Market Your Web Site Online AND Offline
By Robert Levine
©2003 All rights reserved
Like it or not, if you own a web site (and you want visitors),
you own a business. It may be a large corporation or a small
informative site, but it's a business nonetheless. You want
people to visit your site, and see what you have to offer. Of
course, if you're building a site for friends and family the
rest of this article may not apply to you... but even
informative sites may seek out advertising revenue.
Here are some tips to market your web site:
1. Promote your URL
Place your URL on: business cards, letterhead, brochures, company folders, notepads, giveaways
(like pens), invoices, catalogs, email signatures (that little
tag at the bottom of all emails should have your contact
information and web site address).
Back when the Internet was in it's fledgling stages smart
companies began putting their web addresses in their
commercials. Many consumers AND advertising executives, who had
no clue what the Internet was thought these companies were
wasting valuable commercial time and resources on promoting some
silly address that no one in their right mind would go out of
their way to see.
Boy, were they wrong. Anything that you distribute should most definitely have your URL, as well as an email address for
people to contact you.
2. Offer a free service (can just be something small)
Just think, when a supermarket or other brick-and-mortar store
offers an item for free, people go well out of their way to pick
that item up, even if they have absolutely no use for it! Why?
People like free stuff, and on the Internet, it's even easier
for someone to pick it up! Easy to get means more visitors to you.
Now, you don't have to go and give away a car, or some other
high value item. I've seen successful ad campaigns that will
give away a free e-book, or some other form of digital media.
The cost to you, for this, is next to nothing. (Wasn't this
article free?) So, free stuff is simply good.
3. Add an option to your web site where visitors can give you
their email address to be kept up to date. Create a periodic
newsletter that you send to those people with special deals.
Sending out a newsletter costs very little to its publisher
However, the publisher is able to promote and re-promote his/her
site every time a new newsletter is sent out. If you provide
valuable content, the recipient may then forward this newsletter
to a friend, and your promotion goes viral. Articles from a good
newsletter can be re-circulated for years and years, at no cost to you!
What's best, is that a popular newsletter can actually be an
income generator! If your newsletter has a strong base of
clientele, you can charge other companies money for a small
advertisement within your letter. The cost to you remains the
same, and you might end up turning a small profit as well. It's
hard to beat that.
4. Request reciprocal links from other related web sites.
Let other web sites promote your site, while at the same time
promoting theirs. Again, this costs you nothing, while spreading
your target audience to the other company's audience.
Now get to work; you have a web site to promote!
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