Promotion Strategies

Archive for August, 2010

The internet today is like the yellow pages was 30 years ago. You can put as many business advertisements as you want on it but without a comprehensive internet marketing strategy, nobody will know about it.

First, you need to create a website that people will notice. It should stand out from similar websites and catch the customers attention right away and capture their email address. Try doing a search for “cheese” you will get hundreds of thousands of websites and will probably click through tons of them before you find the one you are most attracted to and read the longest. Your website should be pretty, well organized, and state all the most important information right away in big letters.

You will need to know how to get your website noticed through the use of an internet marketing strategy. Search engines are the most popular way to do this. You can use engines like Yahoo and Google. Yahoo! shows websites based on categories while Google is related to keywords. Both of these sites require you to submit your website to them and get approval before you can actually show up in the search results. This is why you want to make sure your website is done to the best of your ability (or your designer). It is possible to have your site rejected, then you are back at square one with little to no traffic.

Keywords play an important part in virtually every internet marketing strategy. You are competing with thousands of other companies offering the same services and products. You want to choose the best keywords so your product or service is easily discovered. If you pick a word like ”cheese”, it is such a basic word, the odds are your website won’t make the first page of search listings. If you were to choose “Northern California Cheddar” though, that is much more specific and on the chance someone is looking for just that, you will probably get your page to show up for them.

There are services out there that will post your website on tons of search engines for a nice fee. Before using anything like this, make sure you check out their history, get some testimonials, and make sure that is what you really want to do as it can be costly.

Banner ads can be effective occasionally but again they are costly and think to yourself, “How often do I actually click on those myself?”. I know I sure don’t.

Email marketing is a good way to go but like banner ads, many people just delete 90% of email they don’t recognize. If you choose this route, make sure you use proper spelling and grammar and have a good headline that will attract attention right away. There are many services that will give you a list of potential customers Email addresses for a small fee. These should be geared toward your product but sometimes they just give you random names. Again, research these companies before you give them any money.

Finding similar webpages is probably the best way to go. Most webpages have a contact area and will let you advertise on their site in return for letting them advertise on yours. As long as you can keep the ads small on your site, this is a nonintrusive and free way to generate publicity.

There are many other ways to get your name out on the internet. There are forums where you can put a link to your site in your signature, blogs, businesss groups, and every way you can imagine to get people to your site and collect their email address. Be creative! Don’t forget off-line ways such as flyers, business cards, and local newspapers.