4) 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site

Advertising Your Products or Services On-Line
The objective of some sites is simply to advertise but not directly sell an
event, product, or service. A prime example of this is a movie studio
that develops a Web site to promote a “soon-to-be-released” movie.
The objective is to create awareness or a “buzz” about the movie, generate
interest in the film, and, ultimately, have a large number of people
attend the movie when it is released. This type of site might include
multimedia clips of the movie, pictures and stories of the actors in the
movie, viral marketing (“Tell a friend about this movie”) elements to
encourage word-of-mouth marketing, an intriguing story about the film,
press releases for entertainment writers, and other elements to help them
achieve their objective with their target market in mind.
Selling Your Products or Services On-Line
Selling products or services online is a common objective. The Internet
provides a broad geographic reach and a huge demographic reach. Often
businesses combine the objectives of advertising their products or
services with trying to sell them through their Web site. This works well
because visitors are not only given information about your products
and services, but they are given the option of easily ordering and purchasing
online. The easier you make it for people to make a purchase
from your company, the more likely they will be to buy. You will have
to provide detailed information on your products and services, your
return policies, guarantees and warranties, and shipping options. If you
are planning to sell directly from the site, you also need to address security
issues.
Providing Online Customer Service or Support
You might decide that the main reason for your business to have an
online presence is to provide more comprehensive customer service and
support. A great benefit of a Web site is that you can provide customer
assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If your company
develops software, it is a good idea to include downloadable upgrades
as well as an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section where
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Planning Your Web Site 5
you can provide solutions to common problems. By providing an easy
way for your customers to solve their problems, you increase customer
loyalty. You also increase the likelihood that they will return to your
company when they need to improve their computer system. Include
the appropriate contact information for customers who have more complicated
problems and need to talk to a human.
Providing Product or Corporate Information
Some organizations simply wish to provide information on their products
or services to a particular target market. Others might want to
provide corporate information to potential investors. Information-driven
Web sites tend to be text oriented, with graphics used only to accentuate
the points being made and provide visual examples. These types of
sites usually have an FAQ section that provides useful and pertinent
information on the company and its products or services. If the organization
courts the media, it might include a Media Center, which can
include all its press releases, corporate background, information on key
company officials, articles that have been written about the company,
and a gallery of relevant pictures that the media can use, as well as a
direct link to the company’s media person.
Creating and Establishing Company Identity or Brand Awareness
Another objective might be to create and establish company identity or
brand awareness. To “brand” your product, a memorable name and an
eye-appealing product logo are necessities. Also, the graphics developed
for your Web site must be top-notch and reflect the colors associated
with the product logo. A catchy slogan further promotes brand identity.
The same branding techniques are also applicable to establishing corporate
identity. If building and reinforcing corporate and brand identity
are important to you, your Web site must have a consistent look and
feel. Likewise, all offline promotional campaigns and materials must be
consistent with your online presence.
Based on the success of companies such as America Online, Yahoo!,
Travelocity, Amazon.com, and eBay, it is apparent that branding a company
or product on the Web can occur swiftly. It is amazing how quickly
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6 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
these relative newcomers to the business world have achieved megabrand
status. Although they all had significant financial resources, each company
used a combination of online and offline advertising to meet their
objectives. Each of their sites features a prominent logo, consistent imagery,
and a consistent color scheme. Check out the sites of these upstarts
that have become big online players if branding is your goal. There
is a lot we can learn from them.
Other Primary Objectives
Brainstorm with all the stakeholders in your organization to come up
with other primary objectives for your organization. This process is
critical to the organization’s online success. Everything else revolves
around your objectives—the elements included on your site and the
Internet marketing techniques you use. If you were building a new office,
you would want to include the input of all people working in your
office to ensure that their needs were taken into consideration and the
office was designed appropriately. The same is true when building a
Web site—everyone must be included in the brainstorming session.
As much time should be spent in the planning stage as in the construction
phase. By going through this process, you will be able to develop
the best blueprint for your proposed Web site.
Other Things to Consider Up Front
Although setting your primary objectives is vital, it is just as important
to identify your secondary objectives. By setting appropriate secondary
objectives, you will be more prepared to achieve all your online goals.
Many companies identify only primary objectives for their Web site and
completely neglect secondary objectives that can help them succeed
online. Following are some common secondary objectives for online
businesses to consider:
• The site should be designed to be search engine friendly.
• The site should be designed to encourage repeat traffic.
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• The site should have viral marketing elements that encourage
visitors to recommend your products or services to others.
• The site should include elements to leverage its sales force.
• The site should incorporate permission marketing, where visitors
are encouraged to give you permission to send them e-mail
on a regular basis.
• The site should be designed to encourage customer loyalty.
• The site should incorporate stickiness, encouraging visitors to
stay a while and visit many areas of the site.
Designing Your Site to Be Search Engine Friendly
Creating a site that is search engine friendly should be an objective of
every company that wants to do business on the Internet. Search engines
are the most common way for Internet surfers to search for something
on the Net. In fact, 85 percent of all people who use the Internet
use search engines as their primary way to look for information. By
using keywords relating to your company in appropriate places on your
site, you can improve how search engines rank you. You want these
chosen keywords in the keyword meta-tags as well as in each page’s
description meta-tag. Some of the other places where you want to have
these keywords are your domain name if possible, your page titles and
page text, your Alt tags for graphics, and your page headers. Many
search engines place a lot of emphasis on the number and quality of
links to a site to determine its ranking. This means that the more Web
sites you can get to link to your site, the higher your site is shown in
search engine results. (See Chapter 6 for more information on designing
your site for high search engine ranking.)
Including Repeat Traffic Generators on Your Site
Every Web site should be designed to entice its site visitors to return
again and again. No matter if the primary objective of your Web site is
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8 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
to sell your products and services or to create brand awareness, generating
repeat traffic to your Web site helps you achieve these goals. Generating
repeat traffic to your site is a key element of your online success
and can be accomplished in numerous ways. Using contests and competitions,
as well as games, advice columns, and many more techniques,
can increase your Web traffic. Chapter 3 describes many of these repeat
traffic generators in much more detail.
Getting Visitors to Recommend Your Site
The best exposure your Web site can get is to be recommended by a
friend or unbiased third party. It is critical that you try to have elements
of your Web site recommended as often as possible; therefore, you should
have a way for people to easily tell someone about your site and its
contents. The best way to encourage people to recommend your site is
to include viral marketing techniques such as a “Tell a Friend” button
on your site. You might want to include some variations on this as well.
Under articles or press releases, you can have an “E-mail this article to
a friend” button for people to refer their friends and associates to your
site. Virtual postcards are also a good way to get people to send more
people to your Web site. There are many ways to encourage viral marketing.
These are discussed in detail in Chapter 4.
Leveraging Your Sales Force
If your objectives include trying to sell your products, you might want
to leverage your sales force by making use of an affiliate or associate
program. Affiliate programs once again use the advantage of having
your site recommended to create traffic to your site. The difference is
that an affiliate program is more formal than just having your site recommended
by site visitors. Most affiliate programs involve having a
contractual agreement, having specific links placed on the affiliate’s site
to yours, and having software to track where your traffic is coming
from so that you can compute and send referral fees to your affiliates as
they are earned. The contract usually states the compensation you will
pay to your affiliates for the sales they produce. This is one more way to
have other people working to build traffic to your Web site. (See Chapter
17 for details on affiliate or associate programs.)
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Using Permission Marketing
You always want your company to be seen as upholding the highest
ethical standards and being in compliance with anti-spam legislation,
so it is important not to send out unsolicited e-mail—or spam—promoting
your company or its products. This is why it’s important to
develop a mailing list of people who have given you permission to send
them messages, including company news and promotions. When you’re
developing your Web site, an objective should be to get as many visitors
to your site as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission
to be included in your mailings. You can do this by having numerous
ways for your visitors to sign up to receive newsletters, notices of changes
to your Web site, coupons, or new giveaways. Chapter 3 has many examples
of ways to encourage visitors to request to be added to your
e-mail list.
Creating Loyalty among Visitors
The way to create loyalty among visitors is to provide them with some
incentives for joining your online community and provide them with
proof that you really appreciate their business. You can do this by having
a members-only section of your Web site that has special offers for
them as well as discounts or freebies. When people sign up to join your
members-only section, you can ask for their permission and their e-mail
address to send them e-mails regarding company or product promotions
and news. People like to do business with people who appreciate
their business. We are seeing a real growth in loyalty programs online.
Including “Stickiness” Elements
To get your visitors to visit your site often and have them visit a number
of pages every time they visit, you need to provide interesting , interactive,
and relevant content. You want to have your site visitors feel as if
they are part of your online community and to want to make your site
one of the sites they visit every day. You create “stickiness” by including
many elements that keep your visitors’ attention. Your site can have a
daily advice column, descriptions of your many products, a discussion
forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to your
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10 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
products, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest
that site visitors can enter. The combination of these elements makes
a site sticky. You want your site to be a resource people return to often
and not a one-time event.
A Final Word on Objectives
Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is
essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want
your Web site to achieve. You obviously want to create a number of
different objectives for your site, but many of the objectives you set can
work together to make your Web site complete.
Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how
best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing
strategy to help you achieve them. Successful marketing on the Web
is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the
objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the
information that is pertinent to the market you are attempting to enter.
Read everything you can find, and examine the findings of industry
experts.
Your Web site objectives form a critical element in your Web site
design and development, as you will see in the next chapter on Web site
design and development methodology.
Target Markets
It is important to define every one of your target markets. Your Web site
is designed for them! For each and every one of your target markets,
you need to determine
• Their needs
• Their wants
• Their expectations.