A lot of what gets done in the outdoor space has to do with who you know, how well you know, and most importantly...why you know. For many in this space, its been a long road of hard work to get where they are, and it is this "effort" that seperates the wheat from the chaff.
My first experience in dealing with online media in the outdoor space was when I was running my own retail shop, Powerline Sports. A kitesurfing shop no less, in the beautiful and cold waters of NH.
This was back in the early beginning of eCommerce and online media. '96 to be exact. The whole idea of advertising your brand and getting the word out was just starting to trickle down to the smaller retailers like myself. CJ was the radar, maybe a few ad networks and of course the local listings.
So like many other retailers, I understood the value of advertising and jumped in...without a plan. I found a network for around $500/month, designed a horrible 728x90 leaderboard (I'll explain what this means later), and waited for the phone to ring. Here is what I was missing:
-Without having any goals for the campaign, I was unable to measure its performance
-By not understanding how networks operate (and more importantly how publishers treat networks) I was ill prepared to maximize my ad budget in the right areas.
-By not taking the time to understand some key metrics on the campaign, I wasn't even able to monitor the performance of what I was buying.
This experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I was out $1,500 for the three months and I was left "thinking" that I got 7 phone calls as a result. The campaign was a flop, I never asked for reporting, and even worse I chalked up the whole experience as a big mistake and burried online advertising in the back of my head.
Having now established myself inside of a company that operates its own niche network of company owned sites, I can say 100% I have seen more than my share of what works and what doesn't.
My offer to you is this. Learn from my mistakes, leverage the insight from someone working on the inside, and if you plan accordingly, you may just end up producing an online campaign with a positive ROI, a strong level of brand awareness and ultimately an increase in sales.
My first experience in dealing with online media in the outdoor space was when I was running my own retail shop, Powerline Sports. A kitesurfing shop no less, in the beautiful and cold waters of NH.
This was back in the early beginning of eCommerce and online media. '96 to be exact. The whole idea of advertising your brand and getting the word out was just starting to trickle down to the smaller retailers like myself. CJ was the radar, maybe a few ad networks and of course the local listings.
So like many other retailers, I understood the value of advertising and jumped in...without a plan. I found a network for around $500/month, designed a horrible 728x90 leaderboard (I'll explain what this means later), and waited for the phone to ring. Here is what I was missing:
-Without having any goals for the campaign, I was unable to measure its performance
-By not understanding how networks operate (and more importantly how publishers treat networks) I was ill prepared to maximize my ad budget in the right areas.
-By not taking the time to understand some key metrics on the campaign, I wasn't even able to monitor the performance of what I was buying.
This experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I was out $1,500 for the three months and I was left "thinking" that I got 7 phone calls as a result. The campaign was a flop, I never asked for reporting, and even worse I chalked up the whole experience as a big mistake and burried online advertising in the back of my head.
Having now established myself inside of a company that operates its own niche network of company owned sites, I can say 100% I have seen more than my share of what works and what doesn't.
My offer to you is this. Learn from my mistakes, leverage the insight from someone working on the inside, and if you plan accordingly, you may just end up producing an online campaign with a positive ROI, a strong level of brand awareness and ultimately an increase in sales.
