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A Beginner's Checklist to Promoting an
Online Business (Part 1)
© 2002
by Angela Wu
The Internet's full of hyped-up promises of the
'ultimate' marketing secret that will singlehandedly
skyrocket your business to instant success.
Naturally, this is all it is: hype. There's no
single 'secret' that will magically transform a fledgling
business into a powerful money-maker. Instead, every
business owner is responsible for testing and refining
various techniques until he or she has developed a solid,
effective base that produces the desired results.
What works for one business may not work for another!
Likewise, another business may have poor results with one
method, while others experience great success. Here's a
quick checklist of some of the more popular -- and
completely free -- marketing techniques to help you build
your online business (note: this is a 3-part series).
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PART 1: FREE ONLINE MARKETING TECHNIQUES
- Build and use your own opt-in list of targeted and
interested prospects. Offer a free newsletter that
provides fresh, interesting, and relevant content.
You'll receive feedback from your readers about what's
important to them, and over time they'll come to know
and trust you. Your products, services, and even
recommendations will then be taken much more seriously
because you've developed credibility with your readers.
- Contribute to newsgroups or discussion boards.
Establish yourself as a helpful member of a community.
Other members of the community who come to know and
respect you will often refer you to others.
- Niche directories or search engines. Find all
the highly-targeted directories and SEs for your market,
and then work to get listed. You'll be surprised at how
many niche sites there are! Good places to start looking
are http://yahoo.com/ and http://www.dmoz.com/.
- Build your link popularity. For example, you
can trade links with other businesses in your market so
that you can 'share' each other's traffic. Most of the
major search engines take link popularity into
consideration when ranking your site.
- Endorsed mailings to other lists. Find the
editor of a great newsletter, and offer your product or
service to him for free in return for a review or an
endorsed ad to his list. Endorsements from the editor
can far outperform regular 'ads', since they come from
someone they know and trust (the editor).
- Testimonials. It's fine for you to say that
your product or service is wonderful... but there's far
more 'punch' when someone else says it! Testimonials
show prospects that you have happy customers and helps
them to make the decision to buy.
- Use autoresponders to follow-up with your
prospects. It has been proven time and time again
that autoresponders can dramatically increase your
profits! They're also great time-savers, saving you from
following up with each prospect manually.
- Ad swaps. You can get extra exposure for 'free'
(no out-of-pocket expenses) by swapping ad space with
another editor that caters to your audience. Plus it's a
great way to put 'remnant' ad space to good use.
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- Join a webring. Link to other sites like yours
and build an online 'community.'
- Offer coupons or gift certificates to entice
visitors to make a purchase *now*.
- Make good use of referral marketing. Ask happy
customers to refer prospects to you. Many people are so
busy these days that they're willing to rely on a
trusted friend or contact's advice -- it saves them the
time necessary to do all the research themselves.
- Write and distribute articles in your area of
expertise. This is a great credibility-builder! People
who appreciate what you have to say are much more likely
to check out your business. Another 'bonus' is that
articles are often archived on websites for visitors to
refer to time and time again.
- Become an 'expert'. If you like to write and
have the time to do so, consider partnering with a
high-traffic site within your niche market and offer to
write a regular column or article. You establish
credibility and get exposure; your partner site and
their readers get great content.
- Use a 'Recommend-It' or 'Refer-A-Friend' script.
These scripts let visitors send your URL to friends.
- Make it easy for others to link to your site.
Consider adding a 'Link to Us' section where you provide
the HTML that visitors can simply cut and paste to their
own web pages. Again, this helps to build your link
popularity (see point #4).
- Hold contests. For example, every month you
could give away one of your products to a lucky
subscriber or customer.
- Use a signature. Also known as 'sig files', a
signature is a brief blurb about your business along
with your URL and/or contact information. Put a
signature on every piece of email you send out, as well
as on any message board posts (if appropriate).
- Give away a quality free eBook or report.
eBooks and reports can be excellent viral marketing
tools. You can even offer them as a 'premium' to other
businesses within your niche, so that they can give it
away to their own customers or subscribers. This is an
effective way to build a network that will willingly
promote your business for you! More on promoting free
eBooks and how they can help you can be found in the
article, '10 Quick Tips on How to Create, Distribute,
and Profit from Free eBooks': http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/articles/ebooktips.html.
Hopefully this has given you a few helpful ideas on how
to market your online business. In the next installment of
this series, you'll read about several marketing techniques
that may cost you money, but that can be worth the
investment many times over. The final installment is all
about marketing your online business in the 'offline' world!
Stay tuned
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Angela is the editor of Online
Business Basics, a practical, down-to-earth guide to
building an Internet business on a beginner's budget. If you
enjoyed this article, you'll love the book! Visit http://www.onlinebusinessbasics.com
or request
a series of 10 free reports to get you started.
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