The most common form of marketing is to add your Web site to the search engines. Submit your URL after your site is complete. While some search engines process it immediately, others can take up to several weeks. And as your Web site changes and grows, don’t forget to update or announce the additional pages. You will also want to announce your site through specific directories and announcement services.. Always announce your site after it's complete. Sometimes you only get one chance to make an impression. Traffic and inquiries to your site should increase and you’ll want to be ready for business.
Integrating your electronic addresses with your traditional advertising is the most commonly overlooked marketing step. Always include your Web site and e-mail address on business cards, flyers, letterheads, brochures, print advertising. on-premises signs, billings or statements, radio & TV ads, yellow page ads, local newspaper’s web listings; and vehicle signs. Try putting a computer in your waiting room featuring your Web Site.
Be sure to get your employees excited about the Web Site— they’ll be more likely to share the information. Hats or t-shirts bearing your web address is a great way to say you appreciate them and consider them an important part of your company image.
If there are advantages to delivering services, programs or information through your Web site, then provide an incentive in your traditional materials to get customers to go to your site for fulfillment.
Use a personal phone call or print advertising, such as a postcard, to let your customers know you have launched your new web site or new product or service. Invite them to visit your site and sign up to be notified of future happenings and offers.
It is important to build an electronic mailing list of your customers. They are already loyal customers and could boost sales quickly by visiting your web site.
Many Internet Marketers have enjoyed success using this good old fashioned technique for generating free publicity. By definition, a press release is for the purpose of announcing a "news event" that may be of interest to a specific group. Start with your local newspaper, trade magazines, association newsletters, local media, and your existing customer list.
Obtaining Links From Other Web Sites
There are three main types of links: 1) one-way links to your Web site from search engines and directories; 2) two-way (reciprocal) links where you provide a link to the other Web site in return for their link to yours; and 3) related links where you provide a page of links to informational sites related to your business. Related links will bring better results if they are reciprocal.
Getting a link simply requires finding sites that have a reason for pointing to you, then asking for the link. f you can't get them to point to your main page, then ask for a link to a page that contains the specific information relevant to their site.
Partners for trading links might include vendors, suppliers, colleagues and providers of complimentary products.
Create A Newsletter
Distributing a free periodic newsletter to subscribers is another way to market your services to others. You can ask site visitors to sign up for a newsletter, then distribute it by e-mail. An e-newsletter allows you to keep visitors up-to-date on site changes and new offerings.
Your newsletter could focus on topics related to your industry, or any other subject you are a specialist in. Newsletters provide a means for building confidence in others about your expertise in a specific area. Likewise, that trust may eventually translate into your subscribers trusting you to provide them other goods or services.
Use Banner Exchanges And Banner Ads
Be honest, how many of you have ever clicked on a witty banner advertising simply to find out more information. I think most of us know that banner advertising can be a powerful means for generating a considerable amount of traffic.
As more links appear on any given page, advertising increasingly becomes a way to stand out from your competition. Find sites that your target audience may frequent on which to advertise. Prices range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars—higher traffic equals higher rates.
Banner Exchange programs, such as LinkExchange™, provide a great way to get free advertising on the Internet.
Offer Free Stuff
Who doesn't like free stuff? That's an easy question to answer, because all of us have an innate desire to win something for free. Whether the desire comes from physiological childhood need or is simply the passing of the "free gene" from one generation to another - the point is we all want to win something for free.
Visitors to your site are the same, what do you have to offer them for free. The monetary value in many cases is unimportant, the true value is it's "free" and I won it. When planned properly, your "free" prize can generate business for you in two ways. First, it can often draw more traffic to your site, traffic that brings along with it potential clients. Second, the prize itself can be a means of securing more business.
Let's look at the telephone long distance industry for an example. The big companies are battling it out, offering months of free service if you switch to their service. Why? Because if you stay for one month "free", you are more likely to stay and "pay" in the future. Now try to apply that same lesson to your Internet business. Make one lucky client, or make them all, a "winner" by offering them a free month of hosting on a Virtual Server or sub-hosted account. Once the client is with you they are likely to remain with you. That brings in monthly residual income that you may not have received otherwise. Your investment will likely pay off very quickly, bringing with it a loyal client - after all, you gave them something free.
Running On-Site Events
Running events on your site is an excellent way to encourage repeat traffic. You'll want to begin running events once traffic from your site launch begins to fade. Examples include contests, games, online interviews, chat sessions and audio broadcasts.
Conducting a Direct e-Marketing Campaign
The trend in direct e-marketing is "push" technologies and services. These allow you to send regularly scheduled messages to individuals who have signed up to receive it. Unsolicited e-mail and spanning are NOT accepted practices. They irritate potential clients who can forward your message to an Internet Blacklist.
Announcing in Newsgroups
There are over 20,000 newsgroups on the Internet with millions of daily participants. Posting to a newsgroup can generate tremendous, almost instant, word-of-mouth advertising. Target only those newsgroups that cover topics associated with your product, determine if the newsgroup accepts postings, monitor the postings and participant response. When you post, provide useful advice or information, not an advertisement for your product. Be specific and keep it short. End with a mention that your site has useful information on the posted topic. Become a known participant by posting frequently with both advice and questions. And don't forget to include your signature on every e-mail or posting.
Seek Feedback
Feedback, in the form of suggestions or criticism, can be very valuable for informing you of your web site's strengths and possible areas that may need improvement. This feedback can be invaluable in making a site better and more marketable in the future. Encourage feedback by providing a clear e-mail address where comments can be sent.
Measuring Your Results
One way to measure the results of your site is a hit counter. They can be placed on any page of your site and used to measure the number of requests to your web site. Hit counters do not count the number of visitors to your site.
You can obtain more detailed information by using a program that analyzes your web site's log files and converts them to reports. But be aware that these reports do not tell you a visitor's username or email address.
The best form of information gathering is to conduct a marketing survey. A survey to collect data on potential customers can be placed on your web site, or you can survey existing customers to improve your relationship. Send an email to your customers asking them to take a few moments to help you serve them better. Include a link to your web-based survey and put a time limit on it. Keep the survey short and easy to answer. Offer an incentive to get them to participate. Use the results to determine if you are giving your customers what they expect from your web site.
Making Your Web Site Work for You
This brief explanation of online marketing is hopefully a beginning for understanding how online marketing can make your company more effective and successful on the Internet. Marketing your web site is an on-going process. The more work you put into it the more results you will get.
