Promote or Die

Chris Rayner of BMP DDB Needham spoke yesterday at the Daily Telegraph Internet 97 Conference about the problems facing new web sites.

Many companies have jumped on the New Media bandwagon, spent a great deal of time and money developing exciting and interesting web sites and then waited for a flood of visitors. A large number of these sites have actually failed to attract visitors in sufficient numbers to even make a return on their initial investment.

Because of this the Internet has been labelled a failure as a communications channel.

Is this fair? Chris maintains that many companies are simpily failing to promote their sites correctly. His solution is not just to throw more money at the problem, but to combine paid-for advertising with an online PR campaign. The success story cited here was the Schweppes site which was designed in association with BMP DDB and acheived a 445% increase in recorded page impressions after being featured on Netscape’s ‘What’s Cool’ site.

Chris Rayner: 0171 258 3979