David Lord
Holt Educational Outlet
www.holtoutlet.com
Product: Educational toys
Problem: Generating traffic
Solution: Partnerships and sponsorships
“I think one of the lessons we learned early on is, unless you have tremendous amounts of money, the banner advertising approach will not be successful, especially if you are not the lead banner,” says Lord, company CEO. “We’ve found partnerships have more bang for the buck and sponsorships or other exclusive deals pay off as well.”
Lord has partnered with Dr. William Sears, a nationally known family doctor and best-selling author. Sears participates in chat sessions and writes a column for the site, which is focused on parenting advice, and Holt sells Sears’s books.
Holt is also a sponsor on the Family Education Network Web site, which targets parents and students with fun activities, homework advice and other helpful content. Lord has identified the audience of the Family Education site as people likely to be interested in educational toys.
He has also started sponsoring a short segment on a cable television show similar to Good Morning America. The segment offers parenting advice or highlights a particular educational toy.
“Be wise about the money you spend,” says Lord. “The Internet changes on a daily basis. Don’t expect one banner ad to direct everyone to your site. Be prepared up front, because it’s expensive to be successful on the Internet.”
Jim Gowen
Oki Business Digital
www.okisemi.com
Product: Various microchips for electronics
Problem:Reaching a very specific customer base
Solution: Get them to the site once and capture the contact information
“In terms of promotion, we recognized over a year ago that the search engine is not the way to do it,” says Gowen, director of marketing. “The search engines are behind and are falling further behind all the time.”
Because of product cycles that typically last about 18 months, Oki needed to get product specs to 140,000 design engineers who would potentially integrate the chips into their new products as quickly as possible.
Gowen sent out 19,000 four-color mailers, along with 7,000 e-mails obtained from the Web site’s registry, announcing a new product and urging them to go to the Web site to download the data sheet. Because the data sheets are 20- to 50-page documents, getting users to download it instead of having it printed and mailed saved Oki money (the company has saved $4 million in printing costs in the last three years). The e-mail campaign received four times the response for 60 percent of the cost.
Engineers, who are under considerable time limitations, can register at the site to be notified of future product releases. This information is put into a database Oki uses to target specific products.
To reach people who weren’t familiar with the site, Gowen advertised in Electronic Engineering Times, the largest trade publication for the target audience. The ad featured a cartoon superhero based on the newest chip, and offered a free T-shirt with the character to those registering at the site. Engineers not only got instant data on a product that could help them do their job better, but also a free promotional item.
The day after the ad appeared, Oki had its busiest Internet traffic day ever and ended up with about 1,000 new registered users. The company now has about 30,000 registered users who receive e-mail product updates in the categories they indicated.
“Print advertising is a costly medium, so we use it sparingly to get them to the Web, where we can communicate large amounts of information very cheaply and capture their identity,” says Gowen.
Jared Schutz
Proflowers
www.proflowers.com
Product: Flowers/floral arrangements
Problem: Standing out among other Web florists
Solution: Have other sites sell the products through an affiliates program
“The major challenge is bringing people to your site,” says Schutz, founder and chairman of the company. “One way is through an affiliates program. With ours, other Web sites can earn commissions for selling our flowers. It gives other Web site operators an incentive to link to your Web site.
“Anybody that has a Web site that has some traffic but isn’t making any money can join the affiliates program and earn some income. It’s a good way to receive an extra $20 to $40 a month.”
Schutz’s affiliates range from hobbyists with personal Web pages to small business sites and he approves each site before allowing it to link to his page, screening out pornography, gambling or illegal sites. He has more than 1,000 affiliates on the Web, generating revenue from Web sites in unrelated fields.
“The most common pitfall in business is to think that by putting something up, people will come and buy things,” says Schutz. “You have to give them a compelling reason to come to be successful. Make sure you update your page frequently. You are not going to get repeat traffic with a static page.”