A website is an excellent tool for your business, as it can work for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when your business is closed for the day, or the weekend. Having said this, a website is only good for you when people can find it. If people have no idea it is there, then it can’t do anything for you. Many companies spend thousands of dollars a year to market and advertise their website, but for those who do not have the budget to do it, there are several free marketing and advertising techniques you can use to build your business online.
Article Marketing
Write articles related to your business, with a link back to your website. For example, if you run a flower shop, write articles about how to choose the best floral arrangements, how to grow and care for flowers, and what the different types of flowers symbolize. Submit the articles to various directories. Your article will rank in the search engines because of the rank of the directory website. You can then get traffic to your website from the article. Many article marketing websites have analytics you can trick to see how many people are clicking from the article to the website.
Email and Forum Signatures
Put the website on your email and forum signatures. Email signatures won’t count as link backs toward increasing your website ranking, but they will increase exposure to people you know. Even if they do not visit on the first email, they will eventually check your website out. If they don’t make a purchase, they may recommend it to people they know, who may recommend it to people they know, and so on.
Social Media
Get active in social media communities such as Twitter and Facebook. Don’t waste time with social networks where you do not think your customers are. Don’t come in solely to promote your business and its products or services. Use this as a platform to truly connect with your customers and improve their customer experience. When you start getting an influence on the social networks, run specials and discounts that are exclusive only to followers and friends, to provide an incentive for people to join you there.
Online Business Directories
Create a listing for your business in an online directory such as Leelgo.com. The listing is free and lets you provide a business description along with the phone number and website. You control which category your business is displayed in, and what is said about your business. Very few online marketing opportunities give you this option.
Taking time to make use of all these free marketing and advertising website techniques is a wonderful way to increase traffic to your website. When traffic increases, you have a greater chance of converting that traffic into sales. The more sales you have the more profit your business has. You can take a portion of the profit and invest it back into website advertising and marketing to increase your business exposure to potential customers.
