

How Much Traffic Does a Magazine or TV Mention Send Your Website? - garbowza
http://blog.momentgarden.com/post/47117433601/how-much-traffic-does-a-magazine-or-tv-mention-send

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dylanvee
What traffic from 60 Minutes looks like:
[http://bjk5.com/post/30813320623/what-traffic-
from-60-minute...](http://bjk5.com/post/30813320623/what-traffic-
from-60-minutes-looks-like)

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orangethirty
Its not the traffic that they send, its the quality. TV, printed, and radio
traffic are still very good. I once had a magazine mention and only had about
50-ish extra visitors. _But_ , that turned into doubling my sales for the next
2 months. Its not the traffic, but the conversions and sales.

~~~
TrevorJ
This is true to a huge extent. The quality of the traffic matters so much more
than the raw number of visitors.

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rrival
In 2008, a Consumer Reports Money Advisor TV segment that featured
<http://www.PriceAdvance.com> was syndicated to news programs in 15 states
right around the holidays. That led to 125k+ installs of our toolbar.

In October 2007, the Wall Street Journal mentioned Startup Schwag on the front
page, below the fold. That yielded ~15 signups for the ~$20/mo service, though
admittedly its appeal was a bit niche.

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typpo
One of my side projects[1] was shown for about 20 seconds on BBC News. Overall
it drove maybe 10k visitors.

The traffic comes in huge waves. It jumps 500x in seconds and dies down almost
as quickly. In my case there were aftershocks as the news piece was aired
around the world.

[1] <http://asterank.com>

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ibudiallo
I like this, i spent a good 30 min playing in it at work.

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bromley
The closest my company has come to mainstream fame was in the Wall Street
Journal. It was a half page article on page 2 - not about us but more the data
from our system (a specialist kind of weather data for energy-data analysis).

I don't think it drove more than about 100 extra visitors - truly a drop in
the ocean. As a kind of direct marketing I think it was pretty much useless as
the readership is so broad whilst our business is so specialist (no use in
exposure unless it's to the right audience).

But we can now mention the WSJ piece as a kind of credibility signal. And for
that it is great.

~~~
garbowza
Great point about the value of the social validation from high-profile media
coverage! That's usually more important than the minimal traffic it drives.

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ry0ohki
Magazines are definitely surprising in their longevity. I still get people
signing up for my service from a small mention in a magazine in 2009.

~~~
garbowza
This was definitely our biggest surprise: we expected an early spike and quick
tapering, just like we were accustomed to from web traffic.

It's hard for us to know how much residual traffic we still get from Better
Homes & Gardens, since there's no referrer to track people coming from
magazines.

~~~
ry0ohki
Yep, same here, I only know because people occasionally say "I saw an article
in Woman's Day" when they send a support email.

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miniatureape
Some of my wife's projects have been featured on Cable TV shows and in large
national magazines (Food and Wine, Brides magazine, Martha Stewart).

The amount of traffic she got from these was minuscule in comparison to
popular online sources (Design Sponge).

The magazines in particular do tend to get put online and feed a small amount
of views over time.

~~~
TrevorJ
From the experience I've had, I tend to think that all things being equal, a
mention on a popular blog in your market will drive higher quality traffic
than a television mention.

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nakedrobot2
My company has been mentioned multiple times on major TV and Radio, the most
recent being a couple of appearances on two different BBC shows, with millions
of people watching. The clicks through to our site were only a handful - in
the hundreds, or less.

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localhost3000
press for us (and we've gotten quite a bit) has mostly been useful in getting
over the 'never heard of you' hurdle which i think is absolutely huge for just
about any business conversation. the power of name recognition is astounding.
we're a small app - we count our users in thousands units not millions - but
our userbase is highly engaged, using our app every time they go to work and
our most valuable user segment (bar staff) generally doesn't care about the
press and certainly not tech press. mainstream press is mostly a fleeting
adrenaline rush and ego stroke for us, it's primary value is street cred.

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kybernetyk
My blog has been mentioned once (in 2004) on a german national news show (RTL
Aktuell).

I got ~500 uniques more that day. I guess in 2004 german TV audience wasn't
too much into internet ;)

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Terretta
We often deploy promo sites to handle TV traffic.

For top cable shows (top 5 in weekly cable ratings), a rule of thumb we've
found works for planning is 100 thousand uniques per _second_ of time the
domain or URL is shown or spoken, during and following the ad. If the brand is
the domain, that counts too.

So 15 seconds of clear call to action exposure can drive 1.5 million uniques.
Numbers are lower without a call to action.

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onemorepassword
Relatively little. Yes, there are visible spikes if a site is mentioned on TV,
but it's nothing compared to what a decent size mailing can do, or getting
attention from a major website.

Even when I used to work for a major TV station and we did very strong
promotion in and around well viewed prime time shows the spikes in traffic
were nothing shocking.

Of course this says nothing about the long term effects.

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brador
Mailing, you mean postal or email?

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onemorepassword
Email.

And be careful with email mailings, especially during office hours. Apparently
most people have nothing else to do but check their mail every minute and
click on every link in it. Huge traffic spikes.

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smackfu
I don't think people appreciate how big the biggest magazine subscriptions are
(3-7 million) and that people do tend to actually read them.

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singold
This is really interesting, but you have to remember to THINK ABOUT YOUR
AUDIENCE

In this case it worked relatively well, because (probably) there is a segment
of the public of the site that is more on TV than on internet, so they saw the
mention on TV and then went to the PC

I doubt you can get this kind of result from a TV mention (or ad) of HN ;)

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zalew
if I remember this podcast [http://techzinglive.com/page/1285/225-tz-
interview-gabriel-w...](http://techzinglive.com/page/1285/225-tz-interview-
gabriel-weinberg-the-duckduckgo-step-function) correctly (duck duck go
founder), an nbc morning mention gained him something close to zero users.

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bryanlanders
I bet the easy-to-remember and apt name helped combat the product's "lack of
SEO friendly links". Conversion from someone hearing of a product once in
offline media, even if they're a perfect demographic fit, seems impressive.

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mrwhy2k
HN will send more traffic than your mentions in magazines.

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digao
really, the lack of a link (AKA THE FACT THAT IT HAPPENED OFFLINE) limited the
long term seo value of the mention... Count me among the shocked.

