How'd it do it? Instead of offering discounts or just promoting its URL, the pizza place's radio ads asked listeners to tear out all the pizza restaurant pages from their Yellow Pages and bring them in. In return, customers received a free pizza of their choice and a sticker with the restaurant's URL. Very clever!
Because the contact information for all the other pizza joints in town disappeared from customers' primary reference source, only one set of contact details was left in households that complied: the URL for the restaurant that dreamed up the promotion. That single outlet is now a franchise. Creating traffic is not necessarily a matter of buying ads or taking a traditional approach. Of course, there's always room for traditional thinking. It works and always will. But if you really want to build effective traffic and branding, go one step further. That is, unless you're a Microsoft with an open marketing budget.
Generating traffic combines traditional thinking with three idea-based elements. The idea is crucial. First, create the idea as the local pizza place did. Develop an idea that not only generates attention but also generates appropriate attention - attention that enables people to remember the information that engaged them and to act on it.
You'll never forget the pizza story, right? The idea (removing the pizza pages from the Yellow Pages) is simple, clever, cheap, and audacious.
Second, promote the idea via traditional off- and online channels and via new channels. The effectiveness of every piece of your communication is increased tenfold if each promotes that pivotal idea rather than simply touting some special offer, new taste sensation, or new product. Third, optimise any channel you use and ensure the message points in your direction.
Half of today's brands have yet to optimise the way search engines secure awareness. A quarter have not incorporated their URLs into the message customers hear on the phone while on hold. Nor have they added it to standard signature lines in emails. These details are free branding. Far too many brand builders believe traffic is secondary to site development. Wrong.
Unless you have an unlimited budget, you can't afford not to think creatively.
You risk ending up like all those vanquished pizza competitors.