Promotions For The Web
Promoting your business can be a large factor
in the success of your venture. By finding other web sites with content related
to your business, you may be able to get free referrals to your web site, simply
by contacting the site maintainers. Strategic relationships may help you by cross-
linking complementary services (but get the visitor back when they're done browsing
elsewhere - we'll show you how). You can also leverage your advertising to gain traffic
with contests and special offers. And don't forget traditional promotional tools!
Search Engines: At first glance, search engines seem like
automatic traffic directors, immediately bringing anyone who wants to find what you have
straight to your door. In the early days of search engines, this was very much true.
Even today, you can fine tune a page to provide results for very
specific searches at particular search engines. Multiply by the number of searches and
the number of search engines, and you can get real results. Be prepared for the associated
costs, as the fine-tuning process requires effort and patience. As part of a complete
promotional strategy, it may provide good value. You may find services from:
Portal Sites Places like yahoo and altavista
and Netscape's Netcenter are common "startup" pages for many browsers. If
you can register and become listed under their browsing topics, you will be
likely to gain more visitors.
Preinstalled Bookmarks in Browsers: You may be
able to register your business as a pre-installed bookmark in a web browser
like Netscape, for free. Just apply!
Related Content:
Consider a list of topics that are similar to your primary or secondary subject matter.
Do web searches for such topics. Look for contact information for site maintainers,
and you may find a mutual relationship delivering links to each other. If you send
your visitor to another site, be sure to pop the link into a new window so they'll see
you again when they're done.
ReciprocalLink.com has
a directory of sites ready to trade reciprocal links. You can also use a search at Google to
find more sources of free links.
Better search engine placement? Reciprocal links can improve traffic to
your site, in a surprising way: some search engines will improve your rating based on the
number of links there are to your site. Of course, if you trade links with sites having
content related to yours in a non-competing way, you'll get links simply on interest value.
You can also trade links with sites with unrelated content, just for the search engine
placement side effects.
Strategic Relationships: By creating a plan to drive
traffic to your site, you can work with other online ventures to share visitors
between each other. This may be a free or for-pay venture, depending on the
levels of traffic each of you drives to the others' site. With multiple
relationships, you may be able to do a little name-dropping to get your foot
in the door.
Contests: You can collect email addresses by advertising
free contests. You may co-op with vendor(s) promoting the giveaway item(s), or you
may do a giveaway with your valued service.
This is also a way to get visitors to shift focus and see related information
you have to offer at your web site. A site that sells cameras, for instance,
might target a giveaway at the "music crowd", searching for a cross-section of
that audience with interest in your camera. So giveaways can help you bridge
interest gaps to gain an audience you may not have had before.
Traditional Promotions: Don't forget that traditional
promotions can have their effect too. It can be tough to measure whether a bumper
sticker produces results, or a keychain or T-shirt or coffee mug with your name on
it does. As a part of your marketing plan, promoting yourself in as many different
ways possible will help more people see your message who may not have otherwise.
D'Michael and Associates has an astounding array of promotional items you can
use for this purpose.
Marketing is a wide-open proposition. In a medium that
just keeps growing and growing, there are always new prospects, whether they be in
your home town or in Timbuktu (er, with apologies to those actually in Timbuktu).
The following sections will give you ideas about specific technologies or more
general solutions.
Or, for those more interested in solutions than in technical problems...
|
