Online ads boost Branson CVB's Web traffic

The online advertising budget for 2005 was more than $200,000, triple what it was three years ago.

Lennon said his organization elected to spend less on paid search placement because the Branson Chamber/CVB was coming up relatively close to the top in organic searches for free. An organic search is when key words are randomly typed into a search engine such as Google.

Relying on organic searches has freed up money for placing online banner ads on sites in the Branson Chamber/CVB’s key markets: Kansas City; St. Louis; Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Okla.; and Little Rock and Fort Smith, Ark.

Other area businesses are slow to catch on to the idea of using advertising specifically to draw clients to a Web site.

Brent Atterberry, owner of AdBuilders, a full-service advertising agency, said few clients are asking specifically about online advertising opportunities to drive Web traffic.

“Most people have the ‘Field of Dreams’ attitude about their Web site: ‘If I build it, they will come,’” Atterberry said.

Ron Marshall, owner of Greenleaf Marketing LLC, said local agencies haven’t really embraced using online advertising to boost Web traffic.

“I don’t mean to say I’m not going to keep my eye on it and it won’t change but, frankly, when people go to a Web site they’re on a search mission, kind of browsing things, and they don’t click through too much to the ads,” he said.

Darin Codon, an independent consultant in Branson, disagrees. He conducts research for his clients and creates and implements online marketing strategies.

“I think what (business owners) realize is … tourists are more sophisticated than a lot of the owners themselves,” he said. “They see the value and they know that it’s important.”

That value includes determining the best keywords for clients to bid on in hopes of luring clicks by Web surfers interested in their products or services. Clients then pay the Google Adwords program for each click that generates a visit to its Web site.

The average pay-per-click cost for specific keywords, Codon said, is 25 to 35 cents, but he’s seen the keyword ‘Branson’ bring in up to $2 per click.

Online options

Included with membership in the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, businesses receive a listing on the chamber’s site with a link to the business’ Web site.

Chamber members also are eligible to purchase various levels of advertising on the site, ranging from enhanced business directory listings for $200 per month, to banner ads that start at $600 per month.

“Great Southern bought the Level I package which means not only do they have that spot on our home page, they have that banner throughout different pages of the Web site on different levels,” said Claire Faucett, communications coordinator for Springfield chamber.

Teresa Chasteen-Calhoun, marketing director for Great Southern, said the banners have been at www.springfieldchamber.com for about two years. Traffic to www.greatsouthern.com has increased in that time, she said, but she was unable to determine if traffic had increased as a direct result of the banners.

Great Southern also has a banner on SBJ’s site at www.sbj.net. Great Southern does not use paid search placement to drive Web site traffic, but the company does have an e-newsletter that it sends to existing customers.

Such diversification is best, according to consultant Codon, rather than using just one method, such as banners or paid search placement such as Google Adwords. He suggests allowing a Web designer or consultant to optimize a Web site so that it will rank high in an organic search.

“Optimization is the only thing that I’ve seen really be effective,” Marshall said. “You pay to be one that comes up on the first few pages of the search. If you don’t come up on the first or second page of the search, you might as well hang it up. People rarely go to the third.”

Budgets and results

Herschend Family Entertainment’s online advertising budget is small, said Janet Eller, marketing manager, who declined to share figures.

“We’re taking a walk-before-we-run approach,” she said, adding that results seem favorable. “We know that we’ve sold more tickets. Every year, we sell more tickets online. Next year we’re hoping to get a gage of whether it’s incremental and if it’s coming from online sales. This year we really don’t have those numbers.”

Great Southern, now in its second year of banner ads, reallocated funds from other areas for online advertising. “It’s still a very, very small percent of our overall budget. Probably less than 1 percent,” Chasteen-Calhoun said. She declined to share specific figures.

CoxHealth has placed banner ads at various sites, including www.417mag.com.

“We view it as adding another layer of access, not so much as something that’s going to make or break the delivery of a message,” said Kristin Butler, director of marketing promotion. She declined to share costs or results from the banner ads.

“I want to be real careful that we don’t discourage other businesses from considering doing this,” Butler said.

“So much of the way people utilize hospital services has little to do with whether they’ve seen a particular banner ad out on a Web site.”

Web lingo

Organic search engines are the well-known traditional search sites that use automated programs called “spiders” or “robots” to index (reference) a Web site based on its content. The information indexed goes into large databases – effectively an Internet roadmap. Position cannot be bought, but it can be influenced via search engine optimization. Almost all organic search engines now include pay-per-click listings. Example organic engines include Google, Yahoo!, AskJeeves/Teoma, Mirago and InfoSpace.

Search engine optimization is the ongoing restructuring of online content through which content is carefully rewritten from the search engine’s point of view. Following search engine optimization, the search engine will rank a page higher for relevant searches.

Source: Search Engine Professionals[[In-content Ad]]