2010 Marketing Budget 80/20 split online/offline

[adventurelife]

That time of year when budgets and targets are being worked on for next year.

As has been the case for several years I will be keeping the vast majority of our marketing budget focused online.

We have a range of small companies across our business all focused in the same sector and around 10 websites.

We will have a marketing budget of around £50k maybe a bit more if the businesses are on target.

Interested to what you SEO guys would spend that sort of budget on?

Peter

[I, Brian]

If you're promoting Scotland/Scottish activities, have you considered additional funding sources such as Visit Scotland and HIE?

In terms of online non-PPC promotion - sure, SEO=yes - but I would also recommend you inventory a number of other Scottish sites and see if you can get a small banner or write up on them - ie, nearby B&B's, local bloggers, etc.

[adventurelife]

If you're promoting Scotland/Scottish activities, have you considered additional funding sources such as Visit Scotland and HIE?

In terms of online non-PPC promotion - sure, SEO=yes - but I would also recommend you inventory a number of other Scottish sites and see if you can get a small banner or write up on them - ie, nearby B&B's, local bloggers, etc.

Scotland is our main destination at present in terms of people and revenue but we do operate in over 10 other countries. I have looked at some of the match funding available from the organisations you mentioned which is attractive , if I can get over my fear of working with government organisations;)

We do next to zero PPC at present but have done a fair bit in the past.

We do have an ongoing campaign for local B&Bs accommodation providers etc but that can always be improved.

Seo is never ending and although we have some sites ranked well we have a lot of work to do on other sites so a lot of link building is required

[SFD]

I would suggest someone to do some forum posts.

I visit a few heath/fitness/weightlifting forums.

On each of these there is a lad called Kieran who has a company selling sports supplements - bodybuildingwarehouse

He never self-promotes but he offers advice, joins in the banter, offers reviews (good and bad) and has a little signature leading to his site.

He is a regular poster on around 5/6 targeted forums and has been since Feb '08.

If you go on any of those forums and ask for reviews, recommendations etc of protein, mass builders, prohormones etc then you can guarantee at least one person recommends his company and provides a link to the product on his site.

He must get absolutely tons of business from those forums.

I think with the kind of business you do that if you targeted the right forums and got some initial business then it would snowball for you. Look at SteveGibson on these forums for example, you can't read a PPC thread without him getting a recommendation.

[adventurelife]

Agreed I do need to hang out on a few more sports based forums or get the team to do so. I tend to hang on out business ones for interest and learning but they do not drive that much business to us. Sports sites would I think

Thanks

Peter

[extremedistro]

Agreed I do need to hang out on a few more sports based forums or get the team to do so. I tend to hang on out business ones for interest and learning but they do not drive that much business to us. Sports sites would I think

Thanks

Peter

im involved in extreme sports my self .....

have you thought about teaming up with the companys that offer experience gift vouchers for extreme sports / track days etc..???

[david64]

Depends what you have done so far, waht is working and in what particular direction you would go.

Have you ever had in-depth keyword resaerch done for your market? By in-depth, I mean more than just using the Google Keyword Tool and storig the data, grinding competitor stats for it all. That is always the first place to start if you are interested in SE rankingks; will provide low hanging fruit for established sites like yours.

There are plenty of other things you could look at:

Conversion rate optimisation
Developing some interesting content and using it to pursue high quality links from real sites
Identifying authority sites in your niche and look at way to gain links / build relations with them
Guest posting
Participating in related forums
Settign up a forum for rafting?
Getting all those photos you have geared up to come up in Google for longtails
Basic link building on your secondary sites

It is hard to know what to suggest. Are you looking for search engine-centric services, human-centric services or a mix of the both?

[adventurelife]

im involved in extreme sports my self .....

have you thought about teaming up with the companys that offer experience gift vouchers for extreme sports / track days etc..???


We have about 30 business relationships with the trade in the sector you mention. It was also an area we have been developing until our business development manager quit last week:( Managed to sell her own company but she had to go with it so no chance of retention.

It is an area that I can see slow long term growth coming from and hence I am back in the market for a business development machine if anyone knows anybody.

[adventurelife]

Depends what you have done so far, waht is working and in what particular direction you would go.

Have you ever had in-depth keyword resaerch done for your market? By in-depth, I mean more than just using the Google Keyword Tool and storig the data, grinding competitor stats for it all. That is always the first place to start if you are interested in SE rankingks; will provide low hanging fruit for established sites like yours.

There are plenty of other things you could look at:

Conversion rate optimisation
Developing some interesting content and using it to pursue high quality links from real sites
Identifying authority sites in your niche and look at way to gain links / build relations with them
Guest posting
Participating in related forums
Settign up a forum for rafting?
Getting all those photos you have geared up to come up in Google for longtails
Basic link building on your secondary sites

It is hard to know what to suggest. Are you looking for search engine-centric services, human-centric services or a mix of the both?

We have a lot of what you say ongoing. We also have a few sites that are strong but I think our largest weakness is that we have a lot of sites so we should be dominating across several sectors.

We have dropped link building for the last 18 months or so mainly because it was me that used to do it but I think that is what we are going to concentrate on in 2010.

I buy into the conversion rate story but I still rank being found with volume traffic as a higher priority. We often convert visitors long after their first visit as what we sell is not an instant decision by a long way. On our overseas trips some people consider for 3 years before committing.

We have done a lot of keyword research but not that much competitor work. In our core product of rafting it I do not think it would help that much as we tend to already be out performing them but in our other sites such as our stag weekend site I am sure we could learn a lot.

Thanks for teh input. I have a long drive between offices today and tomorrow and my brain will be in a whizz:)