Getting Noticed on a High Profile News Site

A client of mine recently asked me how much a mention on a high profile news site is worth.

I didn’t have a simple answer for her as to how much in terms of dollars a mention or link on, let’s say, CNN.com, is worth. Instead, I offered a detailed explanation of how she could guage the value of the link.

A mention on CNN.com can help in a few ways:

1. Direct traffic – Your website will see a spike in traffic, because a high profile site has linked to you.
2. Authority – A link from CNN can cause the search engines to view your site as more authoritative and thus rank it better in their results pages.
3. Trust – An “As seen on CNN” badge on your website can help to build trust with your visitors, thus generating more conversions.
4. Social Interaction – Others may pick up on the story and spread it to friends and colleagues.

What does this mean in terms of monetization?

Let’s take the following example:

The link on CNN generates a total of 3000 visitors to your site

• 1 in every 500 new visitors to your website produces a qualified lead
• You close 50% of the qualified leads as new business
• 3000 visitors / 500 visitors per lead = 6 qualified leads * 50% close rate = 3 new customers
• Each new customer is worth $10,000 in net income
• 3 new customers * $10,000 net per customer = $30,000 net
• The mention in this example was worth $30,000 net

The important things to note are:

• The current number of weekly new visitors to your website (from Google Analytics)
• The number of referrals from CNN.com to your website (from Google Analytics)
• The number of qualified leads you get per week from the web (tally of emails and calls – I use salesforce.com for this)
• The percentage of web leads you close as new business (from salesforce.com)
• The amount of business closed from web leads (from salesforce.com)

As a word of caution, if you are to be mentioned on a high profile site, notify your hosting company and seek the advice of your web developer. A high profile link may bring your web server to a screeching halt due to too much traffic.  This is known as the Digg or Slashdot Effect.

In conclusion, leveraging the metrics from a web analytics and CRM package is one of the critical aspects of effective marketing online.  Ultimately, one high profile link may not be worth millions of dollars.  But getting consistent recognition on high profile sites will certainly be worth its weight in gold.

Please share any success stories that you have had with high profile links.