Creating Your Web Site's Promotional Strategy

By Shelley Lowery

Creating a successful Internet presence involves much more than designing a great web site or having the "perfect" product. Listing your web site with the Search Engines is your first step. However, you must not solely depend upon the Search Engines to bring you traffic. You must design a complete promotional strategy and work it every day.

A good way to organize your promotions is to set up a web page that will contain your complete strategy. This page should be stored on your hard drive and not uploaded to your server. Your page should contain four sections.

  • Daily Promotions
  • Weekly Promotions
  • Monthly Promotions
  • Miscellaneous Promotions

Each of these four sections should contain the appropriate information for each of your promotional resources, such as web site name, user ID, password (if applicable) and hyperlinked web addresses for each web site you plan to use for your promotions. This will enable you to open your web page each day and visit each daily promotional link you have listed.

Daily Promotions

Your daily promotions should include visiting and participating in some popular discussion boards. Although you may not advertise on discussion boards, you can include your signature file with your post.

For a complete listing of some of the top discussion boards, visit:
http://www.web-source.net/web/Discussion_Forums/

Weekly Promotions

Your weekly promotions should consist of placing a paid ezine advertisement and/or arranging ad swaps with fellow publishers. Visit the Directory of Ezines for all the information you'll need to find targeted ezines. http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=doe

To organize your ad placements and swaps, place the publication names, publisher names, ad dates and hyperlinked web addresses within your weekly promotions list.

Monthly Promotions

Your monthly promotions should include writing an article in the area of your expertise, Search Engine promotions and advertising.

Writing Articles:

Writing articles that may be freely published with your bylines is one of the best promotional methods online. Your article may be published in hundreds of ezines, on web sites or even in magazines. To learn more about writing articles for publication, read the article entitled, "Write For Publicity." http://www.web-source.net/write.htm

To organize your monthly promotions, place the names and hyperlinked web addresses for each of your promotional resources within your monthly promotions section.

Article Announcement Lists:

Article Announce
Subscribe: mailto:article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/article_announce

Articles Archive
Subscribe: mailto:articles_archives-subscribe@egroups.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/articles_archives

Free Content
Subscribe: mailto:Free-Content-subscribe@egroups.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Content

Search Engines:

Pay-per-click programs will enable you to advertise to your target audience and only pay for results -- you pay a set amount for each visitor that is sent to your web site. The most popular pay-per-click program is the pay-per-click Search Engines. You can learn more about pay-per-click Search Engines here: http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/

Advertising:

Google AdWords provides a simple way to purchase highly targeted advertising, regardless of your budget. Unlike other sites selling banner ad space and pay-per-ranking, AdWords provides advertisers with highly effective text ads that are displayed with the search results. Studies have shown that highly targeted keyword advertising produces an average of four times the industry standard clickthrough rate. For further information, visit Google AdWords: http://adwords.google.com

Miscellaneous Promotions

Your miscellaneous promotions will include; running a press release, buying promotional products and advertising in newspapers, magazines, etc.

Press Release:

CanadaOne provides a free interactive press release builder. http://www.canadaone.com/promote/pressrelease.html

Gebbie Press provides over 10,000 links to print and electronic media on the Internet.
http://www.gebbieinc.com/

Automated Press Releases will enable you to send your press release to over 10,000 publication contacts. You write your press release or they'll write it for you.
http://www.automatedpr.com/

Promotional Products:

IDit Plates - Put your web address on your vehicle. IDit Plates are a great way to continuously promote your web site. They look like chrome and blend in well with your vehicle. http://www.iditplates.net/new/2711/index.html

Magnetic Signs - Full size magnetic signs for your vehicle. Get a customized sign that magnetically adheres to each side of your vehicle, advertising your web site.
http://www.magneticsigns.com/

iPrint - Professional printing over the Internet.
http://www.iprint.com/cgi-shl/index.cgi?shop=5072

PromoCity - Add your logo to any of over 500 promotional items.
http://www.promocity.com/

Offline Promotions:

Place ads in newspapers, magazines, on the radio, TV, etc.,
Visit Newspapers Online for complete listings:
http://www.newspapers.com/

Once you've created your promotional web page, open it in your browser and add it to your favorite places or bookmark it for easy daily access. Set up a specific day for your weekly and monthly promotions and perform your miscellaneous promotions as needed.

Once you've implemented your promotional strategy and continuously work it each day, you'll be amazed with the results of your efforts. Consistency will be the key to driving massive traffic to your site.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, Web Design Mastery. http://www.webdesignmastery.com And, Ebook Starter - Give Your Ebooks the look and feel of a REAL book. http://www.ebookstarter.com