The huge, record breaking success of High School Musical 2 is a good example of using offline events to drive traffic to our websites.
While very few companies in the world can match the branding of Disney, within our niches we can still integrate our offline activities with our online to create some big traffic increases.
Coinciding with the premiere of the musical on the Disney Channel, the Disney.com website received an increase of 72 percent in page views, as tweens visited the site to find video, music and the microsite dedicated to the second installment of the smash hit.
Even a week later the site had an increase of 75 percent on Saturday and 70 percent on Sunday, in contrast to the previous three week averages.
What we have to do is similar to Disney. When we have some unique offline activity, we need to put interesting, connected stuff on our websites to complement and add to the event.
To just use the event to give out our website address isn't enough if we don't have something extra for people to find.
People visit websites for the very reason they want to go deeper and continue the experience of the event or activity we present to them offline. So we must have plans in place before any of it launches so whatever we do is integrated and complementing one another.
This may seem obvious, but many people don't add much, if anything, to their websites when they promote various offline initiatives. All they do is include a link to their website. This isn't much of an incentive for people to go online to find our more or dig deeper into what you're offering or promoting with them.
Find something that will delight and surprise them to add to the website. It'll not only drive traffic to the site, but keep them coming back for more.
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