As your web investment starts to make money, you will have the means to pay for PPC advertising and other paid for techniques.
Even if you are lucky or successful enough to already have the money, you should still start here. The first six techniques apply to almost every web site. The only difference is whether you hire a team or do it yourself.
Put Your URL on All Stationery and Packaging
There is no extra cost to add your URL on absolutely every public piece of paper that leaves your office: business cards, letterhead, packing slips, presentation folders, invoices, marketing collateral, spec sheets, and press releases.
Do not forget to include your URL on all PowerPoint presentations and the footer of white papers and proposals. Make sure your URL appears in all advertising, whether promotional items, radio, billboard, print or TV. Include it on all forms of packaging: cartons, labels, lids, bags, wrapping paper, ribbon, tissue, and any other containers.
Include Your URL in Your E-Mail Signature Block
Almost all e-mail programs allow you to include a signature block that appears on every e-mail you send. In addition to your name, title, company name, address, phone number, include a five-to-seven word marketing tag and a link to your Web site. If you use the format http://www.YourDomain.com, the text will automatically become a link in outgoing mail making contacting you easier for your customers.
Use Calls to Action in Your Text
Calls to action are essential verbs (such as buy now or save) that inspire your visitors to take a particular action on your site. The word free, as well as a textual link, is an implicit call to action. Use calls to action and links to assist visitors to navigate your site and to show them what you want them to do. If you do not tell them, they will not know.
Collect Customer Testimonials
This is a big one. If a customer spontaneously offers praise, ask them for permission to show their recommendations on your site. You do not have to publish any identifiable details, but you do need something more than “anonymous” as a source. You can also collect testimonials from letters you receive, notes in a guestbook, or comments on a blog.
If you prefer, you can put a star rating or “would you recommend us to a friend?” page on your site to actively encourage customers to write testimonials or leave reviews. Not only does this get you some positive points from your existing customers, it also makes your customers feel more valued which can help encourage return visits. Scatter the testimonials throughout your site on pages with related content instead of placing them all on one page that way they will be viewed more often by more people.
Make sure you ask customers to review you on top review sites related to your industry, if they’re truly satisfied with your service/product they’ll be happy to do this.
Submit to the Top Search Engines
Submit your web site to the top search engines. It does not cost anything, and does not even take a great amount of time.
Submit to:
Google at www.google.com/addurl
Yahoo! at http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
MSN at http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
The best way to achieve good positions in these search engines is to make your site an authority in the industry with plenty of relevant, fresh content.
Create Accounts and Pages on Social Web Sites
Social media gives you the opportunity to interact with others, create and promote content that can get links and viral attraction, if you use the right techniques you can reach key influencers using this medium. We all know what blogs can do, and they are mostly search engine friendly.
Social media can become invaluable to your business because it provides foundations for broader and faster mindshare. You can convert traffic if you target appropriately and do not spam.
Tell a Friend
The easiest and most simple of all viral marketing methods, Tell a Friend, gives a Web visitor the means and opportunity to e-mail a friend or colleague a link to your site with a personal note of recommendation. Your developer can install free script to manage this function. Ensure to include a link to Tell a Friend in your navigation so that visitors can recommend your site, your products, or your services to someone they know is likely to be in the market for them quickly and easily.
Take Advantage of Free Google Local Services and Coupons
Google offer free local listings Incorporated into their map sites and featured at the top of most search results, allowing users to search for businesses within a certain geographical area. While tourism, entertainment and hospitality sites obviously benefit from local search, local listings can be valuable for any company. A large amount of consumers prefer to buy locally because they think it will be easier to obtain post purchase service or because they want to support local businesses.
Besides the listing (which is like a free ad), Google allows you to offer coupons and include your logo building brand awareness without the expenditure of big T.V. adds.
Submit Your Shopping Site to Google Products
Most shopping sites are either pay per listing or pay per click search engines sites. However, Google’s shopping search engine is free to merchants. You can either set up an RSS feed to update your online feed whenever your inventory changes or upload your inventory monthly (which is the minimum required frequency).
Deliver a Newsletter through Yahoo! Groups
Start collecting e-mail addresses even before your site goes live. Make sure you ask permission to e-mail newsletters and do not over do it, this will distract from the message you are trying to send and cause annoyance to your customers. If you cannot afford the template based, newsletter services such as ConstantContact.com, start small with something like Yahoo! Groups.
After setting up your group at http://groups.yahoo.com, e-mail an invitation to everyone on your list of addresses to sign up. It is text-based news, but it’s easy, fast and it’s free.
