Intro | Offline Publicity | Online Publicity | Traffic Builders | Conclusion

By: Bob Conn & Giovanna Genard (gmg11@psu.edu)

I. Introduction:
The key to Internet success is a fine balance of Website design and search engine promotion. These, together with thorough traffic analysis and the study of visitor demographics provide invaluable marketing data for any organization. Effective marketing strategies will increase the visibility and awareness of your departments’ offerings. This presentation examines ways to increase Web Site traffic and to generate repeat visitors by applying marketing techniques. One of the keys to effectively market a site is defining your site’s objectives. Is your objective to…?

• Provide department information
• Sell products or services
• Advertise events, products or services
• Increase student enrollment
• Provide news about latest research
• Once objectives are defined, appropriate marketing techniques can be developed.

Driving traffic to a site takes knowledge, planning time, and effort. Besides using the general profiles that are extracted from the analysis of server log files, other means need to be used to accurately gather target market data. Web-based, e-mail or telephone surveys are essential tools to learn more information about your target market in order to apply the appropriate marketing techniques. Benchmarking with similar departments or others educational institutions provides feedback on how effectively your marketing efforts are reaching the desired target audience.

II. Offline Publicity Venues [back to menu]
Offline publicity venues offer an effective way to attract a specific target audience. To stay competitive, advertising message should market the site as a key resource to find the most current information about events, benefits and services, learning opportunities, and products from your college or department. Although your Web site address may be prominently displayed in most printed material, it should be considered as important an information resource as a phone number. Another way to promote a site using offline publicity venues is to constantly promote the site by displaying print ads with new Web site features. Creating a brochure about your department’s online offerings would be an effective way to reach your target audience, by including it in mailings, information packets, or appropriate publications.

III. Online Publicity Venues [back to menu]
Besides using search engines or directories to promote a site, there are many online publicity venues that help a site gain visibility. Using a variety of tools provides ways for people to learn about a Web site, even if a search engine or directory is not used. A Georgia Tech survey found that people find Web sites using the following methods:

Using the information from the survey, appropriate marketing tools can be developed:

• Web Rings: A central data base of over 10,000 rings and more than 80,000 topic-driven sites; searchable via the RingWorld directory.
• Monthly e-newsletter: To announce the latest additions to the site
• Awards: Create an award program: if a college or department that serves multiple constituencies, and these constituencies have sites that relate to your college or department, create an award program for site content, design, etc. If a site wins, give them an “award” image, which points to your site. Or, submit your site for an award. This will drive other nominees to your site.
• “Favorite” icon: Besides displaying an award icon on a site, another way to use an online venue is to take advantage of bookmarks. There are new search engines that rank a site depending on the amount of people that bookmark it. Adding a script that entices people to bookmark the site encourages action. In addition, having a “favorite icon” is an effective way to call attention to the site, once it is bookmarked. If available on a site, a “favorite icon” (16 pixels long by 16 pixels wide) is automatically displayed in Internet Explorer, next to the site’s bookmark. This could be an effective marketing tool if the majority of your site’s visitors use Internet Explorer as their preferred browser. For a "how to," read this Webmonkey article: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/18/index1a.html

IV. Customer Enticing Traffic Builders [back to menu]

• Free Web Offers
• Merchandise with URL
• “FAQ” or “How do I?” Section: From FAQ, generate this section to address common questions or concerns. If too large, FAQs and answers can be stored in a database and can be retrieved on demand.
• Discounts
• Contest/Giveaways: Effective if they change frequently because they encourage repeat participation. Great method to gather information from visitors. Once winners are selected, send e-mail to all registered users thanking them for their participation and encouraging them to return to your site for the next offering or announcing breaking news or other important information. However, keep in mind…contest/giveaways generate a lot of traffic, but it may not necessarily be your target audience.
• Surveys
• Interactive tours
• Online postcards: Processing forms. E-mail to recipients is great way to promote site. A message sent to recipients to inform of postcard can contain information such as: “This service is courtesy of XXX Department, etc.”
  o Use Perl, ASP, PHP, CGI scripts
  o Use free software available on the Internet, on sites such as ZDNet
  o Brewster Links
  o MTVWebDesign
  o Flexmail
• Create online communities
• Forums: Threaded discussion boards that are topic driven. You can establish a few topics and then ask people to create their own boards. For example, Penn State's Daily Jolt has a general forum, but it also has topic driven boards such as: catching a ride home, finding housing, selling items, reviewing restaurants and food, announcing an event…they even have a Love Forum!
• Chat
• Sounds/Video/Downloads
• Push Marketing: Online advertising has not been successful, but e-mail still is the preferred way to receive communications. Great vehicle to market a site using signatures and listservs.
• Future Trend: Viral Marketing—tracking “word of mouth marketing” without cookies and without violating any privacy issues. Enable companies to create private broadcast content distribution networks via the Internet. It also provides a way for companies to see a “visual trail” behind content, so marketers can see not only how successful their content and promotions are being received, but whether these promotions are being passed on to other users.
• Gizmoz: An example of viral marketing. It's a "smart envelope” that delivers streaming audio and video, 2D & 3D animation, text and any other kind of media available on the Web. Each Gizmo allows users to "Collect" the Gizmo to their desktop; "Send" the Gizmo to anyone with an e-mail address; and "Copy" the Gizmo to a personally maintained Web site. Users distribute Gizmoz to other individuals based upon shared interest, thus generating networks of users who are interested in receiving new content within their Gizmoz. A fully updateable platform, Gizmoz allows virtual instant messaging to occur between businesses and their consumers. More info ZDNet article: Http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0%2C4164%2C2562801%2C00.html
  

V. Conclusion [back to menu]

The combination of successful online and offline marketing techniques will attract targeted visitors to take advantage of your site and keep these visitors coming back. As users become more computer-savvy, they will rely on your department to provide quality online services and information. The effective implementation of the strategies included in this presentation are essential in developing marketing that promotes Web site services and increase your department’s visibility.

The first step in promoting a site is to prepare the most appropriate site description and keywords to aggressively submit it to search engines and directories. Once the site is appropriately described and easily found in the major search engines and directories, Internet marketing initiatives can be implemented. Finally, Internet marketing initiatives need to be reinforced through offline venues, such as a brochure describing new online services or information. Offline venues need to serve as both a reference source and as a consistent promotional tool to target the appropriate market. Additionally, appropriate measurement devices should be implemented to track the success of these marketing strategies and the effect they have on the increased usage a Web site. As a result, you will improve the visibility and marketability of your Web site.