Website visitor figures are one of those things in life that you tend to assume are slightly exaggerated (I’m not naming the others, this is a family blog).
Which is why I was surprised to see the following numbers quoted in a press release from Advantage West Midlands (also here):
In March 08-March 09, there were 8,500 visitors to biz-tv.net, 6,800 absolute unique visitors and 20,000 page views. Top visiting countries outside the UK include France (600) and USA (500). Others include Germany, Poland, Ireland and the Ukraine
They’re not the sort of figures I’d want to shout about. Pete Ashton did the maths for me – 8500 visitors in a year. 700 a month. 23 a day. As he put it, that’s either incredibly good niche marketing or just not very good at all.
Jerry Blackett, Chief Executive of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, would apparently have us believe it’s the former, saying:
We at the Chamber know from first-hand experience that it works. We are able to literally speak to our target audience as well as the broader business community through Biztv
Which doesn’t say much for the size of the Chamber’s audience or the broadness of the region’s business community.
If the figures quoted are accurate then, given the remit of BizTV, the fact it has been going for five years and the funding from AWM (more figures I’d be interested in seeing), an average of 23 people a day is awful – West Midlands Dance is at around that point having been soft-launched on a new domain only a week ago.
Just noticed – the good news press release was churned out by the Birmingham Post the other day. Yay for that.