4 Low Cost Ways to Promote Your Website
If you have a website, chances are pretty high that you spend a lot of time looking for ways to market your business online. In today’s economy, paying for advertisements might be out of your budget. That’s why Blue Water Media has put together a few ideas for promoting your website inexpensively.
Add Your Business to Google Local
One of the easiest ways to bring visibility to your business is by using Google Local. It’s free, easy, and only takes a few minutes. By registering your business with Google local, you increase your chances for people to find your business through Google Maps and localized searches on Google. When potential customers search Google Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your storefront or products. Google provides a great user guide for adding your business to their listings – it even includes a video tutorial.
UPDATE: Here’s a brief instructional video for adding your business to Google Local Business Listings.
Develop an Online Newsletter
If you aren’t communicating with your customers on a regular basis, it can be difficult to maintain a strong relationship. Utilize an email newsletter campaign to provide your customers with useful tips and industry information while also notifying them of sales, promotions, and special events. A monthly email newsletter can be a great way to stay in touch with your customers.
If you are in the habit of direct mailings via snail-mail, email newsletters can be a much more cost effective way of communicating with your customers. Ask Blue Water Media how we can help you setup an email newsletter. Learn more about our email marketing services.
Become an Expert
Chances are you already are an expert in your industry – but not everyone knows it. Use your knowledge and expertise as a way to promote your business. Join website forums and message boards that are relevant to your business and, if possible, where potential customers linger. Then, post useful comments and answer people’s questions – All the while leaving subtle links to your website at the bottom of your comments.
As you post in forums, follow the guidelines. Some forums will allow you to link to your website and some will not. Since your time is valuable, choose forums that allow links, at least in your signature. Make certain your posts don’t sound like ads. Give genuine, helpful advice to the people on the forum. Become a part of the community. Do this often and regularly and you will establish yourself and your business as an expert in the eyes of your consumers.
Promote on YouTube
YouTube is an inexpensive way of putting your company message in front of a large audience. An engaging video can easily be seen by thousands of viewers if not more. And, best of all, posting videos to YouTube is free! Creating videos for YouTube doesn’t need to have fancy special effects of expensive production quality; it just needs to be useful. Much like posting on forums, YouTube videos need to provide helpful or entertaining information that is relevant to your business. A great example is the “Will it blend?” series from Blend Tec. Blend Tec has produced a great series of videos that have reached hundreds of thousands of viewers and raised their brand recognition considerably.
The key to successfully marketing your business on YouTube is creating a video that is appealing to the audience. And don’t be afraid to do something a fun and unconventional – just make sure you don’t detract from your business’ image.
Bill Cook
Marketing Consultant
February 6th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
[...] few months ago, my colleague, Bill Cook, posted 4 Low Cost Ways to Promote Your Website. One of his suggestions was to develop an email newsletter. For those of you who took heed, are [...]
November 13th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
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