We officially began testing an organic online promotion strategy for Proxonic Visuals on Feb 19, 2008. Although the final results are not in, early numbers have exceeded targets by a long shot, and we owe most of it to the design work implemented long before promotion began.

Preliminary Results:

From Feb 1 to Feb 18 (prior to the strategy) we had roughly 800 page views, which were typical numbers for previous months as well. In the ten day period from Feb 19 to Feb 29 we jumped to approximately 8,500 page views. Not eye popping, but certainly respectable.

In the first four days of March we’ve already had more than 12,000 page views from 90+% new visitors. Eyes start to twitch in a pop-pending fashion. At our current pace, we’ll hit 100,000 page views and 20,000 visitors for March. The numbers are especially intriguing considering that we are a professional/creative services company, and not an online store or download site.

Where Did Traffic Come From?

Regarding the campaign itself, and without going into every specific detail, we limited promotion to cheap and/or free submissions, word of mouth, search engine meta data, and sparse use of keyword ads (Google, MSN and Yahoo).

Surprisingly, Google adsense has been responsible for only a tiny fraction of visitors (less than a single percentage point). This is perhaps due to the broad category words required of our industry - things like “animation” and “design”, which are far too competitive.

Yahoo and MSN keyword advertising was, in our opinion, not worth the effort. In addition to being considerably more confusing to setup than Google’s, their results have been dismal. Again, perhaps if we were a commoditized offering, these programs would be effective, but for professional/creative services they’re no more valuable than a law firm purchasing words like “ambulance” and “chaser”.

Our advice to any professional/creative services company is to purchase the keywords of your company name only. By locking up the name keywords, you don’t have to sweat it out over finicky organic search results - ensuring that those who search for your company by name will find it.

The remaining 99.3 % of the new traffic came from various sources, but the root behind all was the same: excellent design. That was the piece that connected our site and our organic promotional strategy. In two weeks, our average daily traffic has grown from 100 page views to 4,000 - almost all of it because the site was accepted by industry design showcase sites like www.designcharts.com, www.fcukstar.com and www.ilovenewwork.com, and subsequently forwarded from point to point.

Design a cheap looking site - maybe something with a Web 2.0 template feel - and organic growth is not a good bet. Design something that speaks to your audience, something that achieves a certain level of production, visual appeal and authenticity … and word can spread like wildfire. At least, that’s been our experience … so far.