5 top tips for free website marketing

Published on January 21, 2009 5 top tips for free website marketing

Marketing your website takes a lot of hard work on top of all the built-in help that ecommerce features like search engine friendly (SEF) URLs can give you. As with most marketing, the results you get out of it depend on your determination and the speed you can gain results often depends on your budget. If you’re running a small business you don’t need to be too demoralised yet because there are a lot of things you can do to promote your site for free.

Here is a collection of ten top tips for free website marketing.

1. Offer something for free. People just love things for free and there are whole websites devoted to listing free offers and giveaways. Give away some really useful information that costs you nothing that is relevant to your customers (e.g., cake icing recipes, colour co-ordination consultation, photography tips) as an eBook or special download in return for just giving them your email address. Email addresses can be gold if used in well-thought out newsletter or email offer campaigns.
2. Write about your products. Your product descriptions will help, but whatever you are selling,  content can really improve your chances of selling your products. Especially if your product is hard to understand, helping people out with what to buy can help you sell those things in your store.
3. Create a viral marketing campaign. A viral marketing campaign is some unusual message or statement that people find so interesting, fun or unusual that they spread it to others or encourage others to visit your website to find out more.  The challenge is thinking up something so innovative it really captures the interest of your potential buyers. Get your creative thinking caps on!
4. Link, Link, Link.  The content on your page is one thing, but you need to have relevant websites linking to you if you want the search engines to consider your website important on the search terms your customers search for. Start building links through directory submissions, link exchange programmes, your business contacts, suppliers and whoever.
5. Promote your website on everything. Use your website’s address on everything you do: letterhead, forum posts, emails, newspaper advertising, t shirts, invoices, business cards etc.

Remember to combine these starter ideas with doing the important things right: answer questions efficiently and in a friendly way, deliver your orders promptly, keep in contact with your customers (email addresses really can be worth their weight in gold) and keep your ecommerce website up to date.