Marketing Your Website Online and Off to Increase Traffic and Sales

Whether you have a new website or an existing one, you can always benefit with more marketing idea's and tips to draw in more traffic with potential customers to your website.

Here we'll cover several ways I've found to be very successful in increasing exposure to your website, increasing traffic and building repeat customers.

Mailing Lists:

Mailing lists are an invaluable tool to gaining and keeping customers. You may already have a mailing list and right now may be thinking why am I mentioning even mentioning this as it's not a new concept to you. Well, while many people have mailing lists only some of them know how to use them to their full benefit. Let's start by the task of getting people to sign up for your mailing list. Try some of the following techniques and announce them on your website:

  • Offer discounts exclusively to mailing list subscribers.

  • Offer a free product with orders from members who are on your mailing list.

  • Offer contests exclusively to your mailing list members.

  • Offer preview sales to your mailing list members so they can see your product before it goes on your website.

  • Offer online "Yard Sales" exclusively to those on your mailing list. This is where you can host pictures of items either on a page on your site known only to your mailing list members with yard sale priced items for them to purchase. You can also host a yard sale on many of the free picture hosting sites and simply send that link to your mailing list when your sale begins.

  • Insert tips, links to articles, links to other freebies, etc on your mailing list

    • Next lets talk about building your mailing list subscribership. There are several ways to do this and these are what I've found to be the most successful:

  • Exchange links or banners with other business's mailing lists. This is great additional exposure for both of you. Say you have 800 members and the other business has 800 members, you just doubled your exposure. Do this with as many business's you can that are willing to exchange with you. Be sure and sign up for that business's mailing list so you can make sure your link or banner is correct. You can agree to exchange for any time period you would like ie; 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, etc.

  • If you have a Blog, insert a mailing list sign up form on it.

  • Post on your favorite message boards telling members about any specials you'll be offering to those that sign up for your mailing list.

  • Post on your favorite message boards asking if anyone would like to exchange mailing list links or banners.

    • SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Link Exchange:

    This is one topic that you can never seem to know enough about. Getting your website submitted and accepted into a search engine can be a challenging to say the least. Especially places like Google and DMOZ directory. We'll talk more here about Google because with DMOZ it's more a matter of if the people reviewing your site decide to include it. With Google though there are certain ways you can help their robots crawl your site more often and increase your chances of your site being included in the search listings. Ofcourse the goal here it to improve your rankings so your website shows up under searches on the first page of listings. The top 5 listings is even better, but more difficult to obtain. Here are some ways you can increase your chances of getting indexed in Google and also improving your rankings whether your listed there or not:

  • Do a search for similar websites to yours on Google. Look at the top 5 websites and contact them to see if they would be willing to do a link exchange with you or if they offer link or banner advertising. Some will and you may have to pay a fee but trust me, a small investment can reap huge rewards.

  • Concentrate on gaining 1-way links. These are links and banners placed on similar websites that point to your website. This is not link exchange. A good way to approach other website owners and make it worth their while to have your banner on their site but not their banner on yours is offer to add their banner or link to your mailing list newsletter instead.

  • Stay away from link farms. These and some of the Topsites Google can actually frown upon and it can hinder your site getting indexed and can effect your rankings.

  • Consider signing up for Adwords through Google. This will place your advertisiment on similar sites and visitors can click your ad and go to your site. You can chose how much your willing to spend for clicks. It's another lower cost way to build traffic.

    • Online Marketing:

  • Create a Blog at one of the blogger websites. Be sure and update it daily if possible with new articles or content.

  • Exchange links with other similar Blogs.

  • Add a mailing list sign up form on your Blog.

  • Offer tutorials, tips and articles on your website.

  • Have a "Post The Most" contest on your message board.

  • Offer a freebie with every order on your website.

    • Offline Marketing:

    You may be wondering why I would suggest offline marketing if your business is online. Offline marketing can actually bring in additional traffic to your website and therefore more potential customers. Here are some creative ways to market your website offline:

  • Include a paper flyer or business card with your info and website URL in all of your outgoing snail mail and packages.

  • Exchange paper flyers or business cards with other online business's and include them also in all your outgoing mail and packages and they will include yours in all of their outgoing mail as well.

  • Place flyers with your information and URL on bulletin boards at grocery stores, doctors offices, day care centers, schools, church, local business's, if you do crafts be sure and have a bunch at craft shows to put in every bag, place them in your booth at an antique mall, If you have a garage sale include a flyer in every bag when people make a purchase.

  • Place white cling lettering with your URL to the back of your car.

  • Contact your Chamber of Commerce and see if your business can be listed in the welcome wagon mailings.

  • Place a listing in your yellow pages or local business directory.

  • Have an open house. Place an ad in your local paper for a time on a weekend evening and allow customers to visit your home to view and purchase your crafts. Have a snack available and also a registry book where they can write their name, address, phone number and e-mail so you can contact them in the future with notices of upcoming home shows, craft shows, online sales, etc.

  • Write related articles and submit them to several submission websites. This is a great way to gain exposure for your site and bring additional traffic to it.

    • Marketing your website is an ongoing endeavor. When you have a website where you sell your wares or services, especially a new one, it can easily get lost among all the others on the Internet. So it's important to make marketing your website a weekly priority. Just do a few of the above tasks each week so your not overwhelmed and so you still have time to do your creating. If you stick with it, in time you'll find you will have built up a customer base and some nice traffic to your website. All new business's online or off take time. So be patient. It's not unusual for it to take a year to really find yourself established.

    Kelle Arvay has been a doll maker and designer for the many years. She has a line of patterns that are carried by several retail, wholesale and online markets and through her website: http://www.DirtyCrowInn.com She also developed http://www.PatternMart.com an exclusive website where customers can order patterns and Designers have a unique way to offer their patterns to a large base of customers. She has developed a multiple way of Marketing both of her websites with great success.