How to Market Your Business for Free

AaronIsOnaRoll May 5, 2008 Business
Some of the best marketing methods are free, especialy when your first beginning and the cash isn't flowing in yet.

Technique 1:
Optimize your site for keywords appropriate to your business.  You can learn alot about the right methods to impliment this strategy at various sites, forums and blogs online for free.  You can also uncover almost anything you want to learn about SEO or anything else for that matter at your public library.

Technique 2:
Write interesting articles that would be appropriate to your target market and submit them the various article directories.  Provide useful information that people will appreciate without trying to promote your products to much.  Place a tagline at the end of each article describing your business with a link to your site.  If you write a couple of articles a week, before you know it you will have links pointing back to your site all over the web.  Keep your aticles brief and to the point, while offering the reader some interesting free information.  Generaly around 500 words is standard.

Technique 3:
Submit your website to various search engines specialty listings, directories organizations and anywhere else you can find to.  This is another technique to get noticed and get one way links back to your site and some free advertising.  Do a google search to help you find places to list your site. 

Technique 4:
Submit ads directing customers to your site to all the free classified sites you can find.  You can get some bonus free traffic to your site in this way.  You can't just place ads with a few sites and expect very much in the way of customers though.  You need to post to as many sites as you can and on a regular basis.

Technique 5:
Post to blogs, forums and message boards that allow you to post with a tagline that has a link to your site. Don't post just to get your tagline on the site.  Be helpful and respectful and this technique will serve you well.

Technique 6:
Start your own blog.  One of the simplest, most effective ways to promote your business is with your own blog.  Make posts to your blog with relevant information on a regular basis using targeted keywords in each post.  When your first starting it's best to update once per day or so.  This can be a very effective method to get to the top of the search engines relatively fast.

Technique 7:
Write your URL on everything.  Place it on all your stationary such as letterhead and business cards.  Also include your URL in your email signature in all your outgoing mail.  Be creative and make sure your website address is seen by as many people as possible.

Technique 8:
Implement an aggressive linking strategy.  Find relevant sites targeting the same market that you are but that are not direct competitors and ask them to link to your site.  If you use this technique you will need to have things on your site (products or information) that will be of value to your prospective link partner's site visitors.  Reciprocal links are another type of link you should try to get.  This is when you link to a site and they in turn link back to yours.

Technique 9:
Write an newsletter and submit it to ezine directories.  This technique is almost like the technique used for articles.  The articles you submitted to article directories can be used in your ezine and vice versa.  You can also use appropriate articles from other authors that you find at the article directories that would be of interest to your ezine readers.

Technique 10:
Use press releases to get the message out about your product or business.  Contact publications and reporters directly related to your industry or area of expertise.  If you have something unique or newsworthy to say then this can be an superb strategy.

Technique 11:
Use traffice exchanges.  Traffic exchanges are sites that you join and in return for visiting other members websites you will get visitors to your own site.  These programs take some work but you can gain lots of visitors to your site for your efforts.

Technique 12:
Make joint ventures with people in your industry that offer complimentary products and services that your customers would find valuable.  You promote your partners products or services and in return they promote yours.

Technique 13:
Use your circle of influence.  Some of the best promotion in the world is called word of mouth.  It's possible to make alot of money with this strategy alone.  Just ask any successful MLMer.  Make a list of all the people you know and then egage these people in some way, whether it be by email, telephone or in person and let them know about your business.  The people that are actualy interested might surprise you.

Technique 14:
Be proud of your business.  If you have a good, honest business that your proud of and excited about, then let people know about it.  Engage anyone you come in contact with, at the local shopping center or your waitor at your favorite diner.  Don't just yell at people about how excited you are because that obviously will not do any good.  Engage people in conversation.  Ask people what they do or how they like what they are doing.  Their natural response will be to ask you the same questions in return.  Tell them about your business or products and exchange business cards with them or at least give them one of yours.

Above are just some of the ways that a business can use to advertise their website for free.  Some of thes methods may not apply to your particular business but this article should help you to at least get started in the right direction.

What did you think of this tutorial?
0 CommentsAdd a Comment
Name
Comment