Costs of Website Promotion

Many website owners neglect to promote their website as well as they promote the other aspects of their businesses. The number of visitors to your website is directly related to your website promotion and marketing. As any aspect of your business, if there is no promotion and marketing, the results will be poor. And poor results generally means that eventually your business will fail. In this respect, websites are no different.

One of the first things that you should ask yourself, if you have a low number of website visitors, is:
How much money do I have budgeted to spend on website promotion and marketing each month?
If your answer to this question is ‘nothing’, then you need to urgently reconsider your commitment to your website.

If you do not promote and market your business then what happens? No new business right? And eventually no business at all makes the business fail. The same thing happens with a website – if there is no promotion and marketing then there will be no results. And no result generally means that your website will be a waste of time and money.

You must have at least some of your budget dedicated to the marketing and promotion of your website - $100 a month? Surely any company that is serious about their website can find a spare $100 to use on website promotion? What about $250, $2500 or $10000 a month? The more money you allocate to promoting and marketing your website the better the chances of achieving worthwhile results.

If you have a successful actual business, then chances are you spend a healthy amount of money each month on the promotion and advertising of your business. Don’t expect miracles from your website. Give it a healthy budget too and the results will follow.

If you have a budget in the $1000 to $10000 range, then you should seriously consider employing a professional website marketing and promotions company.

If you have a very small budget – in the $100 a month range, then you are going to have to take a DIY approach. You also need to be prepared to work hard!
Some low or no budget promotion strategies for increasing new visitor numbers:

1. Submit your website to the free submission search engines (for free).
2. Create some ‘punchy’ classified advertisements for your website – submit them to free classified advertising sites. Many of these websites are international, however, and will only be of use if you are marketing yourself internationally.
3. When they’re done well online classified adverts can be extremely effective as a low-cost way of generating more website traffic. There are a number of very good online ‘classified advertising’ websites based in New Zealand: New Zealand Herald (www.nzherald.co.nz), Trade & Exchange (www.trade-exchange.co.nz), AdPost (www.adpost.com/nz), Sellit (www.sellit.co.nz), NZ Directory (www.nzdirectory.co.nz/ads/), Gumtree (www.gumtree.co.nz), Stuff On Sale (www.stuffonsale.co.nz). Classified ads are particularly useful for ‘testing’ your headlines and sales copy (before you send them out to the ‘big-time’!).
4. Use Online Directory listings eg. ‘Set up a ‘Yellow Pages’ link from the online Yellow Pages site (www.yellowpages.co.nz) to your website.
5. Consider advertising your website using the Google Adwords & Overture search engine advertising systems (the maximum budget varies and can be set).
6. Consider running an advertisement in a newsletter or ezine that is targeted directly at your target market (rates will vary depending on ezine). When searching for local ezines and newsletters the best approach is to search the New Zealand-based directories. Some good links are listed below: http://www.piperpat.co.nz, then click on New Zealand Links, http://www.nzs.com/media/e-zines/, http://news-media.nzpages.co.nz/news_and_media/Magazines/, http://www.nzsearch.com. Consider signing up to the NZAds (www.nzads.co.nz) banner exchange network, and start running banner ads on your website (free).


Some strategies to entice your visitors to return to your website:

1. Collect email addresses and send a newsletter or promotion to them every month.
2. Include a ‘next purchase’ offer.
3. Have a ‘What’s New’ webpage.
4. VIP programs.
5. Reminder systems.

You will need to track and measure each of your different advertising or promotional campaign initiatives very carefully. If it isn’t working, tweak it, or drop it, and give something else a go. If it is working, then try dropping something that is barely working, and use the extra budget to do more of what is working.

Website advertising and promotion can be tricky – and it will pay you to get advice. Visit www.zeald.com to read a large range of informative articles that will help you maximise the results you get from your website.

By David Kelly, CEO of Zeald.com