10 More Ways to Promote Your Website

How do you get visitors to your website?  What do you do to get increased traffic?  Here’s a list of 10 more items you may consider.

Here are 10  more ways that are in addition to my previous posts here - 10 Ways to Promote Your Website - and here - 12 More Ways to Promote Your Website

E-Mail Strategies

The Money IS in the List!  Don’t neglect e-mail as an critical way to bring people to your website.  Please don’t spam, that is, don’t send bulk unsolicited e-mails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship.  Many countries have anti-spam laws.

1. Install a “Signature” in your E-Mail Program.
Most e-mail programs allow you to create a “signature” to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 5 to 7 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering.  Look for examples on e-mail messages sent to you.

2. Publish an E-Mail Newsletter.
While it requires a commitment of time, creating a monthly e-mail publication is one of the most important promotion techniques.  It could be a newsletter (”ezine”), industry updates, new product information or lists of tips.  Basically, whatever you believe your customers will appreciate.  This is a great way to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business.  It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site, but aren’t yet ready to make a purchase.  You distribute your newsletter inexpensively using e-mail marketing services such as eResponder .   Blogs are very popular, but don’t really replace e-mail newsletters. You have to go to a blog to read it, while an e-mail newsletter appears in your inbox asking to be read.

3. Aggressively Ask for E-Mail Sign-ups.
If you want to get subscribers to your e-mail newsletter, you’ll need to work hard at it.  Include a subscription form on every page of your website.  Promote sign-ups through free whitepapers, e-books, or other products.  If you have a local business, ask customers to sign up for your e-mail list to get “special Internet only offers.”   Ask other businesspeople when they give you a business card if you can send them your e-mail newsletter.  While only the e-mail address itself is necessary, I always ask for a first name also, so I can personalize the newsletter and the e-mail subject line with the recipient’s name.

4. Send Transactional and Reminder E-Mails.
A transactional e-mail is sent to an existing customer to initiate, remind, confirm, or thank the person.   Be creative.  If you keep careful records, you can send e-mails to customers on their birthday to remind them to return to your site.  Subscription confirmation e-mails can also mention several popular products.  Use your imagination, but don’t pester your customers.  You’re there to serve them, not the other way around.

5. Send Offers to Your Visitors and Customers.
Your own list of customers and site visitors who have given you permission to contact them will be your most productive list.  Send special offers, coupon specials, product updates, etc.  They often initiate another visit to your site.  If you have a regular newsletter, you can include many of these in your regular e-mailing.

Miscellaneous Strategies

6. Announce a Contest.
People like getting something for free and even just the chance to get something for free.  If you publicize a contest or drawing available on your site, you’ll generate more traffic than normal.  Make sure your sweepstakes rules are legal in all states and countries you are targeting.  Prizes should be designed to attract individuals who fit a demographic profile describing your best customers.

7. Use Viral Marketing Promotion Techniques.
So-called viral marketing uses existing communication networks to spread the word exponentially.  The key to the best viral marketing, is to create something that generates buzz and is so cute / fascinating / fun / bizarre that it gets passed by viewers to their friends via e-mail and social networks — over and over — so that it propels more and more people to your website, hopefully, enhancing your brand, produce sales. Internet marketers often seek to launch viral campaigns on PyraBang or YouTube .   PyraBang is a social bookmarking site with such power, that if enough people “Bang” you, you appear on the PyraBang front page and receive a huge number of visitors in a few hours.  If your video goes viral on YouTube, you could get tens of thousands of visits to the site you promote in the video. However, viral marketing is difficult to do well.

Paid Advertising Strategies

No method is “free,” since each takes time and energy.  If you want to grow your business more rapidly, there comes a point when you need to pay for increased traffic.

Advertising is sold in one of three ways:

• CPM (cost per thousand views)
• PPC (pay per click)
• PPA (pay per action)
• CPA (cost per action)

Examples of the latter are affiliate programs and lead generation programs.  Banner ads get such a low click-through rate (0.2%) that I don’t recommend paying much for them.  Banner ads typically cost about 50¢ to $1 per thousand page views, except on targeted sites.  Do some small tests first to determine response.  Always calculate your return on investment (ROI) before spending large amounts.

Here are some mores methods to explore:

8. Advertise in an E-Mail Newsletter.
Some of the best buys are small text ads in e-mail newsletters targeted at audiences likely to be interested in your products or services.  Many small publishers aren’t sophisticated about advertising and offer very attractive rates.

More effective (and more expensive) is to send out an appropriate solo e-mail to the targeted list’s subscribers.  These often get a good response.

9. Begin an Affiliate Program.
Essentially, a retailer’s affiliate program is a CPA program that pays a commission to other site owners whose links to the retailer’s products result in an actual sale. The goal is to build a network of affiliates who have a financial stake in promoting your site.  If you’re a merchant, you need to (1) determine the commission you are willing to pay (consider it your advertising cost), (2) select a company to set up the technical details of your program, and (3) promote your program to get the right kind of affiliates who will link to your site. Software and service companies are available to facilitate the process.  The problem is getting enough affiliates who will actually work hard to promote your products or services.  These “super affiliates” will probably consist of only 1% to 3% of your total number of affiliates.

10. Purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads
This strategy is way down the list, but it is vitally important. Most Internet businesses will want to explore using Google AdWords to drive targeted traffic to their websites.

These PPC ads appear on the search engine results page, typically both above and to the right of the organic or natural search engine results.  Since they are keyword-driven, they can be quite relevant to what a searcher is trying to find.  Your ranking in this list of paid text ads is determined by (1) how much you have bid for a particular search word compared to other businesses, (2) the click-through rate on your ad, and (3) your Quality Score, which reflects the relevancy and quality of your ad and the landing page it points to.

PPC ads can be a cost-effective way to get targeted traffic, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link.  I strongly recommend that you study this carefully and expect a learning curve before you invest large sums of money in PPC advertising, either on purpose or accidentally.

We certainly haven’t exhausted ways to promote your site, but these will get you started.  To effectively market your site, you need to spend time adapting these strategies to your own market , niche and capacity.

If you haven’t already, please go back and read the previous articles on Website Promotion - 10 Ways to Promote Your Website - and - 12 More Ways to Promote Your Website

Feel free to throw some of your ideas into the comments.

Posted in business
Tags: AdWords, affiliate marketing, branding, buzz, cpa, cpm, Email, freebies, Leads, mailing list, news, Online Promotion, Opt-in List, ppa, ppc, promotion, PyraBang, safelist, signups, Social Bookmarking, youtube