Reach your customers and help improve the path

Research has estimated that South West Coast Path walkers spend at least £222 million per year on accommodation, travel, food and drink, outdoor clothing and kit - and your business can reach them through this website.

Click on the buttons for examples of some of our most popular pages that are aimed at visitors with a specific interest.

Our latest Google analytics figures show that in the 12 months up to November 2011, the site had over 405,000 visits, with users visiting an average of 4.26 pages and with a browsing time of 4 minutes, 34 seconds. The popularity of the website grew by over 27% in the past year, and with this new website, and ongoing promotion in 2012 we anticipate comfortably exceeding 500,000 visits. If you would like more details you can download our latest Google analytics report.

Income from the adverts on this website will be used to help meet the site’s running costs, with any surplus going towards improving the path. So if you are an advertiser, you’ll know that as well as it being a cost-effective way of reaching your customers, you will also be helping to improve the path.

You are also welcome to add links on your site to any of the walks or other pages that you think will interest your customers.

Running a website that accepts advertising is a new venture for the SW Coast Path Team, and if you have any tips and advice on how we could improve the way we do this, we'd love to hear from you - please contact Mark Owen.

How to advertise on this site

Almost all the adverts you see on the site are delivered direct from Google Adwords and Adsense, and you can find details of the site using Google Ad Planner . This means that you only pay when potential customers view your ad, so the cost is directly linked to how many people view your ad. The price of an advert is set through an auction process, managed by Google, so providing you have the wining bid you can decide which pages you want to advertise on, when the ads will display, and what your maximum budget is. New customers to Google Advertising programme are often offered £50 or so of free credit.

You can find out more about how to advertise using Google Advertising here.

Advert types:

In order to evaluate the best format of adverts for us, our users and businesses, the site has a mix of different advertising styles.

• Banner ads: To maintain the appearance of the site all adverts need to be submitted as a 250 pixel x 250 pixel banner image, either static or moving. The majority of these are delivered through Google Adsense, and so if you want to target a particular page on this site with your ad, use the Google Ad Planner tool.
• Affiliate links: On several pages we have affiliate links to a number of companies who offer us commission on bookings made by our website users. If you operate an affiliate programme that you think will be of interest to our users, please contact us

Advertising opportunities for local businesses

For small businesses, such as pubs, café or attractions close to the Coast Path a good page to advertise on is on those short walks or section guide pages that run close to you. As these pages have less traffic, they will be cheaper to advertise on than the main pages, and are closely targeted to your potential customers.

On these pages, you’ll notice we also display reviews about nearby cafes and pubs. These are supplied by Google as a ‘feed’ and so are outside our control. You can add your business to Google for free (see Google Places for how to do this), but by also having your advert on our site, this will help your business stand out, and can be used to promote any special offers you have.

Advertising opportunities for accommodation providers

As well as being able to place ads through Google, there are a number of other ways in which our users can find out about your property.

• One night stays:  If you are interested in attracting business from walkers who stay one night.

This website uses the web list of accommodation produced by Luggage Transfers Ltd (who carry walkers bags along the whole path) in partnership with the SW Coast Path Association (the charity representing walkers)

This is a list of both graded and ungraded accommodation, which is close to the path and accept one night stays. So in practice, appearing on this accommodation list means that you are not only on our official SW Coast Path website, but also the Luggage Transfers and SW Coast Path Association websites. Therefore, you will reach Coast Path walkers who visit any of these sites.

A basic listing is FREE, however purchasing an enhanced entry on the site has a number of advantages. It will make your business stand out, it will guarantee that your details will be included in the next edition of the SW Coast Path Association's Annual Guidebook to the path which is sent out to their members, and it will mean that a proportion of the money is available for the Association to plough back into path improvements.

To ensure that you have an entry on this list contact Luggage Transfers Ltd (01326 550721).

• Longer stays: If you are interested in visitors who wish to stay for more than one night.

This, the official SW Coast Path web-site, does not maintain its own accommodation list. Our accommodation search tool draws information from Eviivo, which amalgamates accommodation information from a number of sources and amongst others is the supplier of data to Visit England.

At the time of the website launch in December 2011 there are a number of ways of appearing within the search results supplied by Eviivo:

1. If you are nationally accredited and assessed with Visit England, Visit Britain or the AA  and listed on your local Tourism web-site ( e.g. visit Cornwall) you should appear within the search results.
2. If you use a sales agent Active Hotels, Laterooms.com, Superbreak, Bedsearcher, Hotelopia, HoseasonsGroup, Cottages4you, Hostelworld.com, Hilton Hotels and Resorts, Radisson Edwardian, or Premier Inn you should appear within the search results.
3. If you use a property management system; Frontdesk, Super Control, My UK Travel, Queensborough group, or Guest link/Roomcheck brand, again you should appear within the search results.