better at it and now I get small amounts of traffic from some of the articles.. the trick is to have a very intriguing title and very informative content. The Article lives and spreads forever. the part that sucks about this marketing technique is that it is not easy to write hundreds of top notch articles.
You don't want to write hundreds of top notch articles at once and submit them at once. You want to spread them out so you get constant traffic. That is what I do, I spread them out and get constant traffic - and the traffic grows as well.
Main method of marketing that I used that failed - Autosurf websites. A newbies mistake but I was in that group for a while. Buying bulk traffic was probly my second and last attempt at paid marketing. From then on, been using my own free marketing methods.
Spend your time on improving your SERPS! Organic traffic is FREE just requires some time and effort to set up your site. You can even pay someone to do it if you don't have the time. I have myself tried quite a few marketing techniques and what didn't work for me: 1) Radio advertising - we have spent around $15-$20k on radio advertising and while we got a little response it was no where near what we had expected. 2) Yellow Pages - I spend about $1000 on an enhanced Yellow Pages listing. What a complete waste of money! I remember having a meeting with the sales rep who was "worried" if our servers could handle the traffic they were going to send us. LOL I tracked incoming clicks and conversions from Yellow Pages and it was poor, very poor. Needless to say I never renewed my contract. I have had some success with more typical online marketing like Adwords, other smaller PPC networks, partnering with similar sites/niches, even forum posting!
Ruby, a few points.. 1. Don't get so caught up in SERPs that you forget about other marketing efforts or rely too heavily on Google (or any company whose actions are beyond your control if they choose to change their model on a whim). 2. The other two examples you gave (radio and yellow pages) aren't going to generally do well for websites, and most marketers could tell you that before jumping in and spending a small fortune. However, that doesn't mean that other techniques (or even other offline techniques more specifically) can't bring wonderful results for a website. As with everything else in marketing, you have to know your market and their influencing factors.