Effective Web Site Promotion Strategy

By Kevin Warrene
Posted Monday, October 25, 2004

Promoting your own web site should be at the top of your marketing strategies. There are many ways to get traffic to your site. You could spend thousands of dollars to the search engines, search engine optimization companies or keyword positioning companies or you could follow these simple tips to help you market your web site on a very small budget. These are in no particular order as I feel they are all integral parts in web site promotion.

Tell Everyone - Word of mouth is sometimes the very best advertising. Always direct people to your site for more information. This is by far the easiest to do as most business people interact with customers, industry specific contacts, vendors and prospects on a daily basis. Tell the world... I have a web site!!!

Business Cards - This is a must. Your business cards should have your web site address on it as well as your email address.

Email Signatures - Always put your web site address in your email signature at the end of your communication. You can get very creative with signatures for different features you want to talk about. I probably have at least a dozen different email signatures that I use.

Stationery - Make it a point to put your web site address on your letterhead, notepads, post-it notes....for that matter anything printed should have your web site on it.

Advertising - If you are spending money advertising on TV, radio, print or online you need to make sure that your web site address is listed. You should want to drive this targeted traffic to your site.

Linking - Several search engines are starting to use link popularity to begin to rank your web site in search results. If would be in your best interests to find sites that are industry related to yours and work on reciprocal links. Ask your vendors about a link to your site. Work on getting linked to any possible site that would have relevant content to your site.

Customers - I feel very strongly that you need to notify all of your customers that you can about your web site. This can be with a direct mail piece, a flyer at your checkout, a flyer in their statement or an email. Your customer can continue to come back to the web site 24/7 to find out what is going on at your company.

Search Engines and Directories - You can always work on submitting your web site to the main search engines and directories that will accept submissions without charge. These are getting far and few between but are out there if you want to take the time. These can generate results but may take quite a bit of time to realize those results.

Newsletter - If you are not aware of it, newsletters are an awesome tool to communicate with existing customers and tell possible prospects about your company. This could be a printed newsletter that is mailed or available at your location or you could create one online or start an email newsletter. Start today to gather your customers email addresses so you can communicate with them.

Software - There are many software programs out there that tout that they will submit your site to hundreds or thousands of search engines. Buyer beware! Make sure to know what they submit to (search engines, link farms, FFA's, directories, etc). Do they update the software to keep up to date with search engine scripts and algorithms? You will find that there are really 15-25 key engines/directories out there and then another 50-60 fringe engines to submit to.

Web Site Content - Your web site should have up-to-date, relevant and quality content pertaining to your industry and your company. Make your site somewhat resourceful and interactive with your customers or prospects with local/national news, weather, maps, related links, newsletters, specials, FAQ's, surveys, polls, questionnaires and the list could go on. Give good quality content and people will continue to come back to your site.

Referrals - Make sure you have a referral feature on every page of your web site. This little feature allows users to click a button or link that sends an email to a friend or associate about your web site.

There are some technical areas that need to be addressed as well regarding making sure that your web site is search engine ready. We call it Search Engine Optimization and Submission. That is an entirely different and very extensive topic. This is an ongoing process in the life of your web site.

There is definitely a need to have a Strategic Marketing Plan in place for your online presence whether you are going to take full advantage of the above tips or outsource this project. If you want to make your web site have an impact on your business you have to make a conscious effort at getting it noticed. You have the opportunity for your business to be online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year and available to an estimated Internet population of 149 million in the United States and over 450 million worldwide (CyberAtlas), so why not take full advantage of this medium. Enjoy the ride!!!

About the Author
Kevin Warrene is Vice President of Sales and Marketing with BMRW & Associates (http://www.bmrw.com). At BMRW & Associates, our mission is to provide the business community with comprehensive and customizable software solutions, enhanced Internet development and the highest quality technology consulting. They also offer web-based software solutions, web site hosting and extensive marketing, planning and development.