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What Have You Done Today to Promote Your Business?Home > Promote > Marketing
> Articles by
Kevin Sinclair
Promoting your business on the Internet is a neverending process. You cannot
afford to place some advertisements and then sit back to watch the results roll
in. To do so would doom your business to failure. Instead, each day you need to
be doing something to promote your business. So what are some of the things
you could be doing each day to promote your business? I will run through some
ideas for you. This is not a complete list - just some ideas to get you started.
Write An Article. A great way to demonstrate your expertise
and to entice people to your Web site is to write an article and submit it to
various newsletters. Ensure that you choose newsletters your prospective customers
are likely to be reading. Ensure that at the end of your article is a resource
box that refers the reader to your site or your ezine. Place Some Free
Classified Ads Look for places where you can place some free classified
ads. A good place to start is the classified ads at Yahoo. This is a high traffic
site that is well worth posting to. If you don't get responses to your ad on Yahoo
- then it is likely that you won't get results anywhere else either. So spend
the time to get your ad right on Yahoo before trying other places. Test and test
and test until your ad is pulling responses on Yahoo. Then place it in other free
classified ad sites. Invite Referrals Amend your site or
add to your ezine a request that your visitors refer your site to their friends.
If you don't ask people to do this, they usually won't. It doesn't take much to
add this request. Recommend It (http://www.recommend-it.com/) is worth a look and a trial
on your site. Develop A Doorway Page Spend some time developing
a doorway page based on some specific keywords that relate to your site. Once
you have done this, submit the page to the search engines. It is wise to spend
time working on improving your rankings in the search engines. After all, they
do provide a stream of free targeted traffic. The only cost is your time to get
your page just right to achieve higher rankings. Add Interesting Content
Add a new page to your Web site that contains content that your visitors
will be interested in reading. Ensure that the page is submitted to the search
engines also. This page could be an article you wrote for your ezine (or other
ezines) or something topical that your visitors will find useful. Again, you demonstrate
your expertise and build trust with your visitors. Trust will translate into orders
for your product or service. Bid On Some Keywords There is
a new breed of search engine that allows advertisers to bid on certain keywords.
The advertiser pays for the traffic sent to their site. For example, if you have
a health business and your best key words are "low fat diet", then you can bid
on these words. If no-one else has bidded on these words, you may be able to bid
as low as $0.01 - therefore, for each visitor they send you, you pay one cent
each. The best search engine available is http://goto.com/ - they provide a very good service and
are worth checking out. A newer search engine that may be useful is SearchHound
http://www.searchhound.com/ Look For Reciprocal
Link Opportunities Spend a little time looking for places where you
can request reciprocal links. These are almost as effective as the search engines
in providing free targeted traffic to your Web site. Consider sites where you
can have your articles appear with a link to your site. Be creative in your thinking
and don't just search for opportunities to trade links. Don't be afraid to ask
for other sites to recommend your site to their visitors. Review Your
Banner Ads Is there any way that you can improve the click through
rate of your banner ads? Consider the design of your banner. Test some improvements
and see what difference they make. Look for ways that you can improve the targeting
of your banner. Maybe even look at changing banner exchanges or joining an additional
banner exchange that could provide you with better targeting opportunities. The
ideas I have discussed above are just some of the things you can do to continually
promote your business on the internet. It is important to remember that you need
to be doing something everyday to promote your business. This list should help
you get started.
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