Why advertise on YourMarbella.com?

YourMarbella is The Costa del Sol’s fastest growing website. It launched in June 2007 and provides a social networking service to residents of the area and also tourists. It is the only site of its kind in the region and grows in daily user numbers every month.
With YourMarbella you can..

• Make new friends
• Build a personal profile adding pictures and information
• Arrange events
• Participate in forum conversations
• Write and maintain a blog
• Promote your business
• Review and read reviews of local businesses such as restaurants and hotels
• Browse member photos and videos
• Check live flight times and schedules for Malaga and Gibraltar airports.
• Join a Group related to a special topic, such as football of golf.
• Check the weather, and read classified ads.

Having our large and unique feature set has enabled us to grow to over 2,000 active members. We also generate over 800 unique visits a day (not everybody has to be a member) which, without inflating our traffic numbers puts us firmly in the driving seat when comparing Marbella related websites.
Here are some detailed, honest traffic stats relating to our site provided by Google. We would always suggest when buying online media you request third party traffic stats of the publishing website if you are buying on a ‘monthly’ or ‘annual’ basis as opposed to buying clicks and impressions.

Looking at the graph above, you can see YourMarbella.com has generated almost 50,000 visits from January 1st until the 27th of March this year. The graph above shows Google's benchmarking service and as you will see here we are comparing YourMarbella to other sites in our vertical, in this case 'Spain sites'. On average (using Google's data), YourMarbella.com is 500% more trafficked than other competitor sites in our sector. We also rank number one in Alexa.com's ranking of Marbella websites.

When choosing where to buy your media its important to take into account how much time people will see your ad for. You would always buy a one minute TV commercial over a ten second one and its the same with The Internet. Each YourMarbella.com user spends an average of 5 minutes and 45 seconds on the site each day. Compare that with how long you may spend browing a website for when you're looking for something. Almost six minutes is a long time in the Internet world and according to Google, people spend two and a half times longer on YourMarbella than other comparitive websites.

As you can see from the geographic location chart above, we are one of the only Marbella websites, who can boast high levels of visitors from Marbella! The majority of our Spanish traffic comes via residents of Marbella. With many other forms of advertising on the coast you may be targetting tourists which is great but they will not be around to help pay your bills in winter. YourMarbella.com is 40% trafficked by local people and expats living in the area. Keep your business booming all year round by advertising with YourMarbella.com.

What can YourMarbella.com do for your business that other sites cannot?

By registering your business on YourMarbella.com you are not just signing up as an advertiser. On most websites when you advertise, you simply send the publishing website your brand or banner and they display it to their visitors across a number of pages. When you register with YourMarbella.com this happens too, however you get a whole lot more. Firstly, you get your new home on the web, this will be in the form of, www.yourmarbella.com/YourBusiness. This becomes your company's profile page. It remains for ever and people can type this directly into their browser to find you, just like a web address.

In addition, when you build your profile, you can do the following things.

• add your logo
• write about your business
• add pictures and videos related to your business
• add a Google map of your location
• add contact details and the web address of your website
• upload music
• allow people to add reviews

Secondly you can take part within the community as the owner of a business. Here are some great theoretical examples of how businesses can really benefit from participating within the community.

Example one - the restaurant owner

I set up my profile and buy some banner space to announce it to the community on YourMarbella.com. I write a forum post which appears on the homepage as all the new posts do and in the post I detail the opening times, some of our best menu items and invite the YM community to come along and have a meal, with a 10% discount for the week if they mention my post.

I then write this offer in my 'message of the day on my profile'. All business messages appear on the homepage which gets 800 eyeballs every single day. People are able to click on my offer and contact me for a reservation through my profile page by using the phone number or sending me a message.

I encourage people to rate the experience when they have tried my restaurant. If I get good recommendations from YourMarbella users my ranking in the dining section on YourMarbella will increase. To get to number one spot in the list I currenlty only need five positive reviews.

Now when any user is looking for Marbella restaurants on YourMarbella.com, I have maximum exposure.

Example two - the home audio visual company

Audio visual can be a complicated subject unless you really know your stuff. As a home audio installer I find there are many large signs around Marbella advertising home cinema and home control, how do I compete with them and how do I get people to come and talk to me without following the crowd?

I set up a business profile on YourMarbella.com and add logos to my profile representing all the brands I work with and pictures on any installs I have done.

I then set up my company's blog on the site which I name The Marbella AV blog. I write two blogs a week helping people to understand all about home control, and home cinema. Every time a new product is released on the market that I supply, I write a mini review in my blog. This week its about a 'Sonos' sound system which allows audio to be played in every room in the house wirelessly. I look to educate the community on YourMarbella and become the resident expert on the topic.

Six months goes by and I have established myself as the AV expert on YourMarbella. Now when people are searching in Google for AV related terms in Marbella such as Sonos, my blog posts and forum answers will appear top in the searches. New people to the site will check out my profile and see that I understand my products by reading my content and trust me when coming to buy their home entertainment products.

Also, my involvement in the site will back up my offline marketing campaign. If I pay for large display advertising for my business, people will generally look to find comments on my company by searching the web. By typing my business name into Google, they will see my involvement in the community and feel comfortable in contacting me through the site for advice. I will drastically improve my conversion rate to sale as I have become the authority on the subject.

Example three - specialist car dealer

I have a performance car dealership in Marbella. I struggle to get the webmaster to keep my site up to date so I start a profile on YourMarbella. Within 20 minutes I have a full website with a Google map and I have uploaded numerous pictures of my current stock and add prices to the photo titles.

Now everybody in Marbella can see our current stock and as soon as new cars arrive I can update the website instantly. I have taken in a low mileage Mercedes SL500 in a part exchange. I take some pictures of the car and add it to YourMarbella. I change my business message to "Low mileage SL500, see profile for pics". This message will be displayed on the homepage and my message will be seen by 800 visitors each day.

I sponsor the Super Cars group as it is a good fit for my business and I begin writing a blog which gives my personal opinions on new cars as they are announced. My blog thoughts appear on the homepage and will rank very high in Google on selected car related terms such as Aston Martin Marbella.

I become the local authority on performance cars in Marbella and although some people may not agree with my views they will see that I know my business. Having an active roll on YourMarbella.com will build instant trust from people who may be sceptical about buying cars in Marbella.

Summary

YourMarbella provides you the perfect platform on which to promote your business. To really be successful in promoting your business however, you need to do more than just advertise. Unlike any other site, YourMarbella.com helps you get your business knowledge across and allows you to build trust with the customer before you meet them.

By blogging, responding to forum posts, setting up groups, and asking people to review your business, people will see a very transparent view of your company which is important. Any business can advertise, however if you believe you really are a specialist in your niche then register with YourMarbella, participate on the site and show the Marbella community why they should be trusting you!