Ways to market a website
Ok, you’ve got your basics sorted and your website is a lean, mean conversion machine. Now you’re looking for some ways to market your website.
I’ve prepared a list of incredibly obvious ways of marketing a website. All effective but definitely thinking from well inside the box. These are the ones everyone does after skipping the fundamentals and then they wonder why they don’t get the results they want. At least you’ll have the advantage of a decent website and these techniques are your starting point when marketing a website.
Content
You’re involved in a specific industry or niche. You work in it everyday. What does that mean? Yes, you are an expert in that field. So why not use that expertise of yours to help others. This means writing articles and putting them on your website. A guide, an ebook, anything your visitors will find useful and leads to them forming a relationship with you. You build trust, you get people spending time on your website, and you improve your search engine rankings. Win, win, win!
Advertising (Banner Ads)
This is a complete waste of money if you ask me. Traditional advertising just doesn’t perform on the internet, despite having your flash moving, eye catching designs. These are more likely to have me leave a website than actually click on an ad. But if you test it and it works for you, more power to you. You’re better off to put your money towards advertorials or creative advertising solutions.
Pay per Click (PPC)
Since traditional advertising wasn’t working, some bright spark came up with Pay per Click advertising. A much better model that is actually worth investing your money in if you do it right. Just remember to target your niches and try to find qualified customers rather than just any random visitor and you can have a lot of success with PPC.
Newsletters
The newsletter subscriber list can be a goldmine for your website. Most people don’t use it correctly and we’ll discuss that more a little later under Direct Marketing. You need to have a way to collect emails and a newsletter, usually offering a free gift for your email, is the standard way to go. They’re becoming a bit overused now and you need to make sure you really give people a reason to join your subscription list.
Link Building
Having your website link on other websites is obviously a good way to get visitors and it helps your search engine rankings immensely as well. Just be aware that gone are the days when you just exchanged links with anyone. You need links from websites related to yours and preferably ones where you don’t have to link back. How do you achieve this? Create a website with excellent content that others want to link to of course.
Blogs and Forums
Remember, you’re an expert in your field. So go out and share that expertise with the community. Go and visit the blogs and forums that talk about your area and help other people. Free advice can get them visiting your website and builds trust again. It means you’re not some faceless website on the internet; instead you’re a friend who helped them out with a problem once.
Article Submission
You’ve been writing articles for your website so why not share your expertise with even more people. With loads of free article submission directories, these articles can get picked up and used in websites and email newsletters all over the world. Be aware that this is a little swamped with submissions now too so you’ll need high quality articles and some luck for people to notice.
Press Releases
New products? New website design? New staff? Something going on with your company? Write a press release about it. Again there are submission directories that will publish your press release and put it in front of journalists for your industry or niche. Not as tapped as article submission and if you learn to write good press releases you can get a lot of exposure through this.
Direct Marketing
Now you should have a nice list of newsletter subscribers and past customers. So what are you doing with this list? Are you sending them targeted offers that have them drooling over their keyboards? Learn how to write sales copy and create offers that add value to your customers and money to your bottom line.
So there you have the bread and butter techniques for marketing your website. You might have some more you’d like me to add as well but I think I’ve covered the main ones. When you’ve got these under control you can climb out of the box a little and move on to some advanced internet marketing techniques.
