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These instructions are strictly for shoestring startups. Everybody
knows how to market your website. And everybody knows how to tell you
the "secrets" to top search engine listings. All they want is $29.95...
or $29.95 a month!
Everybody
lies. Well, not quite everybody, but everybody who wants your $29.95!
Marketing a website is WORK, and it relies on the same time honored
principles of marketing that have always applied. Yes, there are some
newer tools to use, but traditional rules still apply, just as they do
for all business practices. Tips
here are aimed at starting a website with very little. If you have the
money to hire a promotional expert, you do not need this (it will cost
you WAY more than $29.95!). Guidelines about effectiveness times
and reasonable expenditures are based on the assumption that you do not
have money to lose, and that risks and costs must be low, relying on
work instead of money. There
are all kinds of instructional aids on how to market a website. Many
are written by industry recognized experts. The problem is, they only
know how to do what they do for a living, and what they do is cater to
large corporations. What they do, they do well, but when a low budget
startup owner reads their advice, the end result is not going to be a
sense of empowerment or of having been educated. The result is an
overwhelming sense of despair as they read through instructions that
flash dollar signs behind their eyeballs at an ever increasing rate. These
instructions assume you have NO money, or very little money to invest
in marketing your site. We assume that you are starting a business
because you NEED money, not because you already have it and just need
to know how to spend it wisely! So we focus on hard work, and a variety
of economical strategies to slowly build a solid customer base over
time. If you need more information on website building, see our instructions at http://www.skinnyshoestring.com/ebooks.htm. Once
your website is built, uploaded and functioning in the way you want it
to, you have to announce to the world the great things you can do for
them. An unannounced website is like an unlisted phone number. Fine if you don't want anyone to find you, but deadly if you do. A word of caution. Marketing tactics for websites take time.
Without aggressive marketing and generally a lot of money behind it, it
will take three to six months to begin to pull in orders, and eight
months to a year to just know whether or not your baby is going to
survive – you'll see the traffic numbers increase the whole time, but
it will still take that long to see the real potential. So give it a
year before you throw in the towel, and keep your day job until you
know it will keep working. The web can be a slow moving vehicle to
market in, but it DOES gain momentum, and once you get going the
results can be amazing. We know this from personal experience. We have
done it not once, but several times ourselves, and we have helped our
clients do the same thing. So if it is so slow, you want to get your site registered and promoted as soon as possible, right? Yes and no.
You want to start the marketing process as soon as your site is READY
to be viewed, and READY to be a useful tool. Unless you are submitting
to Yahoo or another directory that wants all your t's crossed and i's
dotted, then you can submit your site as soon as you have usable
content in place. But if you do that with some directories or listing
services, they will just toss out your listing. Read the rules and
you'll know. It
is very much like opening a storefront in town. You want to make sure
your store is functioning on a basic level at least before you start
running ads or have your grand opening. A "Coming Soon" announcement on
a page or two won't hurt if your visitors can still get the most
commonly needed items. This is true of all but those few directories
that have policies for requiring things to be completely finished. Also
if you want to enter any contests or competitions it has to be totally
finished, with no under construction pages, or promises of things
coming. Please
do not upload a website with nothing but your business name and no
product listing or instructions for people to get what you offer.
At the very least your website must have a good description of what you
do, and instructions for how to get it, plus good contact information
to reach you by email, snail mail, and phone. Less than this is an
insult to the person who just decided that out of all the search engine
hits they could choose from they would try you, and then waited for
your page to download. They won't come back when you are better
prepared, you lost them permanently. If
you sell products, your website is more harm than help if you do not
list products on it. People will go away if it does not have products
listed by name and type, and a price - even if it is a price range.
They need to know that you have a standard mode of operating and
pricing, and if you don't list what it is or how much, they feel uneasy
trusting you. A shopping cart is a great tool to help you sell much
better, but you CAN sell products without one. You CANNOT sell them
without detailed listings. The web is all about information, and people
come to your site to get information. If you do not list information
that they feel you can easily put out there (after all everyone else
does), then they will feel you are unprepared in all your business
dealings. Again, they won't come back, you lost them for good. So
make sure your site has the minimum degree of function for what you are
selling, and that it will actually serve to gain you customers instead
of losing them before you publicize it in any way. Search engine
registration can go into effect in as little as a few hours, or as long
as six months, depending on the engine, how they manage it, and how
busy they are. Don't count on lag time though, be prepared for hits
right away, even if they don't come. So,
once your website is functioning the way you feel it needs to in order
to be useful to your audience, it is time to announce it. If you are
waiting for the big secret to setting your website apart from the
masses, I cannot give you that. There are general guidelines though
about what does and does not work. What Does Not Work or is a Waste of Time 1. Submission Services.
In general, these are a waste of time. With the one exception listed
below. Many search engines do not accept auto-submissions, and
automatic services (or even services that promise to submit your site
monthly) do not personalize the listing so it may not be working in
your best interests. 2. Frequent submissions. This
is NOT necessary. Unless your site undergoes domain name changes, new
section additions, or other major changes, re-submission is not
necessary because once your site is inthe listing it is regularly
spidered anyway (checked on by a robot). Some experts will tell you
otherwise, but we have proven this withour stats tracking. The search
engines that don't do this aren't usually big enough players to count
anyway. Some of the big ones TELL you not to resubmit! 3. Coding tricks to increase your rank in the listings.
The so called "secrets" used by people who tell you there is one are
either commonplace tactics (which everybody uses so it gives you no
advantage), or they are things that will get your listing kicked out
because the spider detects them as dishonest or unethical. Invisible
links or text, meta tags for unrelated content, words repeated too many
times on your pages, etc, are all things that raise a red flag and hurt
your listing. 4. Listing with search engines and nothing else. Search engines are just the beginning. 5. Free Classified sites. Your ad does not stay on long enough to have any effect, and it just results in your inbox filling with SPAM. 6. Search Engine Optimization.
Ok, I'll get in trouble for saying this, but for a shoestring startup,
trying to rank in the search engines against the big guys is not
realistic! You'll end up focusing your energies on what is NOT the key
issue, and you'll waste time trying to fight a fight you cannot win.
There are other MUCH better strategies to put your limited funds and
time behind! Make sure your content contains good descriptive text that uses common and alternate keywords for your site, and then focus your energies elsewhere. The people telling you otherwise are usually trying to sell you their service or book. 7. Submitting every page of your site to the search engines. Remember,
your site will be spidered, and the search engine will follow the links
in your site and then index all the pages in your site. Again, some
search engines tell you not to submit more than the home page, so this
tactic, if used, can work against you. 8. Google AdWords are
not cost effective for small startups unless you have a high average
per customer margin, or unless you are selling a single item with a
large margin to absorb the cost per customer of purchased keyword
advertising. You have to calculate the cost per paying customer, not
just the cost per click, and using AdWords or Overture keywords is a
highly skilled craft. 9.
Traffic Exchange programs that rely on earning clicks from other people
by visiting the sites of other members of the exchange program. If
you earn clicks to your site, by clicking on other sites, you are going
to be clicking in and out as fast as you can to still get credit. You
won't even read the page, you'll just go through the motions. In
return, you'll earn traffic from other people who are doing the same
thing! This is a waste of your time! It might make your traffic numbers
look good but it won't increase your income one bit! Any traffic
generation strategy that does not result in increased INCOME, is a
waste of your time, and you could use the time better for something
effective. Things that Work - When done Right. 1. There is no magic solution.
Website marketing is a combination of traditional and contemporary
marketing tactics that combine into an overall sensible strategy. No
tricks, just persistence and creativity. The best promotion consists of
seeking out every potential source to ethically let people know what
you have that can meet their needs. 2. I said that auto submission services generally do not work, but I do recommend SelfPromotion.com,
because his forms are customized to each search engine or directory,
and he gives you instructions for submission for those that require
manual submission. He also lists many other sources to submit to. It is
a paid service, though you can use it free, you only pay what you think
it is worth. Otherwise, there are no shortcuts to simply taking the
time to submit your site to each search engine or directory that you
want it to go to. You do not need to use a service, every search engine
has submission pages that you can find and submit your site (some can
be very hard to find!). This is a necessary step, but only the most
basic step. Self Promotion is worth using because he gives you the
links to all those pages and instructions on how to make it work best. A
search engine is like a telephone directory for the web. It lists
addresses and a description for each website that it knows is there.
The difference is, if you want to be listed in a telephone directory,
you do nothing... you only do something if you DON'T want to be listed.
It is the reverse with websites. The search engines and directories
only know you are there if you tell them. Each one has away to do that,
and a page, somewhere, that lets you submit a site. Usually you submit,
they list, automatically. Some review it first and decide where to put
you. Some review your site and deny it a listing... but not many. The
submission page can be hard to find, which is one reason I recommend
SelfPromotion above. He gives you a pretty comprehensive listing of
places to submit to, and gives you the URL for the page that you have
to go to in order to submit it (for sites that do not accept auto
submissions). You don't have to go looking. You want to submit at least
to Yahoo, MSN, and Google. 3. Use link exchanges.
This is time consuming, but does give you traffic if you are thoughtful
about it. And links are becoming more important in search engine
listings, because Google and some others now count how many sites have
links back to your site to determine how good your site really is. Go
to sites that might have viewers who are interested in what you sell.
In other words, a site reporting on pets may be interested in listing
your site for pet supplies. Large and successful sites will not
exchange links. They will expect you to pay for advertising. Smaller
sites though consider a link exchange a reasonable trade. Be sure you
do list their site where it will benefit them. You can also try a link
exchange service. There are several free ones. Be sure you choose one
though that only exchanges appropriate links! And put information
prominently on your site to invite others to exchange links with you
(screen them if you are concerned with suitability). I'd
steer clear of traffic exchange programs that rely on pop-up or
pop-under windows to display the links also. Because they will slow
down YOUR site, and make your site an annoyance to your visitors. The
best link trades involve Non-Reciprocal linking, because search engines
rate “one way" links better than obviously traded links. But everything
helps, so if straight trades are what you can get, go for it! If you
create an eBook, you can trade links in the eBook for links or ads on
other people's sites too. 4. Paid Ads.
Depending on how they are done, they can be successful.They are
generally most successful when placed in specialty location srather
than general ones. Paying for ads on a news type website when the
ad is not targeted will likely not be effective even though lots of
people see it. Targeted ads are the most effective because they reach
the people who are looking for you anyway. They are also the most
expensive type too. We look for niche sites that offer low cost ads,
but which get significant traffic, and pay for ads on those sites,
within what we can afford - we paid for one successful ad that cost us
$30 per year on a niche site. This has helped increase our traffic and
deliver interested visitors. Look for complimentary site content that
is not directly competitive. A few sites also have one time ad fees,
and those are usually a winning proposition if they guarantee placement
for life, and if the fee is low. 5. E-Zines.
An email newsletter can be effective. Publish news related to your
product or service that people want. Set up an "optin" newsletter,
which you have a way of letting people subscribe to. Make sure they can
cancel as easily as they can subscribe, and never send it to anyone who
did not request it. A good e-zine will have between two and four
articles of genuine interest to your audience, and will have ads for
your products or business in a way that makes them visible but not so
obnoxious that it drives your readers away. You can generally find
people who are willing to write for it in exchange for a listing of
their business below the article- it is advertising for them too then.
You can either run this yourself by creating an email "group" of
addresses in your email program, or you can use a free listserver like
Yahoo groups or something similar. There are also paid services which
have no ads.Either way, find some eZine Directories and list your eZine
there. 6. PayPal Shops and other specialty listings for services you use. If
you use a service that offers a free shop listing, use it. Some are
more effective than others. With PayPal Shops, you get visitors who are
looking to buy. That means your visitors come looking to make a
purchase. PayPal shops also reports your weekly traffic. Many services
online offer a free listing in their directory along with the service. 7. eBay. Ok,
eBay is helpful for some businesses, not for others. Services bomb
there. And most items sell for less than they are actually worth on the
open market. But if you use eBay for liquidations that can help your
business. And you can open an eBayStore (for $16 a month plus sales
commissions) if you have regular inventory that you feel could sell
there (or predictable drop shipped items). Whether it works depends on
what your product is and whether people are looking for it on eBay, and
whether they want to pay regular price for it. eBay is also a great
place to research current market value of items. Generally items will
sell for 10-30% more in a storefront than on eBay. Be careful to follow
their rules about linking to your website, and don't expect to use eBay
solely as an advertising venue. They want their commission on sales -
that is the purpose of their existance, so if your link drives sales
away from eBay, it is forbidden. 8. Cross links.
If you have more than one site, then you can cross advertise within
your own sites. If people trust you for one thing, they are likely to
trust you for other things. Cross link with friends also, it helps you
both. Many of my sites have a Related Links or Special Links box, in
which I place cross links. You can also build a Links page, where
you can place links for other businesses. 9. Press releases. You
can submit a press release announcing a new site, a change, or an
event. These work best when they are sent with a personal note
outlining the high points so that anyone who does not want to read a
self promoting press release can get the overview quickly and know if
it is of interest or not. 10. Publish in other people's e-zines. Write
an article for other publications, and list your URL and a one line
description below it.You offer a free article in exchange for your two
line ad. People are more likely to click on that ad line because you
have just written an article that demonstrates your expertise and helps
them feel they can trust you. You can also submit articles to online
article databases - be careful about following their guidelines though,
and do not make advertising the focus of your article. As a general
rule, any article you submit anywhere should be based on sound
information, and not on just getting your link out there. 11. Use a signature line. Set
up your email software to use a signature. It should be short - usually
just your website URL and a one line description to interest people in
clicking on the URL. 12. Put your URL on all your business literature
- letterhead, envelopes, brochures, and business cards should all have
your URL displayed. Some business is generated from customers you have
never met, but a lot can come from people who will order from a website
on their own time but would not get around to ordering from you
personally. 13. Give something away. Now
in order for this to be successful you will have to advertise it,
either locally or nationally in some way or other, and you will likely
have to pay for the ad. But you can run an ad that gives something
away, even if it is just a catalog. What you give away can be a fun
event or other thing that helps people remember you, and sends them
home with someting with your business info on it. Aim for something
fun, informational, or useful - but keep it cheap, and don't spend more
than you can afford in the hopes that it will bring in enough to pay
for it. You
can also trade something in exchange for a link. Give away images with
your URL watermarked on them. Exchange services for a link on their
site. Give away anything that you can afford to give that will get you
some advertising in exchange. And trade for permanent link placement
whenever you can. 14. Put meta tags and Alt tags into your web page.
Alt tags won't make a lot of difference unless your title page is all
graphics. Same with meta tags to a certain extent. It is NOT a magic
way toinfluence search engines! But include them in case the search
engine looks for them (include them in your template and you won't have
to set them up over and over). Use Alt Tags for images if you have
images with text on them. Search engines can also read text in AltTags,
but cannot read text in an image, so it helps you to use them. 15. Forget Search Engine Optimization, and Focus on Content.
The most important thing you can do to improve your search engine
listings is to create good content, with descriptive text. If your
product is referred to in two different ways, make sure both ways are
listed in your site. For example, our site has the words "small office,
home office", but we also include "work at home", "small business", and
"business opportunity" as phrases that we use interchangeably with the
other ones, because we don't know which of those terms someone will
search under. We do not cram the text full of keywords, we use them in
context, in a logical and reasonable manner throughout the site.
Keywords are the words people are most likely to use when looking for
your site. Don't fuss about them, just use them wisely through your
content, and make sure that they are all used in an open and direct
manner (no hidden text, etc). Good content will ultimately help you
more than any other strategy in ranking with any search engine, because
the major search engines DO look for metatags, but most will not
count keywords in the metatags unless there is content to support their
presence in the tag anyway. And if you leave out the metatags, the
search engine indexes the site based on the text in your site. So put
in good content, backed up with good descriptive text. That is
something anyone can do with a little thought, even on extremely tight
resources! 16. Make sure your site is easy to navigate, and welcoming to your audience. This
is what makes the difference between whether people will just stop by,
or whether they will purchase. If it has a personal feel, and if they
can contact you directly if they choose, then it is even more
successful because people will buy more readily from someone they feel
they know a little and like. Bringing in the traffic is just the
beginning. Once they get there they need to feel able to trust you to
honor an online purchase agreement, or that your information is
trustworthy enough to bookmark and come back to. 17. Webrings. A
webring is a service that lists you in their directory, and you can
move from one site in the directory to the next, hence the name "ring".
We have found that they can be a successful way of bringing in small
amounts of traffic for certain topics (they fail for others). They
won't bring in a flood, but you'll get consistent hits from them, and
when you are in the stage of counting visitors one at a time,
membership in a webring can help. 18. Specialized Directories and listings.
There are a ton of specialty listings online. Do a search on keywords
for your site and you will likely find some directories to submit your
site to. Make sure they are not just trying to get your email address
to SPAM you... They should exist as a resource for people with similar
interests, not as a means of preying on you. 19. Start an Affiliate Program.
This is no magic solution either. In order for your program to be
successful, you have to advertise IT. But the nice thing about it is
that once a few successful websites have your link on it, the affiliate
program has the potential to bring you customers who would not
otherwise know about you. It extends your marketing reach by plugging
into the marketing circle of other website owners. Information on
starting an affiliate program can be found in our AffiliateMarketing tutorial. 20. Keep advertising to your existing customers.
Don't be obnoxious about it, but send email or mailed notices to your
existing customers announcing new products, specials, or giving info on
how to use your products. Stick flyers or coupons into boxes of items
you ship. Include incentives with everything you communicate on a
routine basis. Put an extra "tell a friend" coupon in with your
marketing materials also, and satisfied customers can help you to
advertise to their friends. 21. Perhaps this should have gone at the top of the page - Use BusinessCards! Put
your business name, slogan, description, logo, and URL on the card. Put
other contact info as well. Carry the cards with you everywhere and
hand them out to anyone who might be interested. Find stores that have
card stands, where you can put a fistfull of cards and restock as
needed. People remember you better, and will be more likely to check
back later if they have a visual reminder of who you are and what you
do. 22. Use viral marketing techniques.
Keep them honorable, but any tactic that encourages other people to
help do your marketing for you is a good viral marketing technique (we
don't mean Spam). The web makes it easy to put something up on your
site once, and have it downloaded multiple times with no extra cost to
yourself. Value earned for value given still applies – give people a
good freebie with your URL on it, and they will be glad to pass it on. 23.
Put a downloadable brochure on your website if you have a product
catalog or if you market something that people like to think over.
That lets people print out the brochure and mull it over offline. It is
a courtesy to your customers and a selling tool that costs you almost
nothing. Be sure to put it in PDF format (see thetutorial on
making downloadable publications -
http://www.skinnyshoestring.com/sohotools/publications.htm for
instructions and free software tips) - it is important to use a file
format that ANYONE can read, and PDF is the best format for
that.
24. Join Trade Associations that have good ad benefits. Make
sure that the ads will reach potential customers though, and not just
other members of the association. It does no good to advertise your
product to other people who are trying to sell you the same product,
you want to market to people who are looking to buy.
25. Use local events.
Set up a display and give something away. Even if it is just a business
card or brochure. Make sure you have a good visual representation of
what you do and how you can help people. If you can provide samples,
this is very effective. If you have items to sell, bring some. But even
if you market services or information, local events can provide a way
to develop local name recognition.
There are, of course, other tactics. Avoid tactics that promise you a ton of traffic. Avoid
marketing methods that are in any way unethical, or that assume that
you can trick people into buying or paying for something - it will hurt
you more in the long run than it will help you. Give your audience good
information, good value, and be willing to work hard to let people know
you are there. It takes more money to have to keep getting new
customers than it does to keep getting repeat sales from satisfied
customers. Generally you will not find a single thing that will market your site. You
do each thing that you can do, that is affordable and practical for you
and your website, and each one brings in a few more people. A webring
may bring in 10-200 people per week. PayPal Shops may bring in 5-100
people per week. Banner exchanges and cross links may bring 10-300
people per week, depending on how much you do. Search engine
registration can bring in 20 to 500 people per week (lots more if you
get really popular). And each of these things grows with time. So your
long term results are much better than your short term results. Quality of visitors varies too.
If you get hits from people who are just browsing, they are quite
different from people who feel they know you ahead of time, or
customers who are ready to buy. Visitor to customer (making a purchase)
is called the "Conversion Rate". You want good quality hits so that
your conversion rate is high. Lots of traffic is not nearly so
important as lots of SALES. This is one reason that affiliate programs
no longer pay for clickthroughs in general, they mostly pay only for
purchases. Marketing a website is work.
After your website is finished and you start to register it with search
engines (usually the first step), you will have to do one more thing
each day for quite a while to get your site noticed. Make a list and
keep progressing to the next step. It is slow and discouraging at
first, but really does pay off in the long term. Keep working at it.
And give it a year of effort before you throw in the towel - usually
you will get hints that it is working long before then, but it
genuinely takes that long to really see the potential for growth. Written by Laura Wheeler, Mom to Eight, and Owner of AdventureTech-Web, SkinnyShoestring, and SuperMomUnlimited.
Laura builds websites for shoestring startups, coaches people in
starting their business on minimal resources, and produces a wide array
of informational pages.
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