8 Online Business Promotion Tips & Tricks You Must Know

With millions of websites competing for viewers, how do you get noticed? When asked if they are marketing on the Internet, many people say "yes, we have a website."

However, having a website and Internet marketing are very different things. Having a website is meaningless if nobody knows about it.

The phrase "if you build it, they will come" does not work on the Internet. Building a website is just the first step. Driving traffic to your website takes knowledge, planning, time and effort. If you want your website to be successful, you're going to have to learn how to market it to the world.

Today's small businesses need resources to help them grow and succeed. Arguably, as one of the most pervasive technology for small businesses, the Internet can directly increase your bottom lines. Today, small businesses need to do more, at a faster rate and with minimal resources.

1. Search engines

Many people, perhaps even a majority of people, will use search engines and directories to find what they're looking for on the Web. So the place to start in promotion is to design web pages that will be indexed well by the search engines, using descriptive titles, accurate META tags and keyword-laden content-rich pages.

But with hundreds of millions of web pages being submitted to the search engines daily, it's very easy for your site to get lost. Be persistent. If your site doesn't show up within a few weeks, submit again ... and again ... and again.

2. Linking strategies

Linking strategies are a second essential type of site promotion. The more links pointing to your site, the more traffic you'll experience (and the greater perceived "popularity" will rank you higher in the search engines). To get someone to link to your site, you need to ask. The simplest way is to find complementary sites, link to them on a linking page, and ask them to link to you. The key, of course, is for your site to have content that so good that it's worth linking to. Ask for links on sites that cover your industry, as well as from associations your business belongs to.

3. Viral strategies

An increasingly important process is to design a strategy that encourages others to carry your marketing message via e-mail, using their own network of relationships -- and preferably their own resources. This is called "viral marketing" after the way viruses multiply rapidly in a cell, commandeering the cell's resources to do the virus' bidding. The classic example is HotMail.com, a free e-mail system. Each e-mail message (sent by definition to a person's own friends and associates) carries a message encouraging the recipient to sign up for a HotMail account, too. Another example is postcard or greeting cards, each of which carries a message encouraging the recipient to send a card to a friend -- carrying the site owner’s marketing message.

4. Public relations

Public relations, the task of getting press coverage, is still a vital type of site promotion. If you can get a news release picked up by several print and/or Internet publications you'll get a tremendous boost in traffic, all for "free," letting the news periodical's network carry your marketing message. Of course, nothing's really free. You'll need to have a truly newsworthy event, contest, free service, chat room -- or something -- or no decent publication will consider it news. Coming up with "free" services and events isn't inexpensive, but the ensuing publicity can be excellent -- you may get an unbiased editorial recommendation that you couldn't purchase for any amount of money. While there are free news release services, expect to pay several hundred dollars to have your news release sent to hundreds of subscribing periodicals.

5. Traditional media

Don't discount traditional media in promoting your website -- news releases, of course, as well as paid advertising. A very effective way to promote your site is to place a small display ad in a targeted trade publication, offering some teaser copy and pointing readers to your URL or an autoresponder e-mail address for more information. This way your site serves as an online brochure, providing full information to interested shoppers day and night. A no-brainer is to make sure that all your company's literature, cards, letterheads, and envelopes carry your website URL. If you're immersed in the Internet, you may have forgotten that most people still get the majority of their marketing messages through traditional channels.

6. E-mail Publishing

If you're smart you won't even think of developing a business website without marrying it to an e-mail publication. The website is the shy partner who passively waits for people to come to him. But the e-mail publication is the bold, active partner who goes out to where people are and invites them to come meet her groom. Together they are a marriage made in heaven.

E-mail publishing is primarily a way to conserve the people who have shown some interest in your business by coming to your website or responding to one of your offers. One of the highest priorities of your website MUST be to get your visitor to sign up for your free newsletter or discussion list or updates publication. Offer a variety of inducements -- entry into a contest, a free gift, a free coupon -- whatever you must do to insure a steady stream of subscribers to your newsletter. Once they are subscribers -- if you give them content they enjoy and learn from -- they'll stay with you for years, and you can gently build their trust month after month. When they're ready to make a purchase, your site is at the top of their mind, and they'll probably buy from you. Figure the lifetime value to you of a single subscriber. When you've completed this exercise, you'll know why beginning your own e-mail publication is so vital to marketing your business.

Of course, you probably know by now that sending out mass e-mails to huge lists of e-mail addresses is a no-no. It violates the principle of Permission Marketing that says people respond better to a marketing message they have agreed to receive. Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (UCE) also runs contrary to a long-standing Internet tradition that responds to SPAM with angry flames and enough returned e-mail to cause your ISP to shut down your account very quickly. If you're interested in building a long-term business based on trust, don't send SPAM. (More to come)

7. Networking

An extremely important way to promote your website is through networking. Small business members of a local Chamber of Commerce know how making friends, being introduced, meeting new people at mixers, and being featured in the Chamber newsletter can help build your business. Networking isn't quick, but it's the basis of relationships that will grow your business through word-of-mouth over the years.

On the Internet, networking is done primarily through news groups and e-mail discussion lists. In discussion lists, people in an industry carry on a conversation about various current issues. After a while, you get to know the regular participants from reading their comments week after week. Regular participation fosters trust and builds your reputation. You don't brazenly hype your business in this kind of venue -- that's considered rude. But the "signature" at the end of every e-mail message identifies you, and tells people about your business and how to contact you. If you aren't using a signature in your e-mails, begin today. Search out the newsgroups and discussion lists in your industry and take an active part. This will result in increased traffic, as well as referrals and recommendations by list members to their other friends who might need your products or services.

8. Paid advertising

You'll notice that most of the first seven types of Internet Marketing can be done in-house relatively inexpensively (with the possible exception of search engine positioning). Of course, you may be able to find a marketing firm to which you can outsource some of these functions, but you can probably do a fine job yourself -- after all, it's your business, and you are the one who can promote it most effectively.

But there comes a point that to get wider exposure, to break into the consciousness of the thousands of people who never haunt your end of the Web, you may need to resort to paid advertising. You'll be paying high traffic sites or Internet publications to include a graphic or link that will channel large numbers of people to your site. There are several popular forms of paid advertising, with new approaches cropping up all the time:

Banner ads have been around the longest. Typically these are 468x60 pixel animated and linked graphic ads that appear at the top of a commercial web page. They are usually sold on a CPM (cost per thousand page views) basis.

Paid Listings in Search Engines. Google Adwords (www.google.com/adwords). Consider it the equivalent of paying rent to enjoy the foot traffic that a suburban mall might attract.

Sponsorships are longer term paid ads on websites or e-mail newsletters.

Pay-per-Click Links can be purchased on search engines such as www.Google.com. The price per click for the top spots depends upon what your competitors are willing to bid.

Pay-per-Sale Advertising is popularly known as an Affiliate or Associate Program. The merchant signs up a number of affiliates who place a link or linked graphic on their site. If a sale is made to a customer coming through that link, the affiliate earns a commission, typically 5% to 15% of the transaction total. This can be an effective -- and safe -- way to advertise, since you only have to pay when a sale is made. You can purchase software to run your own program, but I recommend outsourcing this to a service bureau such as Commission Junction (www.cj.com) that charges an initial set-up fee and then a percentage of the commission you pay your affiliates.

Paid ads in targeted e-mail newsletters can be very effective. There are hundreds of thousands of e-mail newsletters, many of which have very modest advertising fees. Click through rates are likely to be in the range of 1% to 3%.

Opt-in E-mail Advertising involves sending a stand-alone ad for your business to individuals who have (hopefully) volunteered to receive information from your kind of business. These are called "opt-in" lists, since the list members have agreed to receive information. Avoid "opt-out" lists where recipients are placed on a list involuntarily and then invited to unsubscribe if they want to. Opt-in lists can be quite targeted, with ads getting a 1% to 3% click-through rate. Expect to pay about 15 cents to 30 cents per name; the list broker will do the e-mailing on your behalf.

Certainly, there are many more types of paid advertising, but these are some of the most common and most effective.

Internet promotion can seem overwhelming. But hopefully it's more understandable since we've outlined the ways that comprise effective website promotion.