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Offering free
giveaways to prospects and clients is a powerful business
building strategy that can result in a flood of new and repeat
customers. If your
business is service orientated, you can “give away” a free
consultation. Your
prospects will get to test your business risk-free.
Hopefully they will get “hooked” on your service and
won’t be able to live without it.
By providing
someone with a “favour”, people generally feel a natural
obligation to return the favour by giving you repeat business.
For product
based businesses, you may consider a “buy 1 get 1 free” or
“buy one and get second one at a discount” or give something
totally unrelated, for example ”Buy a pair of children’s
shoes and receive a colouring book for free”.
Think about
what you can offer free-of-charge that your prospects would
consider valuable and that you can give at a low cost to you.
Article
6 Things you can do today to drive more traffic to your
website for free
by Ivana Katz
Website (and business) marketing is not a one off
exercise. Whether you have a brand new website or one that
you’ve had for a while, you need to continue promoting it in
order to bring you more visitors. You need to constantly work
on it, fine-tune it, discard methods that are not working and
implement new ones.
The following 6 methods are simple to implement and can be done
for free by you today.
1. Email Marketing
Your first step should be to send an email to your existing
clients announcing the existence of your website. You should
ask your customers to forward your email onto their friends,
family and colleagues.
If you are starting a new business and don’t have any customers
yet, send an email to people you know who may be interested in
your offer.
Remember to email your clients every time you make changes, add
new offers or features to your website to remind them to come
back.
The next step could be to send your announcement to an opt-in
email list. Opt-in email lists contain people or businesses who
have requested to receive information about certain topic(s).
There are many companies who can provide you with these lists.
For more information visit:
www.prospectshop.com.au/email_lists.html
www.4webmarketing.biz/email.htm
www.ezemail.biz/list_power.html
www.ezemail.biz/list_consumer.html
www.webfirm.com.au/email-marketing-australia/
Under no circumstance should you EVER send unsolicited email
(spam) to people you either don’t know or who have not requested
to receive your information.
2. Search Engines & Directories
Submit your website to as many search engines and directories as
you can.
(A search engine is a searchable database of websites collected
by a computer program (called a crawler, robot or spider). When
you enter a keyword, the search engine looks for keywords in its
database, and any relevant records are displayed.)
Currently there are thousands of search engines and directories
on the internet. Some of the main ones include:
Google -
www.google.com
Altavista -
www.altavista.com
Yahoo -
www.yahoo.com
Excite -
www.excite.com
AllSearchEngines -
www.allsearchengines.com
Northern Light -
www.northernlight.com
DogPile -
www.dogpile.com
AllTheWeb -
www.alltheweb.com
Lycos -
www.lycos.com
For a more comprehensive list of Search Engines & Directories,
go to:
www.web4business.com.au/ResourcesListSearchEngines.htm
When submitting your website to the search engines, you can
either do it manually by going to the search engine website and
adding your URL (website address) or you can employ the services
of a Search Engine Submission company, who will do it for you.
www.submitexpress.com
www.wpromote.com
www.website-submission.com
Search engines try to list sites that contain good content, so
you need keywords and phrases on your pages that best describe
your service and products. For example, if you are a florist,
use the words such as florist, online florist, virtual florist,
wedding florist, florist in Sydney, florist on line, flowers,
floral, bouquets, floral arrangements etc as many times as
possible to ensure high search engine ranking. To find out what
keywords your customers may be searching on ask your family and
friends or go to:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.wordtracker.com
Once you decide on the keywords, use them in
(a) Your website’s domain name
(b) The title of your page - This is displayed in the top bar of
your browser window
(c) The heading of your home page
(d) The first paragraph of your home page
(e) Meta tags - Keywords, page title, description
(f) Titles of your graphics
Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it
is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do
not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be
penalised or even banned by some search engines.
If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services
of a Search engine optimization company, who will make your
website’s content more search engine friendly to make it rank
higher.
One company which I recommend to my clients is
CrankIt. The contact there is Peter Clayton and you can reach him
on 1300 859 600 or via email
peter.clayton@crankit.com.au.
If you quote a special promotional code: web4business868, you will
get a 5% discount.
3. Link Exchanges
Find websites whose business complements yours and add their
website to your links/resource page. Then contact the company
and ask for a reciprocal link. For example if you are a wedding
dress designer, you could contact businesses that sell wedding
cakes, jewellery, flowers and also venues, celebrants etc.
By doing this your website will become a valuable resource for
your visitors, as it will provide information they need. They
may return to your site over and over to find more information.
On the other hand, you will have visitors coming to your website
when they follow a link from your link partners.
Results in search engines are determined by the material you
have presented on your site and by other off-page factors such
as how many other sites link to your site. The more links you
have pointing to your site from relevant websites, the higher
your site will rank.
If you need help with this task, you can employ the services of
a Link Exchange Company. They are generally inexpensive and can
save you hours of time. Some of these include:
http://www.linkexchanged.com
http://www.powerlinks.com
http://www.links-pal.com
4. Email Signature
Every email you send should have an email "signature." This is
text that is automatically attached to the bottom of your email
message. This text can be used to publicize your business. You
can include your name, business name, email address, street or
postal address, website details, phone number, fax number,
company slogan, description of your company and its
products/services. You can set up different signatures for
different purposes.
To set up your signature using Outlook Express:
Step 1: Select Tools > Options from the menu bar.
Step 2: Click "Signatures".
Step 3: Make sure that you select "Add signatures to all
outgoing messages" - within the "Signature settings" section. It
is up to you whether you would like your signature to appear in
"replies" and "forwards"
Step 4: Click "New" (you can change the name from "Signature #1"
by clicking "Rename") - within "Signature" section:
Step 5: Type in the text that you would like to appear at the
end of your email messages - in "Edit signature" section:
Step 6: If you're happy with this, click "Apply" and "OK".
5. Office Stationery & Merchandising Materials
It is extremely important that your website is included on ALL
your office stationery so that customers can see it over and
over again. That way they are more likely to remember it. If
you’ve just had your letterheads printed, you can always add
your website address on your wordprocessor, when printing your
correspondence. For brochures, business cards etc, consider
having small labels printed up. Your office stationery should
include not only your website address, but also your email.
Consider adding your details to:
- Letterheads
- Business Cards
- Flyers
- Brochures
- Labels
- Packaging
- Merchandise bags
- Catalogs
- Invoices
- Fax headers
- Display units
6. Set up a blog
A blog is
basically a journal that is available on the web. Blogs are
typically updated daily or weekly and can easily be managed by
you. They provide a way for you to communicate with your
customers directly, give you an increased presence on major
search engines, allow you to stay ahead of your competition and
so much more.
You can
easily publish the following information in your blog: Articles,
Media releases, Industry news, Surveys – so you can get feedback
from your customers, Testimonials, Product reviews, Interviews,
Case studies, Links to complementary businesses, Frequently
asked questions and problem resolutions, Inspirational quotes,
Research findings, etc
Blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines, like
Yahoo! and Google. If you use Blogger –
www.blogger.com (Google’s Blogging Tool), every message you
post creates a new page on Google so in a very short time you
could have a lot of pages pointing to your website, bringing you
lots of new visitors.
Don’t be scared to try some of these marketing methods – you have
nothing to lose!
There are lots of excellent ebooks and books on internet
marketing. For more information, visit:
http://www.web4business.com.au/BusinessTools.htm
http://www.web4business.com.au/recommendedbooks.htm
---
Ivana Katz makes it easy for you to get
your business on the internet. If you're looking for a
professional and affordable website designer, visit
www.web4business.com.au
and download a free website plan.
What's Free
Small Business, Big Opportunity Guide
Sensis is offering a 234-page guide and educational website free
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Click here
Recommended Reading
The Big Book of Small Business
In The Big Book of Small Business, Tom shares his hard-earned
lessons on how to become an enlightened, effective leader, and
on how to do the small things right so the big decisions work.
This all-in-one toolbox for small businesses is jammed with
warm-hearted, tough-minded practices and street-smart tips,
covering every aspect of a growing business:
Starting, funding, and getting your new business off the ground
Crafting a mission and growing a corporate culture that works
Hiring the best people and maximizing their potential
Communicating and negotiating with your employees, customers,
and suppliers
Creating processes for continuous innovation and growth
Protecting your business from unforeseen dangers
Planning for growth
And much more . . .
As thorough as a textbook and as lively as a news magazine, The
Big Book of Small Business is the most comprehensive and
practical book on how to take a small business to the next
level, and an indispensable slingshot for the million
To order this book in Australia,
click here
To order this book in USA,
click here
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More info Till next time ... Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business
www.web4business.com.au |
