Lots of people browse for your cinema on the Net on a daily basis. Are many people finding you? If not, then this introductory post is a fantastic place to start the World wide web Marketing campaign for your cinema.
If producing your own website sounds like a lot of work (and it might be), then don’t panic, there are other ways to get the job done: If you have the cash, you can employ someone to do the work for you. Either look at sites you like and find out who built them – or ask some businesses in your area for a recommendation. You could even outsource the job on a website like Elance – you’ll get quotes from around the world – and much of the work done in Eastern Europe or the Phillipines is excellent quality and very cheap. If you make a decision to create the site yourself – there are lots of solutions available that can make it very easy. Try Blogger or Yola for instance – they will not take long to learn, and you’ll have the benefit of being able to revise the website in future without having to pay more cash.
Make sure you install a statistics system like Google Analytics or similar on your site. It’s incredible how many people don’t do this, and that’s a massive mistake. Without web stats, you do not know how many prospects your site’s getting – and you have no idea where they arrived from. Without that information you also can’t tell which of your internet advertising activities are working. Most of these systems are free – so don’t ignore this step!
There are numerous directories out there that you can submit your site to. Some are free, and the rest you have to shell out for. Best of the Web is one of the more desirable paid directories, you could also consider Joe Ant. There are so many free directories that it’s often best to employ a reputable directory submission service to save time. Don’t even think about posting to hundreds and hundreds of directories – a hundred or so is generally more then enough.
cinema web sites that will include your details will typically charge you money – but those that have good visitor levels and will send lots of people to your site, it may well be money well spent. Every so often you can even discover a free site that deals with your industry – e.g. http://www.ClickCinemas.co.uk/ for the cinema sector.
A great way to get visitors to a new site is Pay Per Click Advertising (otherwise termed PPC). Pay per click will allow you to create an advertisement, and get it shown on other sites – yet only pay when a person clicks it and visits your site. Google Adwords is the most widely known PPC system at the moment. It’s vital to find out all about PPC before making a start – but it’s well worth learning more as it has the potential to yield a lot of page views to your cinema website.
One of the most important tasks to do next, is to compile an email list, by persuading your readers to provide you with their email address and permission to mail them. Use a service like ConstantContact – which for a modest monthly fee will help you store email addresses of lots of potential customers and email them whenever you want.
You’ve already taken the initial step to obtaining more potential customers from the Web – but the most vital step is yet to come – putting all this into action. Just work through it, bit by bit – but do get started. The quicker you start, the earlier you’ll have your first new buyer from the World wide web.