Where is the best place to advertise?

[Walltopia]

We are a climbing wall manufacturer and I wonder which websites, magazines and trade shows are the best place to advertise in order to react architecture companies all around the world. Climbing walls are can installed in hotels, amusement parks, universities, shopping centers, sport halls, family centers, etc.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Ruzha

[Richard Haut]

in Europe climbing walls are becoming an increasing feature in sports centres, school sports halls and leisure centres.

I operate a new service which may be of help - called Richard Haut's "winners" - it provides weekly lists of who is winning competitions and other projects in Britain and Europe.

alternatively I do provide customized services which could follow sports and associated projects across Britain and Europe.

this is not advertising, but provides you with details of live clients, both of the commissioning clients and the professionals undertaking the projects.

if this may be of interest, please contact me.

Richard

Richard Haut
Tel: 0033-6-72 31 83 86

[Kevin]

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[Walltopia]

Thanks a lot! Your advice is appreciated!

Any other ideas?

[teamjdc]

For product selection by architects, etc, find a way to get at or near the top of the appropriate google searches -- that's all you need. Anything else is a waste of money.

Think abou thow you find stuff. I only go to trade rags if google lets me down.

For general advertising, decide who you're trying to reach and hit the publications they read. If you have an interesting angle for a press release, send it out to the appropriate outlets for free advertising.

I suggest picking up "Guerilla Marketing" at your local bookstore. It's cheap, short and effective.

[djswan]

You got me thinking about climbing walls now. I like it.

I think you just got some advertising.

[Kevin]

[teamjdc]

Look, you're trying to help paper media survive. I get that. But the facts are the facts. Trade mags don't get read and they certainly aren't used for product selection.

Take a poll and see. Publish it if you dare.

If more than 10% of practicing architects and PM's use magazines to find products I'd be shocked and I'm sure the number is going down.

Then ask those people where they go first -- Search engine or rag?

Of the ones who use rags first, ask them if they have a computer with internet access and if they know how to use it.

Now that you're down to the computer illiterate, I suppose you can target them if you want. But I have to ask, How many of those guys do you think are going to be specifying a climing wall?

BTW, if it hasn't already been mentioned, I'll also go out on a limb here to suggest that fewer than 2% of all climbing walls purchased in the future will be specified by architects and maybe 10% of selections will be influenced by architects.

[Richard Haut]

the internet is huge - and the majority of internet promotion (the vast majority) is junk.

whether in print, or new media, or by direct promotion, what matters is targetting.

certainly print trade mags have less readership (and falling). Many have websites. Are they successful ? In my view, rarely, very rarely.

this website does get large numbers of hits - Kevin does have some experience of what he is talking about.

but, team, you have not in reality suggested anything at all. Search engines ? For what ?

Sure there may be climbing walls commissioned other than by architects, but I can tell you (and back it up with facts) that major installations (certainly across Europe) are stated as a requirement in an original brief by the commissioning client, and then specified by the architect as part of the overall design and procurement process of the building.

[ExitReality]

Hey,

The internet is definitely a huge way of advertising and we are in the process of developing a 3D platform where anyone will be able to search the web in 3D. Imagine the possibilities... You will be able to submit 3D designs into the ExitReality Search Engine to be indexed.

Architects, or anyone else for that matter, searching for 3D content on the web could come across your Branded 3D objects that you have created and submitted into our Exitreality Search Engine!

We will update you with the latest information when we officially launch ExitReality. For now, you could visit http://www.exitreality.com and register to be updated.

We will keep you posted.

Cheers, ExitReality

[teamjdc]

[Richard Haut]

I agree that search engines can be very valuable - if one has the time to use them properly.

advertising can be a shotgun approach - and with the decline in print media, it makes selling more difficult.

however for the selling of particular products, the producer is best to target his selling to the architects and commissioning clients who are involved in the projects for which their products are needed. That requires constant market intelligence on what is happening in that field.

[CommunicatingArchitecture]

Walltopia,

Like the others in this post, my advice put your energy and budget into the Web.

Invest in a decent SEO friendly website, list this with all the web architectural product directories, and search engines, and hopefully you’re be top of the Google search in no time.

To help boost traffic try GoogleAdwords https://adwords.google.com/select/Login
With Adwords you could easily get yourself on page 1 – this will cost you between 10p-50 pence UK Sterling, every time someone clicks through to your website.

Good luck!

[Richard Haut]

[teamjdc]

You have just proven my point.

Until your boring post, nobody was talking about marketing for architects.

The issue is marketing TO architects.