Promoting a business online
Running a website is just like owning a specialist shop outside of the city centre – occasionally people will wander in when they’re passing, but usually your customers have to know where you are before they’ll come to visit. And, like a specialist shop, you have to undertake a certain amount of promotion to drum up business. This article explores some of the possibilities for doing so online.
First steps
The first thing our hypothetical shop-owner might do is get himself listed in the Yellow Pages; for the web, the equivalent is the directories – Yahoo, Google and the “open directory project” DMOZ. As well as delivering traffic, getting listed in directories will also aid your search performance.
Next, our shopkeep might take out adverts in either local or trade publications, although this is usually quite an expensive step; online advertising is no different, and the best sites to advertise on will be either those with a connection to the subject and, if relevant, the location of the business. Local and enthusiast forums are the ideal place to target with online ads.
A cheaper option for our shop-owner might be to hang around the places where his ‘target audience’ can be found, handing out flyers and casually mentioning his great shop. Guess what? You can do this online too – just join a few relevant forums, stick your URL in your signature and get stuck in! Of course it is important not to spam your chosen forum; don’t just pop-up with one post advertising your site and then leave, but get involved and earn the trust of the other forum members, who are then more likely to take your advice about where to buy their widgets.
The magic of the internet
Imagine if our shop-owner could be sure that anywhere anyone was talking about the type of products he sold, his shop would be mentioned and one of his flyers would magically appear. Well, through the power of the web, this is an easy and relatively cheap thing to accomplish.
Google Adwords is easy to set-up, pretty cheap as long as you’re not targetting big ticket search phrases like “mortgage” or “ipod”, and a sure-fire way of delivering targeted site traffic. Any site carrying Adwords that talks about the terms you specify will – if you have bid a high enough amount – also display a mini-advert and link to your site. Your ad will also appear on normal Google search results as well.
We operate an Adwords campaign for a smallish client selling very specific services; Adwords syndication is the single biggest referrer to the site, outstripping the search engines by 50%. Obviously if you do happen to sell iPods or mortgages you’d better have a decent marketing budget, but for small, specialist companies, you can’t do much better than Adwords.
Search Engine Optimization
We haven’t covered general SEO, as that is a dark science all of its own. Suffice to say that the best search optimization is to be good at what you do; providing great content, whether it be products or copy, is the way to get other people to link to you, and backlinks are the single best way to come out tops in search.
Summary
There are quite a few free or low-cost opportunities to promote an online business with very little effort; you don’t necessarily need an enormous budget to achieve decent traffic and sales.