FAQ
("Frequently Asked Questions")
As an extension of your television station! Currently most television’s web pages are nothing more than electronic brochures promoting the station. Consider your station’s mission statement and make your home page an extension of that statement. Many television stations are putting an emphasis on the Internet as a pre-cursor to the shift to digital.
Just like your television station, your web page should be a catalyst for generating advertising revenue. The more people you can bring to your "site" the more value your site becomes to advertisers. People who use the Internet are looking for up-to-date news and information. Your station has credibility as a news and information provider give the people what they want!
Many station’s are currently afraid they will lose viewers if they provide too much information on their web page. Recent studies have indicated that people who are online watch significantly less television since they went online and less TV than those that aren’t online. Not to be lost in all of this is the fact that the news and information people seek is on the web at sites such as CNN, PointCast, Yahoo and USA Today (as well as a lot of local newspapers). If your site does not provide the information people seek, it does not mean people have to wait until your news is on it means they will go to somebody else's site to find it!
Promotion and Information. Your strongest asset is definitely your ability to promote your web page on air. This can be done with a strong promotional schedule and by incorporating your web site into your news segments. The second strongest asset you possess is information. Because you are not limited by time you can actually provide more of the information you possess into your web site. Your web page can allow you to get more mileage out of the special features and reports you deliver on your newscasts.
Currently, the largest percentage of advertising conducted on the web is done with banner advertising. Banners are placed on high traffic areas of a site that are linked to more information on the advertiser’s product or service. Also popular are "malls" or "marketplaces". You could set up a marketplace section on your site that would list all of your advertisers. Just like a newspaper you can set up a classified section that features automobiles for sale, jobs and personal ads if you so desire. Coupons are a good way to show your advertiser they are getting a return on their advertising investment. Some other less traditional (for TV that is) ways to generate revenue off the Internet is to design and host advertiser’s web sites and to become an Internet access provider.
Anything that is computer related is a hot category. Other strong Internet advertising categories are hi-tech. products, automotive and real estate. You can create hot categories by creating a site around a category (such as tourism).
Other special features that can be tied into generating revenue are Entertainment with movie, dining and club listing information, Cooking, Home Improvement, Pets, Medical features, Soap updates and even Horoscopes. Don’t forget leisure things that relate to where you are located such as skiing, sailing or fishing. You can even sell access to special content areas such as weather.
Television for the most part has not really done a good job of embracing the web and it’s potential. There are a few stations out there that are headed in the right direction. They are WKBW-TV, KLAS-TV and WRAL-TV . The Tampa Tribune and the Washington Post are good media related sites to visit.
Fountain Street Marketing Technologies can help! Call Kevin Marshall @ (813) 835-1601 or send an e-mail for more information!
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