Advice needed on a plan of action

Hey everyone,

Many here have been good sources of advice in the past, and now I'm in a position where a little advice would definitely help.

In a nutshell, we will be having a site go live within the next 30 days or so (it is pet related). I have been tasked with contacting companies to partner with us in an effort to drive traffic to our website, where people will sign up for our newsletter. My boss has stated that I need to be generating 3,000 registrations per month, and will only have 2 weeks to ramp up to this goal.

The incentive that will be given to our partners is payment of $1.00 per completed registration (btw, the registrations are free), their logo featured in every newsletter that they provide a registered user for, and other benefits to companies that convert a lot of registered users. A lot of the details are currently being worked out, so regrettably this is about all I know right now when it comes to incentives and compensation for our partners.

Since I have never done this type of marketing before, I'm wondering what the best way to get started is. I've made a list of sites that are in the same market, and plan on contacting them first. Are there any other good places where I can get the word out, so to speak?

Thanks in advance to any pointers everyone has.

Barry

 

I'd tell the boss to go jump to be honest. It would take some good marketing tactics to achieve that goal.
What do people get out of registering? Ie what is the point of registration.

 

What type of budget do you have for this?

Honestly, getting a startup site to 3,000 decent visitors per month is hard. Getting it up to 3,000 conversions is going to take some genius.

If you basically have no budget and are just trying to establish partnerships to drive traffic, then I would say its impossible. It is very hard to get other businesses to do anything with startup websites. They just don't have the credibility unless they have a huge brand behind them. Even if you get some good partnerships, 3000 conversions is absolutely huge.

If you have a budget, you can always use more traditional methods of driving traffic to the website. PPC is the quickest and SEO is going to provide a much better long term payout.

The 2 weeks thing is absolutely ridiculous as well. For 3,000 registrations, assuming that you have a decent budget, a lot of time, and you know what you are doing, I would estimate 9 - 12 months minimum. Possibly a bit shorter, but most likely much longer.

I apologize if I am a bit negative here, but for your sake I think you need try to curb your bosses expectations. 3,000/month may be a feasible expectation for the future, but 2 weeks is just not a realistic amount of time.

 

Forumbulge, Jestep I thought that 3000 to start would be very difficult. The problem is, the guy I'm working for has been doing online marketing for years and should know better, whereas I'm relatively new and just don't have enough experience to say to him "Hey, I don't think that 3000 reg's a month is going to be viable for quite awhile".

Jestep, I'm only going to be able to contact possible partner sites and talk to them about promoting our site via newsletters or through ads on their site. No PPC campaigns to get it kick started. He seems to genuinly think that if we really push partnering with sites that we can make this happen. I had serious reservations about the ability to push those kinds of numbers through from the start, but don't have much of a choice. Maybe its time to start hoping for a Christmas miracle.

 

The partnership idea definitely has good potential, but his numbers just seem too high for that short amount of time.

What is the site you are marketing? Or exactly what does the newsletter have in it that people would sign up for?

As far as going about getting partnerships, I would start by making a list of very general topics for what your likely customers would purchase from. For pet related, you would obviously target other similar but non-competitive pet related sites, information sites, shopping sites etc. But, you also want to look into the demographics of what people searching for pet related also search for. Maybe home improvement, outdoor activities, I'm sure that there are a bunch of indirectly related topics that would also be good targets.

Next I would break the main topics down into sub-topics, and then go and find related websites on the sub topics. You are going to need a very large list of websites to get a decent response. Find every decent site that you can and add it to your list. I would think the best sites to target are going to be ones in specific niches run by actual people and not by corporations. You need to email and call as many as possible and explain what you are offering. Don't give up after one decline, but don't be overly annoying. Also, the more popular blogs you can get on the better you will be. Blogs tend to drive very well converting traffic, if you have a good offer and the blog is relevant.

I still think the 2 weeks is way too short, but if you have a very good newsletter offering and you contact a lot of people you may get in the ball park of what you are targeting. Also, make sure you have a decent tracking system so you can tell how many visitors actually sign up for your newsletter.

For something like newsletter sign-ups, even with a very, very good conversion rate, you will probably need to be in the neighborhood of 50,000+ visitors per month, to get to your 3,000 sign-ups. This is 6% which is way above what most sites will ever draw for a conversion rate. 1 - 3% is probably a better assumption of what your conversion rate will be, especially starting out.

This is a huge number of visitors, so also make sure you have a very good web host, and a very fast server. If you can get your site up to the numbers you are shooting for, you will realize very quickly the value of a good server.

 

If your boss expects those targets and thinks its possible in 2 weeks ask him how to do it
Its a little unfair for your boss to turn around and tell you to do this, you have no clue, he has been marketing for years, ask him to teach you.