Why Local Online Advertising Works and How to Build a Simple Marketing Campaign

As some may know I am the Chairman of Kilbride GAA in Wicklow and the founder of Digital Sales.  And over the past couple of years Digital Sales have been working on all things Marketing, Awareness, Branding, Reach and ultimately SALES for the Club.  The Club now turns over roughly 80K per year.  Not bad for a Club with under 100 members!  (Fundamentally, a Club Website is paramount to fundraising, but we will leave that for another day.)

The local community and companies associated with the Club have been incredible with their generosity over the past few years while the Club builds a Playground and other amenities for the Community.

Well, recently the Club ran a Race Night which brought in 6K in advertising alone and sold over 300 horses at 20 euro a horse.  Each advertiser paid 100 euro for a full page advert…But the questions is, what can a ‘good will’ advertisement of 100 euro do for a local business?  Especially online?  How can you turn 100 euro into 1000 euro or even 5K or more?  What should an advertiser do with their 100 euro investment after the event or their Jersey Sponsorship?

The below tips and steps may help you turn 100 euro into 5K…

Tip One & Step One – Backlinks

Make sure you request a backlink from the Clubs website to your company website. See for example: https://www.kilbridegaa.com/our-sponsors/

Remember, backlinks are extremely important for your company’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) performance and especially if you are a local business trying to target local customers.  So, seek out all the local community websites and get a link back to your website.

A backlink on some websites can cost thousands and at Digital Sales we get countless requests for backlinks every week, mainly due to the Domain Authority of this website.  So, you are getting a BARGIN for 100 euro.  Try and make the link permanent, that would be even better, and even more valuable.

If you don’t have a website, get one!!  Contact the Digital Sales team here!

Tip Two & Step Two – Upload a Blog Post

So, you have just created content for 100 euro, the Race Night organiser has produced a booklet, get a copy of it in pdf or take a photo of it and then generate a simple blog post like this example: https://www.boilerreplacement.ie/boiler-replacement-blog/very-happy-to-sponsor-kilbride-race-night/

A website without a blog is almost a waste of a resource.  Code and Design a Blog (this is a service we also provide!) and push content onto it, you will never rank your website on the search engines without fresh content, be that SEO Blog content or Generic Blog posts.

The new page will help your SEO performance, also, you have just uploaded a new page to your company website, when a search engines scans your website, they will think, ‘great this company is still in business and active on social media’.  These are all positive brownie points and add value to your organic search ranking.  Suddenly your 100 euro investment is starting to look like great value…but it gets even better!!

Tip Three & Step Three – Create a Social Media Post

Upload a simple Social Media Post and make sure you tag the Club, this means it will be shared on the Club’s Social Media feed and will get picked up by their followers and maybe shared by followers with even larger follower figures.  So, make sure your Facebook profile is following other local business, especially information based Facebook pages like a GAA Results page for example.  See Social Media Post for NT Heating & Plumbing (Tagging the Club and inserting a link back to your website, the blog post):

Bang…your own social media post has just been picked up by the Club (see below) and now their 1100 local followers will see your post…make sure you tag the Club and then ask them to share it for you!  They have nothing to lose, they will do it!

Tip Four & Step Four – Share your Blog Post on other Social Media Platforms especially GMB (Google My Business)

The more links back to your website, the better for your SEO performance.  Again, links are endorsement signals for search engines.  And GMB is owned by Google and they have a large search engine market share in Ireland.  So, post on GMB, LinkedIn, and others.

Also, remember to give all your images a title (not a file name like: 56676FG), a description and if the blog is SEO related, use the keyword groups you are targeting.

So, 100 euro, is a bargain!!

To summarise, my advice to any sporting organisation or Club, don’t position the offering as a traditional advert, you sell that for sure, but don’t stop there.  Tell the prospect that you will give them a backlink, tell them they can use the advert (content) for a blog post, both actions will help the advertisers SEO rankings.  Organic position will equal more sales.  And then the social media side of things, tell them you have so many followers (mention ‘LOCAL’ Followers, local will most likely be their target audience), you will upload a post for the advertiser and help drive traffic back to their website, which also helps the company’s SEO efforts.  More traffic is a positive signal.

And show them an example of a successful Case Study from the previous year and try and get a juicy testimonial from a couple of advertisers, mentioning the financial returns, sales and awareness they received from being involved.

So package the offering and focus on the sales opportunities for the advertisers.  And feel free to share this blog post with them.

Diarmuid Haughian – Business Development Director – Digital Sales

Post Grad Dip. User Experience (UX), Dip. International Selling, Cert. Digital Marketing, MSc. BITS