| |
February 2004
Thomson Directories has launched a major new marketing push for its search engine marketing product, WebFinder.com. Initially launched to the core Thomson Local print directory market via existing sales channels, WebFinder.com will now be heavily promoted to marketers and new media managers in small and medium size businesses.
The campaign, including on and off line advertising and direct marketing, will use humour to encourage businesses to promote their websites on search engines by using WebFinder.com to achieve priority listings.
Karen Francis, Internet Channel Marketing Manager, Thomson Directories, describes the theme of the campaign as ‘slightly cheeky'.
Karen Francis said: “The key messages are that with WebFinder.com, advertisers can ‘choose their favourite positions' on search engines by the amount they bid for a particular keyword or phrase or ‘ be on top' in order to drive qualified sales leads to their businesses.
“The underlying benefit is that this is highly targeted pay-as-you-go advertising, ideal for small to medium sized businesses who know the value of every marketing pound spent. It's a very dynamic way of capturing Internet surfers and it is extremely cost effective.”
Thomson launched WebFinder.com last year to grab a major share of the increasingly lucrative search engine marketing industry, predicted by Jupiter Research to be worth £3bn by 2008.
Designed to promote websites by achieving priority positions on some of the most popular search engines, WebFinder.com is currently generating over 40 million searches a month across its search partner network, which includes Freeserve, Ask Jeeves, Tiscali, Streetmap and blueyonder. Users can also search directly from the WebFinder.com homepage, which has a unique ‘location specific' search function.
Advertisers pay an initial one-of set up charge and then only pay when someone clicks through to their website, starting from as little as 5p a visit.
Thomson Directories says that search engine marketing effectively eliminates wastage, as the Internet user has already expressed an interest in a certain type of business or product by initiating their search, providing a high return on investment.
The set up price for the full WebFinder.com service is discounted for the promotional period to £75.00 plus an initial deposit of £50.00 for the click-through account. Alternatively a self-service account can be set-up for £25 with the same click-through deposit applying.
Karen Francis said: “We believe that this offers real value for money – and we have also added value with a range of customer support services. We have designed tools to monitor the results by individual keywords and campaigns so that users can track the effectiveness of their campaign.
“Full service customers can also work with a dedicated account manager who will help them identify the best choice of keywords or phrases to maximise exposure and drive users to the most relevant page within a website.”
The campaign will run through until April, with ads in key marketing and new media titles and on-line promotion in newmediazero.com, mad.co.uk and emediabulletins. It also included a presence at TFM in February and IDMF in March plus direct mail and email campaigns in March and April.
Creative was developed and designed by Chaos Design with media booking handled by The Media Shop. Public relations is being handled by Wyatt PR.
For more information on WebFinder, visit www.webfinder.com or contact our press office.
|
