This is the first article of a three-part series. I decided to trysomething a little different and illustrate the marketingchallenges of a small business. I'm using one of my clients,PrescottWeddings.com (you can read more about PWC,including a testimonial from the owner of PWC, on my Website, http://www.writingusa.com)

PWC is an online resource guide for couples planning theirweddings. Along with a ton of information for brides andgrooms, the site includes a resource guide where localbusinesses can advertise their products and services.

We launched PWC in November 2001. Like many start-upbusinesses, PWC didn't have much money for marketing.Yet we had two major challenges (three counting the limitedbudget):

1. PWC had to attract two kinds of target markets to the site-- advertisers and couples -- essentially at the same time.And if that wasn't bad enough, we had to appeal to eachgroup even though one was dependent on the other --advertisers wanted brides and grooms logging onto thesite, and brides and grooms wanted a complete resourcecenter.

2. Several bridal print publications had come and gone inPrescott -- and had burned their advertisers while racing outof town. Businesses were understandably hesitant aboutsinking their money into another bridal venture.

Armed with those challenges, we went to work. Now, justover two years later, PWC enjoys well over 40,000 hits amonth and has increased its advertising base by over600%. On top of that, PWC is well on its way to establishinga reliable brand in not just Prescott but throughout YavapaiCounty.

So how did we do it? A great Web site with great content (butmore on that in a later article) plus three main marketingstrategies: 1) Using print to drive traffic online 2) Thinking small 3) Frequency, frequency, frequency

I'll cover number two and three in the next two articles. Todaywe'll talk about number one: Using print to drive trafficonline.

The cornerstone of PWC's marketing program has beenprint advertising, more specifically monthly advertising in thelocal newspaper. Print advertising is an excellent choice formany businesses -- from small to large. In fact, it's notuncommon for small and medium-sized businesses tobuild their advertising program around print.

The strength of print advertising is its flexibility. Printpublications come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Theycan appeal to a broad readership or a narrow one. They canbe published every day or once a year. This variety gives youa lot of flexibility in fitting print advertising into yourcampaigns.

You can also track print to a certain extent (coupons innewspapers for example). Print is physical, allowing yourcustomers to carry something around with them.

However, print's weakness is also its strength. It's a visualmedium only, so it requires more effort and interaction fromyour audience to make an impact (they need to stop andread it).

In the case of PWC, we chose monthly advertising in thelocal paper as the foundation of our marketing program. Wedecided upon the local newspaper because it has thebroadest reach. Prescott isn't big enough to have its ownevening television news, so the newspaper is the bestvehicle for local news.

If you live in a big city, the local newspaper may not bepractical because of cost. In that case, you may want to try aniche newspaper or magazine, like a business or lifestylejournal, or maybe a regionalized newspaper. In Phoenix forinstance, the Arizona Republic is the main newspaper, butall the cities around Phoenix, like Scottsdale and Tempe,also have their own papers.

Because PWC is a Web site, there's an assumption weshould be using only online methods to advertise. Onlinemethods are good, and PWC does use them, but they onlytake you so far. Print is a part of the "real world" -- somethingyou can touch and pick up, not virtual like a Web site. Printhas also been around a lot longer, and carries more trustwith it. We found by using print, some of that trust and "realworld" essence rubbed off, making PWC seem lessanonymous and more like a "bricks and mortar" business(a business with a store front).

Also, since we were trying to drive local traffic to the site, itmade sense to advertise locally rather than attractingpeople from all over the world. But even with our localadvertising, we still have a substantial number of visitorsfrom around the state, including Phoenix and Tucson, aswell as all over the globe.

The point of our marketing program was to advertiseregularly so we could both build the PWC brand and drivetraffic to the Web site. Yet it was essential to keep our costsdown. So we leveraged our monthly newspaper advertisingto stretch our marketing dollar as far as we could. More onthat and how we "thought small" in Part 2.

Michele Pariza Wacek owns Creative Concepts andCopywriting, a writing, marketing and creativity agency. Sheoffers two free e-newsletters that help subscribers combinetheir creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywritingprinciples to become more successful at attracting newclients, selling products and services and boostingbusiness. She can be reached at http://www.writingusa.co m