|
|  |
| |
|
| | Post New Topic | | 10 Easy Ways to Promote Your Website | Views: 403 | | Feb 11, 2008 2:24 pm | | 10 Easy Ways to Promote Your Website | # | 
Chris Morgan | | You've created a great website, now it's time to market and advertise it. Promoting your website can be a daunting task: it feels like there are thousands of ways to do it, but all of them take a lot of time or money for no guaranteed return. But we all know that website promotion is a very necessary evil and if we don't promote our business we know the chances or success is next to nil. To help solve this problem, I've compiled a list of ten easy ways to promote your website.
1. Advertise in the Media. Now, you might have already ruled out advertising in newspapers and the like as too expensive, especially since the chances are your audience doesn't live in any specific local area. But did you think about the small little classified newspapers that are available all over your neighborhood. Advertising in these small newspapers will fit your budget and it is localized to your area. That mostly rules out radio, too, and TV is even more likely to be out of your reach. But, remember with the internet their are talk radios on-line. You might try that venue. You should stop looking at the general media and start looking at the specialist media for your area. For example, if you run a house-buying website, you could advertise it in specialist property magazines, and even on 'lifestyle' cable channels that show programs about moving home.
2. Write Your Web Address on Things. If your business has any physical objects, whether it's a product, a carrier bag or just the front of your office, make sure to write your web address on there. Even if people don't keep or remember the exact address, it at least lets them know that your website exists.
3. Give Out Leaflets and Printed materials. There's nothing wrong with a bit of old-fashioned paper promotion: leaflet as many areas as you can. The chances are that your website is targeted to a specific demographic rather than an area, but the post office will be surprisingly helpful when it comes to getting your leaflets where they need to go, if you ask them. You can find many websites that offer free advertisement with the price of a postage stamps. They are commonly called "fillers" and many Mom targeted websites and groups use this type of helpful free advertisement to help each other advertise. Stuff these fillers in the envelope when you pay your bills. Why not we get spam mail from all the big companies! Leave your leaflets anywhere you can, doctors office, dentist office, bus stop, library, Laundromats, etc . ..
4. Go to Specialist Events. If there's some kind of trade fair for the industry your website is in, turn up to it and promote your website. While there might not be all that many people there, the ones who are there will be influential, and can get your site talked about.
5. Put your URL on Business Cards. It should go without saying, but once you've gone to all that trouble to set up a website, don't forget to put it on your business cards. After all, if you're relying on them to get people to phone you, why not give them the option of reading more about you on your website? Your URL should be on ever piece of paper that you use for your business, I would also recommend having it printed on your personal stationeries, this lets everyone you know you have a website.
6. On-Line Communities and Forums. An often overlooked way of getting traffic to your website is to participate on forums related to the subject and put your web address in your signature. This gets you more traffic than you'd think, especially at very popular forums. Many members do get curious enough to click on links found in your signature line.
7. Your Email Signature. If you've spent so much time on money on your website why wouldn't you put a little advertisement blurb and your site link underneath your signature on all of your emails. Create one in your email program that gets added to every email message you send or respond to. It's free and it let's your friends, family and anyone you are in touch with via email know that you have a business on-line.
8. Keep a Good Blog. While more and more businesses are starting blogs, few of them are doing it right. If you're using your blog to publish product announcements in corporate-speak, it's useless. You need to remember a simple mantra, 'views not news' – make sure your blog has something interesting to say. Don't just use your blog for advertising your new products, sales and what not, give your readers more. You could put up a joke a day, quote for the day and so forth, even recipes would be great to add to keep them coming back.
9. Buy Search Engine Ads. Many people seem to think it's some kind of admission of defeat, but search engine advertising can work very well, especially with keywords that aren't already cluttered with ads. If you do it right, you can get very targeted ads very cheap – indeed, ironically, the more targeted the ads, the cheaper they tend to be.
10. Start an Affiliate Program. Finally, if you're selling something, don't forget that old standby of web marketing: the affiliate program. Offer visitors a cut of the profits if they can sell your products for you, and all of a sudden you've got a crack sales team raring to go. The only trouble with this plan is that everyone is doing it, so you'll need to offer a high percentage of your profits to your affiliates to make the offer attractive to them. Even if your affiliate members do not generate a lot of sales, you have backlinks to your website that you didn't have to pay for and that helps with your search engine ranking and of course link popularity, plus it's free advertising!
Chris Morgan - CMorgan's Web Services - http://cmorgansweb.us
WAH Network Forum - http://wahnetwork-network.ryze.com
WAH Network Community - http://wahnetwork.ning.com/
Guild of Crafters Community - http://guildofcrafters.ning.com/
Private Reply to Chris Morgan | | |
| |
| |
