The Internet's full of hyped-up promises of the 'ultimate'
marketing secret that will singlehandedly skyrocket your
business to instant success.
Naturally, this is ALL it is: hype. There's no single 'secret'
that will magically transform a fledgling business into a
powerful money-maker. Instead, every business owner is
responsible for testing and refining various techniques until he
or she has developed a solid, effective base that produces the
desired results.
What works for one business may not work for another! Likewise,
another business may have poor results with one method, while
others experience great success. Here's a quick checklist of
some of the more popular -- and completely free -- marketing
techniques to help you build your online business (note: this is
a 3-part series).
PART 1: FREE ONLINE MARKETING TECHNIQUES
1. Build and use your own opt-in list of targeted and interested
prospects. Offer a free newsletter that provides fresh,
interesting, and relevant content. You'll receive feedback from
your readers about what's important to them, and over time
they'll come to know and trust you. Your products, services, and
even recommendations will then be taken much more seriously
because you've developed credibility with your readers.
2. Contribute to newsgroups or discussion boards. Establish
yourself as a helpful member of a community. Other members of
the community who come to know and respect you will often refer
you to others.
3. Niche directories or search engines. Find all the
highly-targeted directories and SEs for your market, and then
work to get listed. You'll be surprised at how many niche sites
there are! Good places to start looking are http://yahoo.com/
and http://www.dmoz.com/ .
4. Build your link popularity. For example, you can trade links
with other businesses in your market so that you can 'share'
each other's traffic. Most of the major search engines take link
popularity into consideration when ranking your site.
5. Endorsed mailings to other lists. Find the editor of a great
newsletter, and offer your product or service to him for free in
return for a review or an endorsed ad to his list. Endorsements
from the editor can far outperform regular 'ads', since they
come from someone they know and trust (the editor).
6. Testimonials. It's fine for you to say that your product or
service is wonderful... but there's far more 'punch' when
someone else says it! Testimonials show prospects that you have
happy customers and helps them to make the decision to buy.
7. Use autoresponders to follow-up with your prospects. It has
been proven time and time again that autoresponders can
dramatically increase your profits! They're also great
time-savers, saving you from following up with each prospect
manually.
8. Ad swaps. You can get extra exposure for 'free' (no
out-of-pocket expenses) by swapping ad space with another editor
that caters to your audience. Plus it's a great way to put
'remnant' ad space to good use.
9. Join a webring. Link to other sites like yours and build an
online 'community.'
10. Offer coupons or gift certificates to entice visitors to
make a purchase *now*.
11. Make good use of referral marketing. Ask happy customers to
refer prospects to you. Many people are so busy these days that
they're willing to rely on a trusted friend or contact's advice
-- it saves them the time necessary to do all the research
themselves.
12. Write and distribute articles in your area of expertise.
This is a great credibility-builder! People who appreciate what
you have to say are much more likely to check out your business.
Another 'bonus' is that articles are often archived on websites
for visitors to refer to time and time again.
13. Become an 'expert'. If you like to write and have the time
to do so, consider partnering with a high-traffic site within
your niche market and offer to write a regular column or
article. You establish credibility and get exposure; your
partner site and their readers get great content.
14. Use a 'Recommend-It' or 'Refer-A-Friend' script. These
scripts let visitors send your URL to friends.
15. Make it easy for others to link to your site. Consider
adding a 'Link to Us' section where you provide the HTML that
visitors can simply cut and paste to their own web pages. Again,
this helps to build your link popularity (see point #4).
16. Hold contests. For example, every month you could give away
one of your products to a lucky subscriber or customer.
17. Use a signature. Also known as 'sig files', a signature is a
brief blurb about your business along with your URL and/or
contact information. Put a signature on every piece of email you
send out, as well as on any message board posts (if
appropriate).
18. Give away a quality free eBook or report. eBooks and reports
can be excellent viral marketing tools. You can even offer them
as a 'premium' to other businesses within your niche, so that
they can give it away to their own customers or subscribers.
This is an effective way to build a network that will willingly
promote your business for you! More on promoting free eBooks and
how they can help you can be found in the article, '10 Quick
Tips on How to Create, Distribute, and Profit from Free eBooks':
http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/articles/ebooktips.html
Hopefully this has given you a few helpful ideas on how to
market your online business. In the next installment of this
series, you'll read about several marketing techniques that may
cost you money, but that can be worth the investment many times
over. The final installment is all about marketing your online
business in the 'offline' world! Stay tuned.
About the author:
Angela is the editor of Online Business Basics, a practical
guide to building a business on a beginner's budget. It's a
proven hit with beginners, for the down-to-earth style and loads
of instantly useable tips! For details, visit
http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/article.html OR request a series
of 10 free reports to get you started:
mailto:businessbasics@workyourleads.com
