21 Ways to Promote Your Site Online and Off

Offline Promotions
1. Always put your URL on letterhead, business cards and in e-mail signatures--wherever potential visitors are likely to see it.

2. If your employees wear uniforms, put your URL on them so every one of your customers sees a walking advertisement of your website.

3. Include your URL on all promotional items you give away--coffee mugs, T-shirts, keychains and so on. A daily reminder is a good way to get people to visit your site.

4. Be sure to include your webaddress in all press releases you send out to members of the media. By having it at their fingertips, they may be more likely to include it in articles they write about your company.

5. Don't forget to put your webaddress in your Yellow Pages ad. That's one place people see it every day.

6. Do you own any company vehicles? Be sure to put your URL on the side of any car or truck that's out there delivering your products.

7. In addition to listing your toll-free number, put your webaddress on the bottom of every page of your catalog so customers have easy access to your online store.

Online Promotions
8. Hone your search engine submission process so you can get the best exposure possible.

9. If you're still itching for more exposure, you can explore search engine marketing, wherein you pay to have a text ad appear when visitors search for certain keywords.

10. Launch a sweepstakes that offers anyone who registers on your site or subscribes to e-newsletters within a certain time frame the chance to win a free gift.

11. Send out a weekly e-mail newsletter to registered site members that offers tips and news related to your company or industry with links back to your site.

12. Offer free content to other sites. It's a win-win situation: The other site gets free articles to beef up their offerings and you get a link back to your site and the cachet of being an expert.

13. Send a well-planned, customer-focused e-mail promotion to a targeted list of potential visitors and offer a credit toward the purchase of anything from your site. Spend time on your e-mail's look and content: You want to offer value to customers and not have it appear to be spam.

14. Create your own link exchange by asking sites complementary to yours (but that don't compete) to put your link on their pages and you'll do likewise.

15. Hook up with webaffiliates--hundreds of sites that all link their traffic to yours--and get visitors from sites with related content.

16. Get active in online discussion groups and chats and always include your URL in your signature. (Don't do any hard selling, though. Most groups frown on such behavior and will think you're spamming the group.)

17. Any time someone orders a product from your site, include a catalog with their order to get them coming back for more.

18. Inspire your visitors to spread the word for you with viral marketing techniques, from the aforementioned newsgroup participation to including an "e-mail this link" on every page of your site.

19. Not sure what your customers want? Try creating an online survey to get their crucial opinions on how well your site is selling to them.

20. When creating your own ads, make sure you understand who you're targeting, the goal of your campaign, and how to creatively use the ad confines to get viewers to click on your ad, not away from it.

21. Use other selling venues like online classified advertising or online auction sites to increase exposure to your site and products.