[...] to geotarget their message to a niche, highly engaged audience. Now it seems businesses that are on web-based only are following [...]

[...] As I wrote about last month, I’m running cable TV commercials for my geo web site Lakeway.com. We’ve completed the first commercial, which you can watch below. [...]

jp,

People will always lose minor traffic to the .com but it doesn’t matter – is you have a solid business plan around a .org or .stupid it will still work and the monies saved from paying for a .com can be sometimes justified depending on the name / model (I said sometimes)

Gordon,

If I’m correct Andrew is hoping for traffic but the campaign is not about traffic as much as it is credibility. Unless I’m missing something with lakeway.com (and to be honest, almost every geo site) it’s about building the brand and getting advertising dollars from local business. It’s not about conversions for selling bubbleheads or vacation packages so traffic is great but the brand is more important and the theory of “build it they will come” applies.

At first, I was thinking about Andrew’s quote … “I guess I was turned off my SpotRunner’s quote form that or some documents I downloaded that mentioned $10k budget” … Radio, like TV is only effective the more you run and the slots you choose. 10k is an extremely small budget in the radio world to buy quality airtime but more importantly it’s an investment that has to continue to run month after month since it takes time to build awareness and a brand. Until that brand is somewhat build an owner must continue the monthly spend otherwise when the ads stop, so does the brand building. For geo domain owners “this extremely small budget” is actually an incredible large investment since most do not have the luxury of seeing returns from units sold or phone calls converting to leads on a daily basis – it truly is about building creditability.

I remember a few years ago we purchased some ads in the New York Times and with that came the ability to say “As seen in the New York Times” … that money was some of the best we ever spent. Did we buy the ads ever to expect a return dollar for dollar based on the simple math of how much traffic we got from the ad? Hell, no. The only reason I even cut the check was to use these words and showcase some “street credit” to our visitors. Time after time people mentioned this little blurb when they called in.

By not diving in deep with ad costs, creating an ad which can probably be viewed on Lawkeway.com at some point and being able to say “As seen on CNN, Fox News, A&E etc…” is worth the money.

My only advice … once you get the ad and finish your initial contract … limit the rotation to a skeleton show every month or just stop since you can easily spend 100k on TV ads but that money is better spent promoting the hell out of where Lakeway.com has been seen or sponsoring a morning radio show for a couple days a month.

Note …. EVERYTHING you hear on the radio is an Ad. Free burgers at Papa’s Deli for the next caller …. Yep, Papa Deli’s cut a deal with them – its not because the morning crew really think they have the best burgers in town. Media is an illusion – we only hear what others pay for us to listen to.

I’m also with David on Billboards … they are probably more effective (although very pricy) but not only do users see them but the ADVERTISERS you want will see them every day.

Good luck …. !!!

I’ve done radio ads and print ads for both an ecommerce site and a non-eccomerce site, and have even had a site on the today show, on local news etc. The traffic was never huge – a random post on a decent blog always brought me more traffic.

Good luck!