On-Line Marketing

Building a Web site and not promoting it is a waste of time and money. To get your Web site visited and appreciated, you need to let people know it exists. Web marketing is a long-term investment. Submitting your URL to search engines can be frustrating. It can literally take six months to finally see your web site show up in a major search engine. Here are a few ways to market your website and draw the targeted individuals you want:

Put Your URL on Everything

Get the most out of a small print ad by enabling wired readers to get more details instantly, 24 hours a day. Be sure to include your phone number and street address as well. Include your URL in answering machine or voice-mail messages. For those who call your office outside of office hours, spell out your Web address in your message, so that they can immediately help themselves to the information they need.

Utilize your on-hold message as well -- instead of playing muzak for customers while they wait in line for a representative, you can tell them that if they're calling for directions, prices, return policies and such, they can surf your web site.

Append a signature file in emails. At the end of every email message you send, attach a file containing your contact information and a line about what's new at your Web site.

Change the "what's new" line frequently to tempt previous visitors to have another look. Make sure everyone in your company uses one.

Print your URL on every piece of paper that leaves your business, even packing paper and tape. Print it on invoices, sales literature, shopping bags, trade show giveaways, t-shirts, pens, on literally anything that can be printed. Print it on product labels and instruction manuals. If you are not ready to reprint your stationery yet, print small, coordinating labels that feature your online address and invite people to visit. Stick them on envelopes, seminar folders, the backs of your business cards and more.

Newsgroups

Post notices of your site's content in newsgroups. Whenever you add useful non-promotional content to your Web site, such as a "Frequently Asked Questions" file, post notices to relevant newsgroups, forums and mailing lists. This usually not only increases traffic to your web site, but also prompts people to add links to your site.

Link Exchanges

Visit non-competing informational sites in your area of expertise and ask the owners to add links to your site. This works best when your site includes useful informational resources rather than strictly promotional material. Before requesting links, add a section to your site that contains links to related businesses. Then contact the Webmasters of those sites to request a return link. You'll find your initiative frequently reciprocated. There are also a significant number of industry directories that can drive significant amounts of traffic to your site. Check whether the trade publications related to your industry also have web sites. There are usually significant marketing opportunities available.

Newsletters

Start an email newsletter. Some say that showing up in your customers' mailboxes every week or month with updates, schedules, sale prices or industry news is even more valuable than the Web site itself. Somewhere in the newsletter, tell readers to check out your Web site for more information on related subjects. You can also advertise within other newsletters written by related organizations. Alerting their clients to unique information or offers on your website can boost traffic to your site quite effectively.

Publicity

Add something to your site that no one else has in your industry, then send a news release to industry trade magazines about your unique feature: free software, such as a calculator or conversion tool, a top-ten list, etc. In order to ensure that the visitors to your site are targeted, i.e., are the type of people most likely to buy your products, make sure what you are offering would appeal to that type of audience.

Web Site Optimization

Invent alternative domain names. The shorter and more memorable your domain names, the better. Inquire as to other similar names that could have meaning to your customers, as well as simple mispellings of your URL. These new URLs could quickly redirect traffic to your main website. Encourage people to bookmark your site. You can even provide information on how to make your web site their home page. This would bring visitors back every time they open their browser.

Many web marketing companies talk about optimizing web pages for search engines and stress adding meta tags. But many search engines don't rely on meta tags at all. They use complicated tables that classify and count the frequency of words and their relationships; others rate links to your site. Optimize the file names of all html and graphics files, rework pages to eliminate frames (which most spiders can't travel through correctly) and review the contents of your home page.

Hire Outside Help

Of course, hiring JHeydecker Design Systems to handle these and many other on-line marketing projects lets you get back to doing what you want to do: running your business. JHeydecker Design Systems can help plan and implement an online marketing strategy to generate targeted traffic to your web site. JHeydecker Design Systems senior management has direct and significant experience marketing and managing traffic for the Lycos Network, a pioneering web media model that includes three of the top ten web sites in the world.