While investing in your website will make sure your online business is making a profit, there are cost effective ways to enhance those efforts and promote business in order to create a higher rate of success. Online expenses for marketing should be one of your lowest expenses. The most important things to spend your money on for online success is search engine optimization, a great social media metrics application, content creation if you can’t create your own, and a small investment in pay-per-click advertising. Pay per click advertising is the most cost effective because you can control. Adding free ways to promote your business from that point will be the icing on the cake that will take your online business from zero to hero when it comes to your profit margins.
The first most important thing is to get active in the social media networks, but not just to be social which is what many businesses make the mistake of. Actively search out your target market, are they mostly on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter? Meet them there and engage with them on a social, yet professional level. Think of it as a virtual networking event, the small talk is important, and you would never want to “sell” at a networking party. The main goal is getting the contact information and developing the type of relationship that will gain trust for your targets to do business with you.
Next, continue to provide the best content possible and take some of that content off site. Highly visible content marketing sites such as ezinearticles, ehow, or Squidoo can help bring a huge amount of exposure for your site if you write compelling content that people are interested in searching out and reading. These articles should not be about selling. They can be product reviews or content that would relate back to your products and services. For example, if you sell athletic apparel, articles about how to start jogging could lead readers back to your site to check out your running shoes due to the author byline you are allowed to add to each article.
Submitting press releases and getting active on the top bookmarking sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon are also cost effective ways to promote your online business. When you are strategic about how you use your marketing and advertising budget and combine it with free ways to get your website name out there, you will find the return on investment is significantly increased.
