You’ve decided what items you will offer online, developed great products to sell, built a fantastic-looking website and peppered it with key words to make it soar in the search engines. Yet all that effort is not enough to guarantee that your Internet business will be a success.
You can have the best pizza, the best boutique—or the best website—but if no one knows about it, few will come. With all the mechanisms in place for successful Internet sales to take place once a visitor stops by your site, you must now become an expert in getting the consumer to your site.
Website promotion is a vital ingredient to creating wealth from your site.
There are tons of ways you can get the word out that your website exists and is open for business, and many of them are free. Here are just a few of the ways you can get web surfers to see your “Open” sign and spend time on your site:
Send out press releases. Just as any new brick-and-mortar business might do, you can send press releases about your website’s “Grand Opening” to newspapers locally or around the world. Include a contact name, email address, and phone number right at the top; create a catchy-but-informative headline; and provide all the answers to the “Five W’s” (Who, What, When, Where, and Why) in the first paragraph.
Keep press releases to one page, and send them by email or fax, then follow up with a phone call. If you want newspapers to write a full article on your business rather than a brief mention, be sure to come up with a unique “angle” that will intrigue reporters. For example, can you tie your “Grand Opening” to a local charitable organization and donate a portion of the proceeds? If so, it may be a newsworthy story.
Create an email signature with your URL and catchphrase. Create an automatic signature that will be at the bottom of every email you send. Include a small graphic image or logo, your name, title, and contact information, plus the URL (web address), and the tagline for your business. Your website is then getting free publicity and visibility with every email you send.
Blog your way to fame and fortune. Good blogs that are entertaining and informative are hot. If you have a great sense of humor that translates well in your writing, and your grammar skills are up to par, consider creating a blog and updating it frequently. You can sell directly from your blog or link people from there to your website.
Sign up for social networks and Twitter. If you don’t have Facebook and MySpace pages, get them. You can place links to your website, special sales, information about your business and more on your social networks pages. But remember that people get on Facebook and MySpace because they are relational, not for a hard sell. Let your potential customers get to know you, as well as your business. When you have won many peoples’ trust, try “tweeting” them on Twitter.com. You can send short, one-sentence updates to those who choose to “follow” your tweets 24/7.
Join the video craze on YouTube. Videocameras are inexpensive and easy to use, so invest in a good one. Try shooting some short video segments that are creative and fun to promote your business. Then put them on YouTube and let visitors to your blog, website, and social sites know the videos are there. If you can’t seem to get the knack of making video look good, hire someone under 25 to teach you or shoot it for you. Video is most likely their second language.
Swap links and create “Blog Tours.” Find other websites that provide a similar service or are in the same market, but are not your direct competition, and ask to swap links. You put the other guys’ business link on your site, and he returns the favor. You can also send samples of your product to top bloggers or create a blog group, where everyone agrees to write a review or post about your product during the same two-day period. (You should be willing to return the favor for their product.) Track the results to see if these tactics translate into sales.
Produce an eNewsletter. Almost every site these days has a sign-up spot to subscribe to the company’s e-newsletter, and yours should, too. This helps you gather email contacts and keep them in touch with what’s happening on your site. Make sure the newsletters are frequent enough to keep you visible (at least quarterly, preferably monthly) but not so frequent that you are the online equivalent of a pesky saleslady.
By utilizing these simple strategies for promoting your website, you can increase traffic and create consumer awareness. Since greater traffic equals greater potential for sales, good website promotion is a must for every successful Internet venture.
Tags: online sales, social networks, website promotion, website traffic