Septmeber 2007
In September, I started out with the idea of a free ebook that people could download, where select tourism operators would have their ads. Much like a How-To Manual for each species of fish. People who download the ebook are given the option to subscribe to a fishing tips newsletter. The newsletters are pre-written and set up with an auto-responder service so they are timed to start their delivery sequence once a new subscriber signs up. Each email is a short teaser paragraph with a link back to the full article on the fishingbook website - where the select advertisers are presented alongside the fishing information.
It's a great system - you can thoughtfully prepare a series of 4 or 5 email that invites the prospective guest back to your site to take the next step in the 'tour' of you offer, helping to establish trust and recognition.
(This full working system can be seen working if you sign up at www.canadianfishingbook.com after you confirm you email subscription, you will receive one email about every 4 days. )
This was great, but I needed more traffic. After a conversation with Bruce Fallon, Gerry Cariou and Jerry Fisher, I knew I needed more pages and more information that people are searching for if I was going to get more traffic.
October
I spent over 60 hours collecting a database of over 700 lodges and resorts across the northwest. This unique database was created using www.thebrain.com which permits me to link a lodge listing to everything they are involved in; The services they provide, the sport shows they attended, the organizations they are a member of and more.
November
Thru november I exported this database as a Fishing Lodge Directory on each of the five CanadianFishingBook websites, and I created banner space above every lodge listing where the Master Investors are displayed - and a prominant invitation to download the ebook on every page as well.Around that time I found the nifty Peel-Away Ad Script, and thought that was an eye-catching, unique promo, so I bought the script and created a special Peel Away ad for each Master Investor that randomly displays a different Investor's ad each time the page is loaded.
January
By January, all of the Lodge Listing pages were indexed, about 2000 pages for each of five sites, subscribers were signing up every day and the activity was growing.
I happened upon an interesting script and included www.canadianfishingbook.com/videos section without any customization, just as an experiment to see how Google would index it. Results are starting to show, and this section needs some TLC.
February
In February, I had the good fortune of attending the Tourism Keys Workshop and Seminar in Thunder Bay. Todd Lucier was the speaker for the two day event, and the information he presented has cause an explosion in the scope of my project with the CanadianFishingBook.com websites.
The ebooks and the followup email series are still the core of the marketing program - the bottom of the funnel, if you will. But in order to bring more people into the funnel, where we might get them to grab an ebook, the CanadianFishingBook.com series of websites has expanded it's online footprint by establishing a visible presence on huge range of busy online real estate.By including our marketing message where people have already gathered on the internet, it's easy to bring in new traffic from very different sources.
Search Engines
Everyone is aware of the search engines as a source of traffic. We do that. Currently have over 10,000 pages indexed in Google, with thousands of top 10 rankings.
March
Video Sharing Sites
But now you can gain unique and distict traffic from Video Sharing sites like YouTube, Dailymotion and Metacafe (and more than a dozen other popular video sharing sites). All Master Investors get one animated video created and posted thoughtout the network of 17 video sharing sites - and I dont link back to your listing on my site - I link directly to your site where I can, and I include your phone number so you can be contacted directly.
Social Bookmarking Sites
It has become very popular to connect up with friends and post your bookmarks online. In fact, as this industry matures, people have started to use their friends' bookmarks as a starting place when searching online for ANYTHING. This way, the results they get have already been pre-screened, and 'voted for' by someone they trust. AND, so, I've made sure that All Master Investors have been bookmarked on several of the bigger Social Bookmarking sites - with more to come...
This is mighty powerful word-of-mouth
But this is BIGGER...
Social Networking
I've established a business Fan Page on FaceBook for each of the eBook websites, where people can sign up as fans. All the Master Investors have links to their sites in the NOTES section on each Fan Page, and will soon have all the videos posted there as well.
April 2008
Five new FaceBook Fan Pages have been created - one for each of the five Fishingbooks!
This provides another way to increase the effectiveness of our word-of-mouth referrals, and to grow a group of new followers. In addition, a New FaceBook Fishing Group called "Take Me Fishing" was also created, and continues to have a growing membership! What's the difference between a Fan Page and a Group? A few things, but the most important is that you can view a Fan Page without being logged in to Facebook, and so can Google. In other words, you can post a one-way link to your sites and blogs from Facebook!
- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14039182164
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smallmouth-Bass-Book/8307003323
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Northern-Pike-Book/22003075744
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Walleye-Book/8356508565
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Trout-Book/10384916962
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Canadian-Fishing-Book/10577369084
Each of the Master Investors have been featured throughout the various new FaceBook pages - and people on FaceBook are also encouraged to download the various fishing eBooks, providing yet another step to building a relationship between potential tourists and the 12 Master Investors.
Social Marketing or Search Engine Markeitng?
Search Engine Marketing is going to be around for a while yet, but I've never gotten these kind of conversion rates from traffic generated from search. Search Engine Marketing is passive. Do the updates and wait for the results...
Social Marketing is better. Social Marketing is proactive, extremely targetted, and much more often, leaves you with a visitor who has converted into a "Friend", "Fan" or "Group member" - this gives you two benefits:
1) You have permission to contact these people again, and
2) all of their friends (potentially hundreds of people) can see that someone they know and like has become your Friend, Fan or Group Member, often adding new members that I had not contacted!
May
The CanadianFishingBook.com series of websites are always being improved. I'm very excited to accounce the newest upgrades to help visitors find your service!
Introducing - Google Maps!
Your Membership now includes a position on the main page Map - for all Five websites! Check it out! http://www.canadianfishingbook.com
June
Blogcatalog is a Social Community of bloggers - I have searched out the people who write about fishing, added them as my friends and joined "their neighborhoods". This creates a link from their listing to mine - and measureable traffic to our offers.
Our 5 fishing sites are now connected to a wide range of fishing related blogs - all of which helps to bring our offer closer to another "tradeshow" of people who love fishing. Most importantly, this list has created a permission based, measureable and lasting way to communicate future offerings to this audience of people who write about fishing: 'come download the updated eBook'
September/October 2008
Then, after creating new real-estate on the biggest websites all year long - it's time to prepare for using our entire network of sites for marketing the 2009 trade shows. Articles, news and press releases, blog posts, videos, pictures and email notices about the upcoming sport shows will be created and posted for automatic release on specific dates throughout the impending sport show season in January - April of 2009.