Put a group of advertising, public relations, and Web design people in the same room together and the debate will rage for hours over the best way to promote your Web site. While it will be generally agreed that no one media can provide the complete solution, there will be debate over what mix will give the best results. David Hellaby analyses what works, and what doesn't, in the Web site promotion game.

You want people to know about your site. But how do you get the message out there? Does television offer better results than print? Do banner ads work or can you get cheaper and better results from linking? Do loyalty and reward schemes that offer micropayments work, or do you just register with as many search engines as possible and hope for the best? And what are the dangers of viral marketing and e-mail campaigns?

Businesses are increasingly becoming bamboozled by the options available to promote their Web sites. And many are questioning whether the benefits outweigh the effects of the likely backlash from those they are targeting.

But these are questions that vex any company that needs to promote a Web site, and no one answer fits all. However, there is one important fact that emerges from any such debate: it doesn't matter where you place your ads and promotions, or how much your promotion budget is, if you don't have a compelling reason for people to visit your site in the first place. Huge spending on advertising for sites that did not have that necessary ingredient was the cause of many of the dot-com crashes and there are those who are still learning that lesson today.

What are you trying to achieve?

Industry pundits emphasise the importance of being very clear about what you're trying to achieve through promoting your Web site.

PR and ad agency Hill & Knowlton has had a lot of experience promoting major Web sites including Adidas, AIG, Bausch & Lomb, BBC, BT, GE, Gillette, Kelloggs, Motorola, and Shell. The company launched in Asia earlier this year with successful interactive campaigns for Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble in China.

Locally Hill & Knowlton has been involved in promoting Web sites for IBM Fanmail (during the Olympics), the Welsh Development Agency, and BT Global Challenge. Director of Technology & New Media at Hill & Knowlton, Claire Hosegood, advises companies that, before they choose how to promote a Web site, they need to think about the site's objectives.

-Who is the site hoping to attract? What is the profile of the potential audience? What influences them and how do you want them to respond to your site?" she asks. -Do you want to communicate with them as an individual or as a representative of their company? Are you seeking a one-off visit or ongoing relationship?

-A Web site that has no audience in mind but merely wishes to promote its design is simply a vanity site," she says.

-Once you get a firm fix on who the site is hoping to attract you can determine the most effective way of reaching them." She suggests that, as with any promotion, a combination of the marketing mixâ€"including advertising, public relations, direct (or -viral") mailâ€"may be required both on and offline.

-Offline advertising can be useful in generating awareness of a site, and there is research that suggests audio is the superior medium for the recall of URLs, so radio promotionâ€"whether paid or mentionedâ€"can be effective," Hosegood says. -But driving an offline audience to the Web requires an extra call to action. It's obviously much easier if they are already online and only a click away."

-The effectiveness of online banner ads continues to be debated but it is probably safest to view them as generators of awareness rather than click-through traffic."

However, Hosegood does offer a word of caution to businesses assessing their strategies. -Misused or untargeted online viral marketing runs the risk of being viewed as spam [junk] mail, but it can be useful for recruitment andâ€"depending on the audienceâ€"can successfully secure first visits," she says.

-Endorsement of the site by credible influencers such as the media or industry experts can attach credibility to a site among the target audience and build confidence that the site will deliver on its promise. Some sites will include links to other sites if those links can be seen as 'added value'. However, ultimately it's up to the quality of the site and interest of its content to create pleasing enough experience for the visitor to return."

Hosegood believes the best sites are those which have an organic relationship with their usersâ€"they grow and change in response to usage and so are genuinely interactive.

She also points out something that should be glaringly obvious, but which many organisations ignore: it is important to have a good address and name for your site.

Get the content right

If it is just to recycle internal company information that is not useful to customers, then Robles's advice is don't bother. He also believes that Australian sites specifically need to make sure they are the equal of sites worldwide, because of the lack of borders in the world of the Net.

-The way you attract people to your site, product, service or company is by knowing who your audience is, how they interact with other people, and what groups or associations they attend. Then it's easy to target marketing to that audience.

To market the Web site of a pharmaceutical company, for example, one should investigate to find lists of the professional associations in that field, and the major conferences. prize packages

Another way to get those eyes to your site is through the use of events, competitions, and prize giveaways. -Some companies create promotional Web sites and the PR company will do street stunts or street promotions that point to some Web site and offer a compelling reason to visit," says Weber Shandwick's Robles. -Or the Web sites might use a competition-based approachâ€"so if you go there and click, you might be able to win a trip or a prize."

Another way to attract visitors to a site, according to Robles, is through electronic communications, including viral e-mail, but the danger of this type of advertising is that it can annoy people if not used properly.

Robles considers a one- to three-percent response rate to direct or viral marketing to be good, and a response of five percent outstanding.

Search engines

While it is second nature for people who have built a new site to register it with multiple search engines, the engines themselves will not drive people to the site. They do, however, provide a good indicator of whether people will visit it.

The trick is knowing the key words that will bring your site up in response to a search. If you have difficulty coming up with good key words or phrases that characterise your site, then there is a good chance that it doesn't have the compelling content people require, and you might as well put away the cheque book.

Looking at links

Simon van Wyck from the Web development company Hot House has experienced both success and failure at driving visitors to Web sites.

-We did a site called Manhood that was based on the book by Steve Biddulph [a story about -how men can find the joy and energy of being in a male body with a man's mind and spirit", according to one description], but nothing we did could drive traffic to it, because what do you search for?

However, the opposite was the case when HotHouse created SexualityBytes.com.au. There was no need to promote it anywhere but online, and the traffic came in droves.

-Despite its name the site contained very straight educational material on sexual health," van Wyck says. -We put it up and then went to every Web site we could possibly think of that would want a link to it. Because the content was worthy and there was no reason for them not to, we got a lot of links and generated a lot of traffic."

Van Wyck agrees that having the word -sex" in a URL will attract visitors, but he says this is not necessarily all to your advantage.

-While it is a magnet, it also is a really blunt object and a lot of people were looking for something quite different than what the site had on offer.

-When looking for sites to link from we looked for any site that was publishing health and lifestyle information as well as organisations dealing with sex education or education in general. We asked them to have a look at our content and put in a link. We were generating 200,000 page views and about 6000 unique visitors a day and there would not be a lot of sites in Australia doing that."

According to van Wyck, although Sexuality Bytes was registered with search engines, it was a long process and took some time before it began turning up in serach results. However, the cross linking was more effective anyway.

Online advertising

However, van Wyck says the results he has found from Web banners have been mixed. -We had some success and some failures with banners. They work well if you have highly targeted content and the ads and content fit well together.

Hot House has done a lot of affiliate arrangements where it shared revenue with people, based on the traffic that they bring to the Web site and that has worked well. van Wyck attributes this success to the fact that it is cheap and it is paying for success. -We can track the people who have been directed to us from another site and can calculate the revenue they generate.

-If you look at the success of e-Bay in the United States (which operates a similar cross linking and revenue sharing scheme) there is no question that their success has largely been driven by their online campaign. They are everywhere."

However, Weber Shandwick's Robles does not agree that online advertising is the utlimate answer. -Loyalty programs may work but again it depends on the audience."

Earlier this year a new Web promotion organisation called clixGalore.com was launched in Australia. clixGalore provides affiliate programs to merchants wishing to build and promote their Web site and e-business, or affiliates wishing to earn income by displaying merchant advertisements.

ClixGalore general manager, Chris Brooks, says affiliate networks were useful in making an organisation's Web presence known by expanding its partnerships with other businesses on the Internet.

-As a merchant you can build your own pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, or pay-per-sale affiliate program and use graphic or text advertisements to promote your Web sites product or services.

Affiliates then join your program and display your advertisements on their Web sites, sending customers and traffic back to your site."

He says online marketing and sale statistics are available so clicks, impressions and sales can be tracked and merchants had total control over the rate paid for each click, sale or lead.

Alternatively they can join one of the programs and earn money by hosting other merchants' ads on their site.

The company has put security measures in place to prevent fraud by users attempting to enter clixGalore code directly into a browser so clicks were recorded without visiting the site.

Brooks says the company is able to check that the click-through has actually been submitted via the affiliates web site. -If a click-through is submitted via a non-approved route the attempt is logged as a fraud attempt and we will pursue repeated fraud attempts."

Getting the right mix

For some, it's not a matter of deciding which one approach to take to promoting their Web site, it's getting a mix of a number of different options.

Michael Young, group head of marketing for the Perpetual investment group has used this approach. When Perpetual updated its perpetualinvestments.com.au Web site, adding new customer services, it used a combination of print and online advertising to get the message across.

-We were providing an additional service to our 120,000 investors through the site," he says. -The first step was to highlight the changes on the site itself. The people who normally used the site were going to quickly realise we had made a change or added something to it because we promoted it on the front page.

-The rest of the investors were targeted with a promotion via our newsletter, telling them what the new services were and how to register online for them."

Young believes that in the finance industry the Internet is looked upon as an enabler, rather than as an acquisition tool. He thinks this is because people tended to go to fund managers because of their brand or because they got third party endorsement. -No one will tend to go to your site just because you have great features on it," he says. -However, they may go there seeking information.

-We use the URL on a lot of our advertising and on our direct response advertising we use the site by directing people to different pages so we can then track them. We find that about half our visitors are responding to press advertising but they tend to be people who are less committed so the leads are not as warm. They find the mechanism of being online and checking out the site is a lot easier than picking up the phone and talking to someone, filling out a coupon, or even sending an e-mail. However, they tend to be people who have a quick look, decide whether they like it or not and then move on. So while more people respond the leads are of less quality."

Creating success

They have used offline promotions which have ranged from displaying their URL on all merchandising, to television commercials, press advertisements and product promotions. Online marketing initiatives have included search engine optimisation, online media, promotions, viral marketing, and affiliate marketingâ€"all aimed at giving the widest possible spread. Antoniou says users respond to different mediums and all have their pros and cons.

-The main benefit of search engine optimisation is that 85 percent of Web users use search engines to seek information, he says. -However, the engines are time-consuming and constantly evolving." Other examples Antoniou uses are online media, which has the advantage of providing users with the opportunity to interact immediately, but it has a limited users. Viral marketing offers exponential growth, but it is difficult to track past first dispatch.

Affiliate marketing harnesses the user base of other sites, but presents a potential compromise of a brand, while loyalty/reward programs provide increased -stickiness" and loyalty but they can be costly to administer.

What about ITV?

Another option some businesses are assessing is interactive television.

Hot House's van Wyck is excited about the prospects it provides as an advertising medium of the future, particularly for driving traffic to Web sites. Interactive television will use various types of set-top boxes, many of which will be capable of linking to the Internet through the television set.

-I think that the whole interactive television idea brings advertising and promotions into a very familiar environment," he suggests. -Television is much more immediate than anything else." He believes interactive TV is going to answer a lot of problems, but there is a long way to go. -The free-to-air networks have yet to decide on a platform for interactive television and it is late in the year, so we will definitely not see set top boxes this year, but I am very optimistic about ITV."

Experimenting

Businesses also sometimes find that the key to determining the approach that best works for them comes through experimenting with different approaches.

Perpetual experimented with direct response advertising in newspapers around the country and tested different media and different executions to try to get people to respond.

-We even tried an online promotion giving away a free offer to use Market Eyeâ€"an online market investment tool," Perpetual's Young says. -We have used the Internet a lot by linking from other sites using banner ads or joint promotions."

Young uses the example of a joint promotion Perpetual did with ComTech where it had banners and links on its site pointing to a promotion it was running to give away free funds.

-Now we are starting to experiment with viral marketing, but rather than offering micropayments as a reward, we plan to use a game mechanism that links to an online newsletter," he says. -The game challenges participants to beat a benchmark and then they do the test on a friend to get them to have a go. Afterwards they will be able to go into a draw to win a trip to New York."

Young says that because the idea of using the Internet as a media is so new Perpetual has done a lot of experimentation.

-We try something and get quite a finely tuned mechanism by measuring the results. The aim is to get it down to an acceptable cost per leadâ€"and that depends on the dynamics of the business. But throughout the finance industry the talk is that between $50 and $100 is an acceptable cost per acquisition."

Making contact

He says the URL is only included to provide credibilityâ€"to give a point of contact, because the commercials do not include a phone number.

-We put everything on our press ads including phone numbers, e-mail address, and the URL and about half of the responses come through the Internet. We get more contact through the Internet than over the phone but the phone callers are better leads."

He says the key with any advertising is to know who you are targeting. -We have identified a particular segment of the market we call savvy clickers and are targeting people who use the Internet quite frequently so our executions are oriented towards that."

The company tracks the response in partnership with its advertising agency and an external supplier called RNR, who looks after its prospect database.

-Everyone measures different things at different times. If someone goes to a Web page and enters their details they are automatically downloaded to the database. So RNR measure that part of it, while we count the actual hits to the particular pages so we can measure they actual dropout rate," says Michael.

Perpetual found that it was cheaper to do their own testing and experimentation than to pay for other people's research, which was scarce and not always relevant.

Finding the revenue source

A recent survey by Australian research company RedSheriff, found that online advertising was currently a primary source of Web site revenue and had become a significant online industry. Despite this, questions were regularly raised over the effectiveness of online advertising and industry understanding, of which many aspects remain incomplete.

The research showed that two thirds of Internet users were exposed to advertising most often through their TV consumption and that TV was perceived to have an advantage over other mediums because of its use of visuals, movement and sound.

It was also capable of inducing a much higher emotional response than any other mass media. Fifty-three percent of Internet users surveyed said they had gone online and visited Web sites after viewing a TV commercial.

The report said consumers perceived different media as having particular communication strengths. Television was seen as being capable of generating emotional response whereas Internet advertising was appreciated for its interactivity and ability to link to detailed information. Consumers expected elements of consistency between online and offline advertising for a particular brand or product. James Burge, Australasian research director for RedSheriff, says consumer reach and advertising effectiveness can be maximised through an integrated online and offline approach.

-Each medium has its communication strengths and should be employed to leverage on these to meet brand and product communication objectives. Synergies arise from employing different media for their strengths and where possible driving consumers between them."

Group participants in the RedSheriff study generally recalled seeing advertising on Web sites, the formats and creative of the advertising, but failed to remember brand names or product information immediately after viewing. Overall, users most often recalled online advertising that was highly noticeable, relevant or entertaining. It was more likely to be recalled where the ads were positioned high on the page; they were for well known brands; the logo was prominent; there was creative use of images or graphics; they included movement and animation; there was an element of interactivity and there were relevant brand or product messages.

The study found that while many online ads performed on some of these, ineffective execution of one of these elements could be enough to dramatically reduce the apparent effectiveness of a campaign.

It found that the mention of e-mail advertising prompted unpleasant memories and negative perceptions for many, though some recounted more positive experiences and attitudes towards relevant opt-in e-mail marketing such as newsletters.

-Banner blindness", a phenomenon recently identified in the US, also appeared to affect Australian Internet users. Users said they usually -zoned out" and ignored information from the banner area as it was expected to contain advertising.

Pop-ups received overwhelmingly negative reactions, though they had the greatest level of awareness and, in some cases, had been found to be relevant or entertaining. However, competitions and surveys were frequently recalled due to the involvement required on the part of the user and attracted a lot of enthusiasm from some users.

The research also looked into new advertising and media technologies such as SMS advertising and promotion and Interactive TV. Only one in five Internet users were aware of SMS advertising and promotion, 23 percent of them were receptive to the idea. Even fewer had considered the implications of interactive TV advertising but those who had reacted favourably to the concept and could see benefits in being able to immediately respond to advertising that was of interest.

While the RedSheriff study showed up the growing incidence of banner blindness, properly crafted banner campaigns can work if the product is right.

Earlier this year Coca Cola tested banner advertising through a campaign in the Netherlands.

Coca Cola's experiment involved a Shockwave advertisement that ran across four Dutch Web sites in the 24/7 Media Europe advertising network and involved a survey of 7600 people. The aim was to drive people to a microsite where they could register for a Coca-Cola card. While 26 percent of those surveyed said they didn't like banners, more than 20 percent recalled seeing the banner after only a single exposure. Of those 60 percent found it -striking, clear and up-to-date" while 80 percent of respondents thought the campaign was consistent with the Coca-Cola image.

Closer to home, ACNielsen.consult's Australian Online Advertising Effectiveness Study 2001 also concluded that online advertising worked in increasing brand awareness, attracting prospective purchasers and driving people to relevant Web sites. But it found other forms of advertising also worked.

Whether you experiment as Perpetual did, rely on research by the likes of RedSheriff or ACNielsen.consult or employ an advertising or public relations agency, it is clear that no single medium can offer a total solution for driving traffic to your site. However, if you get the fundamentals right, have compelling content and know your target market you can successfully drive a lot of traffic in the right direction.

A different challenge

van Wyck said that with stuff.com.au Hot House tried a number of different approaches, including radio and television advertising, linking, as well as comprehensive search engines.

-We were getting three-minute spots on the Ten Network's Internet Bright Ideas [program] on Saturday morning and there is no doubt that for us that was the cheapest cost per lead," he says. -But you have to be able to afford the television. It was costing about $6000 a week."

He says the ad ran nationally every week and it got incredible results. -But it peaked after about three months indicating that the same people were watching week after week, and it was expensive," van Wyck adds.

Another approach Hot House used to promote stuff.com.au was radio. -It is really expensive to get national coverage andâ€"while the results were good at the very beginningâ€"they dropped off quite dramatically and it was very difficult to justify the expenditure.

Ultimately I think it is an expensive way of promoting a site.

And what about print? -I have never run a print campaign that I have been able to see any results from," van Wyck says. -We have run them but they have never made a difference to the traffic. They were purely a branding exercise."

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