A different challenge
There are always Web sites which opt to take a different approach to self-promotion. Hot House found this when working with stuff.com.au. This provided the Web developer with a different challenge. Stuff.com.au is an online marketplace and Internet auction site that has survived the recent downturn (and survived it with a sizable promotional budget).
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."
