25 Ways To Promote Your Site Online And Off

By Josh Greth
Posted Thursday, November 11, 2004

Offline Promotions

1.Always include your URL on all company letterhead, business cards, signage and paper advertisements such as flyers or newspapers ads.
2.Using uniforms with your corporate slogan can we a walking reminder to all your customers who they are doing business with, and who they should return to in the future for all similar services.
3.Develop some promotional items with your URL to give away for free. Whether it’s something as simple as a free pen, or something a little nicer like a java mug, placing your website name on these items will remind whoever possesses it about your business and its products.
4.When dealing with the media, including your URL with all press releases will mean it possibly showing up in their articles, giving your site a whole new world of exposure and audience.
5.Signage for corporate vehicle can now be as easy as a metal sticker. Don’t forget to add your URL to your vehicles, and pass by thousands of potential customers for free.
6.Include your URL in your phone book listing, and make sure your company is listed properly. Just like search engine listings, phone book ads for businesses can be just as tricky, so be sure you are added to the correct category when registering your business.
7.Display your products in a catalog that customers can peruse offline, and add your URL and toll free number to every page.
8.Promotional giveaways through such organizations as radio stations, churches, or gyms can be great ways to spread the word about your company and website. Make sure all donations or giveaways are done in the name or your website, and you are sure many folks will hear about your URL.
9.Develop a quality, custom, logo. This tool can be used in co-operation with all the above, and more, giving you even more of an impact on your potential customers. They will have an easier time remembering your URL if it is incorporated into an attractive, colorful, logo.

Online Promotions

10.Develop a weekly newsletter for announcing special discounts, industry events, or corporate news for customers and site visitors alike. This will bring back old customers for repeat business, as well as develop new customers whom initially sign up for just the newsletter.
11.Develop free articles for publication, distribution and submission all across the web. There are many directories, e-zines and webmasters just waiting for your free articles to add to their resources. Not only does this bring your site more exposure through the links back the articles contain, but it helps enhance your reputation as an expert in your industry.
12.Correctly optimize your website, especially your homepage, for the keyword terms most relevant to your products or services.
13.Add detailed, keyword filled content to every important page of your website, especially your main URL. This will further optimize your site for search engines, and gain you more exposure through higher rankings. Just a simple paragraph about what you do and a picture is not enough. The word keywords the better.
14.Explore PPC (Pay Per Click) listings through Overture or Google AdWords, to balance out or beef up the exposure you are already getting through you well optimized URL.
15.Include an “exchange links” option on your links page, or even devote an entire page to this option for your site visitors. This will develop more links back to your site, and more exposure will follow.
16.Create you own links directory, by searching out link partners who offer similar or complimentary services or products, yet are not in direct competition with you.
17.Come up with creative, yet cost effective, sweepstakes and promotions for online customers. Apply it through using the signups for your weekly or monthly newsletter as entries. Offer visitors more entries if they can suggest your site or newsletter to a friend, and then contact that person via email with the appropriate information for them to signup as well.
18.Harness the power of numbers and create an affiliate program to use hundreds, even thousands of others to sell your service as well. For a nominal share in the profits this advertising pays for itself because it is performance based, not traffic based. You pay for what you get.
19.All orders placed online should include an invoice printed on corporate letterhead, a product catalog, and a free promotional gift such as a pen or mug as described in #3.
20.Have someone from your staff participate regularly in online discussion groups, signing all responses with the hyperlinked URL of your website. A very effective technique to get many employees interested in corporate promotion is to allow certain “breaks” in their day, which are specifically centered around them being online, discussing industry news in industry related forums and chat rooms. They are free to meet new people, surf the chat room of their choice (as long as it related to your business) and converse with whom they wish.
21.Invite customer feedback through an online poll, and find out exactly what they want, how they want it, and if you have got it or not.
22.Create mini-sites to add exposure for your main URL, and then place these sites on auctions sites like e-bay. Run special promotions and prices for certain items just on these mini-sites, for specific blocks of time, and find out exactly how successful this tool turned out by your order fluctuations.
23.Place min adds in classified directories all directly linking back to your main URL. Most often these classified sites are free, or charge very little to place an ad on a regular basis.
24.Create a forum on your own website for customers whom are interested in your products. For instance, if you run a mortgage site, creating a forum for buyers and sellers of homes to exchange tips and experiences on selling their homes, and finding their newest dream homes, would be quite a nice marketing tool.
25.Utilize the power of the internet to spread links back to your site by developing a tool that countless numbers of people, even people loosely related to your industry, would find interesting and beneficial to their visitors. When they place the tool on their site, the code will have a link back to your site already in it, because you develop the product. Such tools could be traffic counters, online poll tools, and free search engine submission devices.

About the Author
Josh Greth has developed, owns, and is the reigning CEO of CardStreet Cardservice Corp. To date, they have established over 100,000 successful merchants and helped make their dreams a reality, by creating a simple, yet cost effective, means of credit card processing. For more information on credit card processing, or to obtain your own merchant account for a retail, internet, wireless or phone/mail order business, please visit CardStreet.com.