"If customers are moving away from search engines as their primary source of information about content on the Web, shouldn't you be utilizing every opportunity at your disposal?" posited Maleflixxx Marketing Director Mary Gillis during Friday morning's Marketing Mix seminar at the GAYVN Summit.
The first seminar of the summit touched on a number of topics pertinent to adult websites and production companies, chiefly how companies can market their companies by building brand awareness on the Web.
"The key to increasing traffic is not just building the number; it's targeting the surfer," Gillis declared at the start of the session, "because if you're not targeting, you're just wasting your money."
Gillis went on to talk about the importance of using Google analytics and comparable free stats programs to track the behavior of paying customers, saying those programs acted as a "gateway to knowledge" that could prove to be priceless to webmasters.
GayPornBlog co-creator Michael Stabile agreed with Gillis—to a point. "It can be addictive to look at the numbers and the [return on investment], but you need to look at the big picture," he stressed, citing the importance of using long-term marketing opportunities such as print ads to help develop a company's brand. "You should also remember that you need to keep investing on things that won't pay off at first, but that will bring you more success [down] the line."
Stabile cited the marketing campaign for Wet Palms, the popular adult soap opera produced by Jet Set in conjunction with NakedSword, as an example of creating a campaign that "got people involved in a community."
Badpuppy's Lisa Turner spoke of the continuing efforts that Badpuppy must put forth to stay in the public eye, despite having been around for more than a decade. "We have to add to our marketing constantly," she told the crowd. "Once you're so-called 'out in the front,' [you] have to work this as hard as [you] can to stay where [you're] at."
Turner said one of the ways Badpuppy has succeeded throughout the years is in "working with other companies and helping them grow, which in turn helps us grow." She also mentioned Badpuppy's participation in bar events, consumer shows, gay pride celebrations, and magazine ads as further examples of the company's ongoing marketing program.
It was after the session opened up to questions from the audience that additional marketing avenues came into play. One attendee asked the panelists to give him tips on buying traffic and how to utilize ad-word campaigns effectively, to which Gillis replied, "If you don't have a solid balance between paid traffic and organic traffic, you don't have a very solid business model."
She went on to talk of the "unexpectedly good" results that Maleflixxx has received from peer-to-peer marketing sites such as YouTube, XTube, PornoTube, and even MySpace, adding that the surfers on those sites are "incredibly savvy online users" who can help companies target their consumers.
Hot House Entertainment director Steven Scarborough, who said he was "brought up in the mail-order business in a time when we were taught not to give anything away for free," asked the panelists to expand on how viral marketing could benefit studios.
"It's hard to quantify," responded Jack Shamama, editor of GayPornBlog and the senior manager of creative services and brand and product management for Falcon Studios. "You can't really measure 'buzz,' but you're building brand identity to the point where consumers will want to go to [a studio's site] to become a paying member or buy your videos when they are able to.
"Sometimes, you have to give a little bit of it away for free to make money," he added, prompting Turner to chime in with the session's definitive closing statement:
"Exhaust every opportunity to expose your site," Turner advised. "You can never market too much."
