After your website is up and running you will want to develop a Marketing program. Although, once your website is finished it will be picked up by search engines from a few weeks to a month, there are millions of websites and thousands are being added every day. As a result you must plan to do more if you are going to attract visitors to your site. What we have found is, there is no one solution that works, so you will have to try a few different things.
Advertisizement falls within several categories, each with their pros and cons.
- Pay Per Click, PPC - Banner Ads - Pop-Ups and Pop Unders - Online Directories - Email - Link Exchange - Search Engine Optimization, SEO - Local or National ads, eg news paper, magizines, radio, TV
Unfortunately, each of these can be very expensive. Our recommendation is to use an expert, since it can be very costly just learning the ropes.
PPC, Pay Per Click adverstisement If you plan to do it yourself, pay per click search engines, pay for placement or pay for ranking search engines are a highly effective way to attract targeted traffic to your website quickly. The best and most popular pay per click search engines are Overture, Google and FindWhat. The huge success of Google, Overture and FindWhat in providing targeted website traffic has encouraged the arrival of dozens of other pay for placement, pay for ranking or pay per click search engines. Often you can buy this search engine traffic for as little as 10 cent or 20 cents per click, but be prepared to see some key words costing more than a dollar each per click. For a list of most of the major pay per click websites you can go to:
Banner Ads Banner ads initially was the main way to advertise on the interenet. It has since gone out of favor, because of the low click through rate, combined with the poor conversion rate. As a result the cost per thousand impressions has drastically dropped in price. Many advertisers still rely heavily on this type of advertisement, not so much for the traffic it brings to the web site, but more as a brand awareness builder. Anotherwords, it is a way to get your company name or product brand displayed. Also, you can be more selective as to which sites will display your banners, but be prepared to pay more to target your market.
Pop-Ups and Pop Unders Pop-ups are used to present an offer. They can be displayed either when you arrive at a website, you select something on a websit or when you leave a website, by closing the browser. Pop-unders are similar, but get displayed behind your browser so it is less intrusive. You see it only after you close your browser. In many ways, they are similar to Banner Ads, but they can be any size, and most of the time larger than a banner ad. Although they too are not as popular any more, there is one clear advantage. Instead of being an isolated ad with a link to your website, they can be a page on your website or even your home page. Each time it is presented, it will count as a hit to your website, significantly increasing your unique visitor count. This is tracked by independant sources including google and can significantly increase your ranking.
Our experience has shown that only a very small percentage of your traffic will convert to sales. Do not select this form of advertisement if conversion rates are very important. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that buy something from your website. This usually ranges from less than 1% to a few percentage points.
Online Directories Online yellow pages fall into this category. Many have free listings service, but will charge more for special ads or highlighted entries. Yahoo is actually a directory and charges an annual fee to be listed. Directories are extremely important for a small business whos clients are primarily for their local community.
Search Engine Optimization, SEO After you are familar with the keywords for your business, you can invest in trying to increase your search ranking, but this is a long process and will require more investment in both time and money. We have a few articles at the bottom of our website that can give you some ideas, if you are interested in Search Engine Optimization, SEO.
Email Many companies are using mass e-mailing, but most have not found this to be effective any more, and it can create a negative image. Email is very appealling, and is somewhat seductive, because it looks like it is free. This is far from the truth and can have negative results. To be effective it should be very targeted. For example if you are selling software for websites, you will want to target webmasters. Selective mailing lists that have been thoroughly tested for accurate address will be expensive. In addition, you should use opt-in and have opt-out options. This means that the person has agreed to except receive email advertisment (opt-in). In your email you must provide the option to select that they will not receive any further emails (opt-out). In addition, your service provider may not allow mass mailings, because of the large amount of traffic it can generate or complaints that might result.
If you are a small business and just starting out, we suggest the following:
- Make sure you are in the Online yellow page directories.
- Start off small until you get familar with ppc, (pay per click). Start with google. (picking the right key words, and price is important). Start off at the minimum price and increase the price per key word until you reach your daily budget.)
- Sign up to yahoo directory. You will need to pay an annual fee.
- Try one of the low cost ppc, eg FindWhat
Unfortunately, you will not see quick results, because you have to learn as you go along. You will need to look for steady month to month improvement and increase your investment as your business grows.
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