Marketing OFFline

There are many free & really cheap ways to market your web business.

#1: BUSINESS CARDS. handing out cards is one of the cheapest ways to advertise your business. It is your "little billboard". Printing yourself or you can get cheap card from http://www.vistaprint.com/
Put them in EVERY order.... leave at restaurants .... hand to Bank teller.... always have them in your wallet or purse. Do you sell pet supplies? Leave some around a pet store...

Many people don't set their cards up right... Always have these 3 things on your card:
WHO you are
HOW to get ahold of you
WHAT you do.

I have seen SOOOO many cards left on bulletin boards with: ABC company & a phone...
what the hell do they do????? OR ABC company, a phone AND with a pen, "piano repair"...
WELL JUST PRINT THAT ON THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! I just want to shake people who do that. (one of my pet peeves)

#2: Be a walking billboard. At http://www.promote-101.com/ you can
put your logo or web address on shirts... totes.... golf markers....
Get others to be YOUR walking billboard! Give-a-ways..... all from http://www.promote-101.com/
Hats, watches, earrings, Clocks, even Golf ball markers for those SPECIAL golfing clients!
Let them wear or use items with YOUR info on them!

#3: Your message on voice mail or machine..... "sorry, we are not available. if you would like more information visit http://www.candybarwrap.com/ for personalized candy bar wrappers" Something like that.

#4: Postcards & flyers
The internet is full of addresses to most targeted markets..... google certain bizes if you work with them .... I signed up for a cheap mailing address for bridal leads ... baby leads ... graduates in any zip code I wanted. Local leads in Yellow pages or online yellow pages. Google Chamber of commerces in a certain city. They almost ALWAYS have member lists with addresses & phone numbers. If you have a local "welcome wagon" or Chamber of commerce (not free though) see what it would cost to add your brochure into their packets.

#5 Let those high Gas prices help pay to advertise. Vinyl window stickers from http://www.jlcustomgraphx.com/ . Always in white & on the rear window. Cars at stop lights or in rush hr traffic have nothing better to do than stare at the back of your car.
Car magnets. (just make sure they don't have REALLY cool graphics.) A friend of mine who had a Beer making shop had a beer mug shaped car magnet. After the 2nd one got stolen, he changed to Text in a square magnet.

So there are a few ideas....

Feel free to add comments with other ideas!

Marketing.... Search Engines

There are a TON of search engines but the first ones to get listed on are Google, Yahoo, MSN & DMOZ. Most searches will pick up sites from the DMOZ

The best way is to go to each & manually submit your site.
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

http://dir.yahoo.com/ click on "suggest a site" in upper right.

http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

http://www.dmoz.org/

http://www.altavista.com/


Here are some others that will submit to several other search engines for you


http://www.scrubtheweb.com/addurl.html

http://www.exactseek.com/add.html

http://www.entireweb.com/free_submission/


I've submited only once. If you keep your site fresh & new at LEAST every month, the searches will see that you have new content & will reindex you each time they do a search.

Some takes...days, weeks or months to index. Be patient & just keep doing all the other suggestions in this blog.

http://www.ecrater.com/ will send your site to google products automatically. So there... you don't have to do google feeds everytime you list new products.

Just having Fresh & New content will keep your site at the top of the heaps.

Marketing on Forums & groups

Now it's time to "talk up" your new site.
Find forums that would sorta match your site content. Baby items... "mommy forums"... Book sellers ... reading & book clubs.

Now most forums or groups either allow you to intro yourself once & some with a link to your site. But just about all allow a sig. (a small link under your name)
However... I sorta link my site while I'm "talking about" something or answering a question.

Example:
Q: how are your sales doing during the summer? blah...blah...blah

My A: My sales are doing great.... my Kid's ceiling Fans are selling great for the summertime.
OR.... alot of mom's are redecorating their kid's Bedrooms & ordering children's ceiling fans

OR another example:

Q: I am having a party for my daughters first birthday. We are planning on a big party with a BBQ. Any Idea's for other stuff?

A: I got a bunch of personalized Hershey miniatures & Custom Hershey Kisses & tossed a few in the middle of all the tables with confetti that I got at the party store.

Another cool idea are scratch off tickets.... put them under each plate & give the winner a prize.

So you see how you can add your links without spamming your forum.

If you can't add any hyperlinks... CRAM your responses with keywords & say "at my site... I have these cool Italian Charms that would work great for what you are looking for. A Charm Bracelet would be a perfect for your neice as a Bat Mitzvah gift" then you should have your sig under your name that they can click & look.

This way, the search engines will not pull any links .... but it may pick up "Bat Mitvah" or "italian charm" & your sig will be right there.

Now Start Marketing... linking

After you have your site all ready for customers..... it is time to market.

Years ago... the thought was "build it & they will come" . Those days are long gone. "build it & PROMOTE ...PROMOTE...PROMOTE." Then Promote some more!

This post will start with tips on Linking with other sites.

Set up separate pages on your site for recipicol linking. Each page should be for a separate category. All categories should be relavent to your site. If you are a furniture site... don't link with a viagra site or online casinos.

Do Not set up a "link farm" & link with sites that are not 20 pages of just "links".

I also will not link to a site that has NO resource or "link partners" linking from their HOME PAGE. I will also not link with companies that have a third party directory site.

Linking helps with your search ranking but I also get hits from some of those sites.

My resource page: http://www.candybarwrap.com/OurLinkPartners.html
I link with party, baby, wedding mostly.
I have the ecrater stores as a courtesy for all my ecrater friends. I just HOPE it won't mess with my search ranking.

You can make your own "rules" for linking sites with others. I don't link with direct competitors like other candy wrapping sites. And don't be afraid to tell a "requester" "sorry, I can't link with link farms... etc."

Finding sites that take recipicol links is relatively easy. Google "add link"... start linking & emailing.

Another site to get links & link requests: http://www.linkmarket.com/

Yes... it's FREE!

STEP #2 Design Tips on your website

Here are some tips on setting up a great looking website.

The best way to start is get a paper notebook. Do a draft layout of the pages you are planning to add. This will make it ALOT easier when you are designing it on your computer!

Start by putting a page name at the top of every page. (home, resources, prices, samples, etc.)
Then you can write the text you want on each page, write in the link locations etc.

*** tip **** start each page with text that has your keywords for that page.
Have your phone number on your front page. Customers don't like hunting for ANY information.
They also don't want to wait a day or 2 for an email response.

IF YOU DON'T WANT AN EXPENSIVE SECOND LINE or don't want customers calling your home phone..... I have this REALLY COOL & CHEAP line! www.magicjack.com
You have to have high speed internet.... choose a number in your area. It hooks into your USB port (I have one desktop in the house that is always on) then you hook ANY phone into the magicjack instead of the wall. Now here's the best part!!! Cost like $50some for the magicjack AND the first YEAR of local, long distance, messages, caller ID... after the first year it is a whopping $20 a YEAR!!! Yes... a YEAR! I don't have a landline anymore. I have magicjack & my cell phone. I save just over $50 a month!!! if you google "magicjack" there is a NonOfficial forum.

OK... now some design tips.

LOGOs: You can design your own... I use PaintShopPro for all my design work. If you are not a great designer, see http://www.cooltext.com/ http://www.flamingtext.com/ http://www.logoblog.com/ & many more for simple quick logo designs.
Logos should reflect your business. Professional looking logos are the best.
Don't want an elephant on your clothing store logo ... you get the picture.

My daughter hand drew this one & then I added the text & made it a bit 3D with PSP (it's light because it's watermarked into my background on my site)

A few inexpesive places for logos & other cool store buttons etc.

http://kjscreations.ecrater.com/category.php?cid=50785
http://website-graphics.ecrater.com/ *this one is really cool!*
http://brenbeads.ecrater.com/category.php?cid=458691
http://photoforyou.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=434354

WEBSITE COLORS: White or light is the best. Textures or image background should be very light like a watermark. Bright colors can be used as menu bars or headers. Please match colors & be sure they are in your theme. Red & green is Christmas... so unless you have a Christmas Item store, those 2 colors would NOT be a great choice.
Now this is MY opinion: pastels.... men (yes, I get business men calling to advertise their bizes at my candybar site) would not stay very long. If you cater to the baby industry, party or weddings ... then pastels would be fine. But you may want to stick to very neutral backgrounds, & darker blues, tans, browns or greens if your targeted customers are both genders.
I am setting up a Golf shop (a work in progress) but you will notice the color scheme is green.
Even though women visit... I kept it "golfing green".

& Finally for this post.... Meta Tags... titles & descriptions:
Tags are the main thing search engines look at. If those tags are NOT relevent to that page, you will be chewed up & spit out on page 999 of the searches.

Tags must be listed above the body of each page in the header.

TITLE TAGS: This is the text that is displayed in the top section of the browser when you open a certain page. Example: Books Audio Movies Music - Online

META DESCRIPTION TAGS: This a a short description of your web site. Example: variety of books of all types: children's, adult's, audiobooks, homeschool curriculum, classics.

META KEYWORD TAGS: List all related keywords separated by "," Example: books, movies, audio, audiobooks, classic books, adult books

These Tags should be different on each page. "wedding" on your wedding page, etc.
3rd party stores & template made sites may be different.