Ask Laura About Website Marketing

“My website is ready and I’ve spent thousands of dollars on it, but I’m not making any money!”

I’ve heard it a hundred times or more…

Learn How to Start Marketing Your Website – Ask Laura (July 2007)

After spending all that money for a custom designed site, or forking over cash for a turnkey website in a hot market, you realize that just because you’ve built it (or had it built), doesn’t mean they’ll come (the customers).

So now you’re taking the next step which is to learn about marketing and advertising your website or online business…

But let’s just back up here for a minute – so you don’t make the same mistake again. A website or online business is not much different than a business you would start up in your home town. And before any business is launched a business plan should have been created, written, and all aspects (such as advertising and marketing) would have been written into such a plan.

So before you launch your first website, or your next website, consider your marketing strategy, your advertising costs, your plan of attack, for gettting your offer in front of your potential customers.

Let’s talk about how to plan and write that strategy then.

It’s dull work if you’ve never thought of marketing before, but once you’ve created a strategy and you see it starting to work and the sales rolling in, you’ll fall in love with marketing strategies.

Begin by writing a list of daily, weekly, monthly and long range promotional action steps. Post it directly above your desk and act on it daily. Many business owners will tell you that you’re not in the “service” or “product” business – you’re in the marketing business when you own your own company. Every day must see some activity to promoting your brand, your website URL, or your offers.

If your marketing, advertising or promotion strategy is netting any results or sales after a few months it’s perfectly acceptable to rework the plan and seek out different avenues for advertising or promotion.

Below you’ll find some of the techniques other webmasters have success with. Each technique should be investigated fully by reading the advice of top internet marketing trainers before proceeding. As an example of why you want to delve deeper into understanding any strategic move is because many ‘gurus’ will tell you to trade links with other webmasters to gain traffic. This is good advice, old advice, but if you don’t do it right it won’t be one-tenth as effective as it could be.

So…let’s get to some of the promotion techniques for website owners:

• Trade links only other webmasters. (Again, you need to learn how to do this correctly.)
• Offer something of value, for free, on your site. (Read more on viral marketing.)
• Employ an affiliate opportunity. (Amazing how this delivers sales and traffic, but again, learn how to do it inexpensively and correctly first.)
• Add useful content, not just product sales on your site.
• Add interaction to your site. (Learn about forums, comments, help desks – relevant to your offering and target market.)
• Give them a reason and a venue to return – or refer their friends. (Learn about bookmarking, email a friend, subscribers.)
• Run limited-time sales on your offers. (Learn about one time offers and back end selling.)

That’s all for today and enough to get you started in your online marketing and advertising campaign.

Laura Childs

The ‘Ask Laura’ series is published solely to assist you with questions and resolutions to making your online business profitable. Names are never disclosed on this website unless approved or requested.

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