If you had a 200K marketing budget how would you spend it?

What are your goals? Brand recognition, sales, list building, etc.? Anything specific?

If you want any worthwhile ideas, I would probably give more details than "barter related site".

It's a little hard to come up with anything, dividing up 200.000 grand on that info.

Give me the 200K first, you can get my idea afterwards.

You can put that money into adword campaigns, going to your site which would be an informative page, with the option to capture leads, to build a list. Promote offers to that list, and the profits you make from them sales can drive more cash for you.

Otherwise buy a new car lol.

I would buy billboards only...lol

how long before you launch?

Spend $10-20 on checking your site in different browsers: in Chrome it sucks

Looks fine on my end in Chrome.

Honestly, I'd throw about 100k at a MAJOR social media campaign. Use that to test the **** out of your site, from conversions to mouse movement, price points, etc. The next 100k would be dependent upon the testing results.

okay - you need to put that date off and conserve your cash for the moment. I'm sure there are several features that haven't been turned on, but I know you're not going to be ready for a launch that soon. And even if the site seems ready, the crosses of the "i" and "t" 's won't be.

For example -- the initial thing people see ...

"BuyersTap is a "Free" social media website that allows you to buy and sell your used items in our marketplace without having to use a Credit Card or real money.Instead we use "Trade Credits" that you can earn on BuyersTap to buy items listed by other members. BuyersTap also lets you connect with all your friends, share pictures,videos, update your status, join groups, and much more. Check out the three buttons below for more info!"

is a real mess.

Your domain name, to the naked eye, has an implied weakness -- BuyersTap easily becomes buyerstRap (buyers trap) -- so step #1 is to remove the " " from the word Free ... because having Free in " " implies, whether real or not, that there IS a cost involved and really this service isn't "free" at all. Next, correct the spaces in the paragraph, etc. ...

I'm sure this isn't going to be your homepage for long -- you'll want to get members faces and members offers/products on the front page as quickly as possible -- but since this is what people first see - it has to be right and not leave any psychological problems -- whether implied like the "Free" or real like the spaces ("I'm not trusting these people with my money, they can't even correct their copy")

It ALL matters. Every last bit of it matters.

You want to populate the place asap with people -- in your sig here you say $600, on site it's $200 free Trade Credits -- offer the same to everyone.

With 200k I would absolutely without question hire a great PR firm for $8-20,000 month for 6 months and set up a promotion to give away $50,000 in cash and prizes - but mostly cash. Populate the site fast and as others have said, offer the early adopters something great - - "The first 3,000 to join are entered to win their choice of either $25,000 in cash or a new Camaro" ... or whatever...

That will leave you with 100,000 to spend on petty things - but I would mostly leave this in the bank and not touch it.

I don't know the details of your plan with this business -- what your ROI is and all ... so, blind take all the advice with a grain of salt. No one knows your plans or how you'll make money and what your CCA cost are going to be, what your burn rate will be, or how long you having to start making money ...

if i had 200k to spend, then i must have done something right to make that 200k. i would just go ahead and repeat the process to make another 200k

Would it be "cheating" (ie not applying the funds where they are really intended) to buy a laser targeted email address list?

Building the product is a small part of the job. You'll need a huge budget for marketing. 85% goes into marketing. So... well, I guess it will be important to use a great deal of that money in advertising.

last year I was going to take on an SEO project of someone who had an excellent idea. He built the website but had ZERO money for SEO or marketing. His wonderful website with all them money spent on programming to get it to work, was wasted and nothing has come of it because he was thinking it would somehow take off on it's own.

Just a thought,
Chrisi

Massive outsourced press releases.

You're in Jax? I'm here in Daytona. If you're ever in the area, shoot me a PM and I'll buy ya a beer

1) It may not be in your best interest to take advice from people that have never managed anything close to that size of a marketing budget.

2) Contact Michael Hiles or cross your fingers and hope he replies to this thread.

Id hire a professional marketing team that works with small businesses and knows how to effectively leverage every penny to get you placed high on Google, Seen on Face-book, and back-linked all over the web. In addition this team should be able to find you affordable advertising that WORKS and spits out results. I know of such a team since I work for a marketing firm that does just that but I don't want to self promote so I will leave it up to you to PM me if you'd like to see our online portfolio.

My signature contains my personal endeavors so it's not there, but I am very proud of the company I work for. 100% integrity with every penny. Good luck to you!

If you had a 200K marketing budget how would you spend it?

Ice cream?

Loads of it.

The Way I'd Personally Go about it.>
$200,000 Budget Avail
1.Planning it all Out
2.Creation
3.Outsource, as MUCH as possible, Use Elance find someone who Believe's they have knowledge on the subject or is able to Acquire Valuable Knowledge on the Subject.
4.SEO= CRAZY
1x Money Site + 6 Website's Aiming at Different Keyword, Each Related to the Topic. Different IP's per Each Site
Each of the Keyword Sniper Site's Wheel around to Each other, each site Promoting your Money Site's "Idea/Ideology"

Then Use SENUKE+TrafficGeyser+Pixelpipe+SEolinkPro+3waylink s+Thelinkjuicer+Linkvana+Bookmarking Demon+Autopligg+SocialPoster+ Join a Stock Photo Website Buy 50+ 100Max Royalty Free Pictures Related to your Market/topic ect.

Pay for a Press Release for MoneySite.

The Main & Soul "Issue" is Marketing Especially for this type of Site, you'll want to Viral it as much as Possible & get it around the Social Networking avenue's.

Promote on all the Video Website's Using tool such as Trafficgeyser

On Site Use The Viral Friend Generator

Put in your Name & Email & 4Friends who you think May Be Interested also.
If you Refer 2 or more people to the site & they Subscribe also you will receive or get X?

You could go "Crazy" and spend 30k or more on AMAZING Sales Copy.
I Reckon Just Market it well, Hire Outsource's who just Market it 24/7
Backlink's/Social Media,BlogComment Demon kinda tool ect.

Have a GREAT Article Written for your PressRelease

*Have an Option Where people can do Survey's/CPA to Receive Credit's
if they don't want to pay or use CreditCard ect.


Hrm $200,000 Being a Considerable Budget, it's more a case of you have a Project/Campaign your Planning, & your Budget is Unlimited, BUT! you wanna play it smart & Make as big a return as possible, Target being Earning $200,000? in such and such time frame or getting your website to the value of X amount.

That Amount of Money is more than is Needed to do what you want to do, I believe even if you did everything Possible, that's still more money than you'd need.

JV's+Team of Outsourcer's + Good Written Material
Market the HELL out of it, & Plan all stages out thoroughly Before Proceeding, so you have no reason to stop along the way & Minimise the Chance of any Issues or Stops Arising.


Ok Iv'e Just Said my Part, Briefly.. with a Standard kind of Planning
Hopefully I said something of Use for you.

I Also think just Consult & Discuss, with People that have already done or people that are Expert's in the particular area's

I would take $100,000 and purchase Vacation Incentives for people to sign up on your website. I would take the other $100,000 and create a Awesome Contest that gets picked up on National Morning News Programs.

Think... We will pay someone $200,000 for the next year to live on a deserted Island and make promotional sayings in the Sand. It sounds sooo STUPID... but how many people would want to get paid $200,000 for playing on the BEACH.

Goes Viral and you have time on NBC, CBS and ABC taking about your Website....

Go to Buyerstap.com to apply for our $200,000 a year job to PLAY on the BEACH and talk about your adventure on-line.

I'd like to say also, when Big Companie's have a Campaign/Project there Planning.
They'll have a team of Marketer's in a Room just Brainstorming/thinking during the planning stage.

Thats what I always try to, Replicate Discuss/Consult/Brainstorm ect. with other Marketer's

Sorry if that comes across as a bit Patronising, to even have to mention:O

I will spend it on google PPC & will setup multiple blogs.

Holy crap dude I highly recommend you reconsider investing $200,000 in advertising if you are coming here on the WF to ask what to do with it...

Seriously man... you're heading in a very bad direction right now - one that will most likely end with you waking up to a bank account with $0 in it.

Seriouslyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Start with chunks of $300 add spends and see what it produces for you. You need measurable results before you drop $200k on advertising.

I'd probably just spend it gambling in vegas.

Hello,

See what works for your competitors and do the same

As you have a 'big-stage' budget, you should run a 'big-stage' campaign.

The first thing you should do, is to contact industry specific magazines, and ask them about being featured in an article. I don't want to get into this too deeply here, but a news story in a 'real' magazine can bring you millions of customers.

Most marketers are unaware that for a magazine or newspaper to feature a company in exchange for cash - is completely legal. Actually, it is protected under US and EU law.

When you see a big name magazine promoting a new unheard-of company or product, usually the owners of that product or company have paid for the privilege.

If you get your company featured in the right magazines, with the right readership, I think you should be able to get the members up to the level you need for your venture capital agreement.

The down side to this is, it's expensive. If you have the budget though, it will get you where you need to be.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Colin Palfrey

I would divided up as following:

Step 1: Save $20,000 for staffing/web development needs (no American staff unless they are willing to work for equity only).

Step 2: Take $80,000, spend 2 years doing SEO for hundreds of keywords, build up thousands of visitor flow into the website. Everything you spend should be such that $1 into the cash flow machine comes out more than $2 within 6 months or less.

Step 3: Come up with a way to monetize this traffic. Show an operating history of rapidly increasing revenue and traffic. Show some real options of rapid expansion in earnings/revenue potentials, either through partnership or new services/product offering. Dream big, but keep a keen eye on operating cash flow.

Step 4: Use $100,000 to file a DPO (Direct Public Offering), average advertising related business can typically fetch P/E ratio of 50 times or more. So if you are making even just $100k a year as an advertising agency, you could potentially be worth 5 million dollars or more. Once you take it public, you got a lot more options for expansion.

5. Retire before 35.

What do I know? I am just a silly dreamer/failed stockbroker running my own startup. But that's what I have been doing, with 150k of my own money on a company that is barely profitable right now.

I would be happy to help you, advise you or what so, but you need to give us a little more information than this. Considering you have a substantial marketing budget your original post was pretty poor, as others have asked what is the goal of your campaign? What do you want visitors to do once they land on your site? Do you want leads or sales?

So on and so fourth...there are hundreds of ways to advertise online, from the creative to the most mundane yet effective advertising techniques.

We just need to know what you want visitors to do first.

I have seen so far excellent answers given here in this thread on how to spend your 200k budget...From my little experience i would have to say PR is the most important.Find a good PR company, with proven work and results and give them part of the money.Pay them only for results.If they know what they are doing, they will spend wisely the amount given to them.Except that you could always use PPC campaigns, get your site go viral.200k is a very nice budget.

At last i would say spend a nice amount of money in giving prizes,for someone who joins your newsletter for example.Give the people a motivation This always works!

Wish you all the best

Dimitris

PS Of course you should spend some money in optimizing your website, doing some SEO work and test what is working and what isn't

Sponsor an event to try and break a world record have no idea how much that would costs probably depends a lot on the record but there must be a few that wouldn't cost the earth and whenever a world record is broken it always seems to get so much main stream media attention.

120,000,000 from VC, ok and what for do you need all those money for 1 barter site?

Knowing the VC % rates whats your exit strategy?

i feel those 2 questions totally worth 1000 usd and more

Seriously, don't go crazy on spending for PR if you haven't tested the buttload of your the site.

I would find the best, most experienced person I coud find that's good at getting traffic as well as PPC.

I'd pay him to teach me how to do these things. I personally believe PPC alone is the best way to get traffic if you know what to do. So if you become a expert at that and getting traffic in many other ways.
You'll surely get many people to join and have a successful site.

Alot of people mention spending money on advertising which is good, however if you don't know what to do, you can easily lose money. So by paying an expert that makes money everyday with his methods, you'll not only make money, but you'll also get those members you wanted.

I'm anonymously behind a username, I'm aware, so this may seem like a sucker-punch - but I've taken my time and participated in this thread and I've read all the advice ... and more importantly, the replies ... lot of time has gone into to helping someone who has

"VC's have $120 million ready to invest ..."
"on the BOD (board of directors) of several venture firms"
"$200,000 advertising budget"
"good sized marketing team at our office"

and quite frankly it doesn't pass the smell test ...

So I did some further google digging (which was easy to do) ... this is what I've found ... not making a judgement for you, and not wanting to or trying to cause myself any trouble either now or down the road -- just letting other members decide for themselves!

I started with googling "I am president of CoMergent Acquisition Group based out of Jacksonville FL." ...

landed on the LinkedIn ... Robert Thomas | LinkedIn

who sells penis enlargement pills - Increase Sexual Stamina and Sex Drive, Natural Male Enhancement Product

fine, don't have a problem with people branching out ... but um ... you should read some of the forum post ...

As I mentioned in another post in this thread, the original BuyersTap.com Business Plan was offered for download on his LinkedIn ... so I downloaded it and read the whole thing ... asking for $15 million for 6% interest ... it's since disappeared from the LinkedIn ... regardless, I still have it... anyhow, BuyersTap changed names and became Scoupo ... which is now (as of only a few weeks ago) only looking to raise $350,000 Product based Groupon Website - Very unique business model

BuyersTap -- which according to this thread is supposed to launch any day with a $200,000 blowout ... actually launched already www.buyerstapp.com now offering $400 credit you can spend right now when you create a ... http://ezinearticles.com/?BuyersTap-...So!&id=4748074 ...


Meanwhile, "The 1.25 Million dollar buy out will leave President Robert Thomas as acting CEO for at least two years." ... Internet Marketing and SEO

And they had this cool technology called UPK Theory which is why they were bought ... but UPK is used by Our Technology which is of course, somehow connected to all this ...

and depending on which website you're on Rapidly growing company looking for new owner - Made 54K in last month: Business for sale in Jacksonville, Florida on BizBuySell - Internet Property Development group - Already made $145K since Sept 22nd Business For Sale in jacksonville, Florida | BizQuest.com ... it's somewhere in the thousands of dollars ...

oh, and there's a TON ... and I mean a TON more on google ... it's just everywhere when you google buyerstap or comergent or thomarv ...

But this is just where this whole dog and pony show really goes off the rails and MY conclusion is this is all nothing more than a bunch of B.S (make up your own mind) ...

Possible IPO of BuyersTap.com - HotStockMarket Community

and just in case it too disappears ... I'm including a screencap I just took