Planting Seeds in All the Right Places, Continued

In web development, both staff and time are often at a premium. Outsourcing awareness-building activities to a third party can make sense in many cases. If you do decide to outsource, never select a service based only on the number of submissions they'll make. Numbers are meaningless. Why? Because submission sites are not equal in value. What's worse, some submission sites aren't even legitimate. Some are "fronts" for other businesses and aren't really in the directory business at all. Anyone can submit your URL to 500 of these sites, but chances are it will have little or no value to your campaign.

Costs for third-party submission services can vary wildly. It usually depends on who's doing the submission and how customized your campaign will need to be. A quality submission campaign surrounding a site launch should cost about $1,500 or less for a one-time service. For ongoing services, prices are typically negotiable.

If you're ready to get started, think back to my earlier advice. Make sure to take a holistic approach. Whether you do it yourself or outsource all or part of it to a third-party service, awareness-building requires constant commitment. Plant seeds in the right places, but don't forget to tend to your site's growth over time.

Eric Ward runs NetPost, a site promotion service whose clients include Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Mecklermedia. He writes a column on web marketing for Advertising Age, which you can find in their Net Marketing section.Article © 1998 Eric Ward.

Net Marketing
Advertising Age magazine's section devoted to marketing on the Internet.

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