Free Marketing Using Your Own Website

Small business owners and freelancers alike must make their website a marketing asset. There are many websites that are underutilized. In a time when budgets are tight and businesses are fighting to survive, using a  website as a marketing tool (as well as information provider) is even more important. Here are some inexpensive Do-It-Yourself tips for fully utilizing your website without shelling out the cash for a web-marketing guru.

Add a Page for Products or Services

Give people the opportunity to buy online. If needed, use the templates offered by your web hosting service. Upload good, clear photos of your products, against white backdrops. Write short descriptions that entice the shopper, but also tell what the product does. Keep these very short—one or two lines.

Add a price and a PayPal or credit card payment link. (Set up a Pay Pal account if your don’t already have one. It is a great financial service for both customers and businesses). Pay Pal and your web hosting service has the tools to make the checkout function operate without your input. Just wait for the email that announces a sale.

Send E-coupons with Discounts and a Web Link

Use your customer contact list or guest book entries as a mailing list. Send out emails that invite customers to visit your site. FindItLocal411 sends email blasts with coupons and new business postings regularly. Emails cost nothing to send and should be used as much as possible in an appropriate manner. Include a code that will allow them to take a discount or got through PayPal to discount the prices on certain items for specific time periods. You can even do you own Internet doorbuster sale by announcing a specific time period during which your products will be discounted. Send out emails and place large font banners on your site about the event.

Link Those Social Networking Accounts

Link your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts. Update the status with specials and info about your products or links to the site. Also, link these sites to your blog with plugins or regularly posted hyperlinks. This way, you will become a curator of news around your site and be able to control the message that you set in front of customers, clients, etc.

Blog About It

Use your blog to offer tips to customers, talk about current events in your industry or to just talk about the business. Use certain key words frequently and mark them as meta tags for the blog entry. First time bloggers should use a service like WordPress, as it is easy to learn on. WordPress blogs also easily link to your website — study their wealth of plugins for any “link” related ideas you have. Their platform allows for easily customizable layouts and formats.

Update Frequently

Update the website and the blog frequently to keep the content fresh. Ad featured items to the home page that change daily or weekly. Change headings and experiment with fonts. Add pages of info or fun activities. There is no cost but the time you spend, so make the site your own.  Also, note any changes in traffic and clickthroughs as you make these changes. These might reflect your readership’s tendencies and inclination to click through on your next post.

Your Personal Town Crier

The Internet is today’s version of the town crier. You can send out a message to hundreds of people with a click of a button. It will take you some time to perfect a message and to gather a strategy. However, in no time you will have access to the largest, most inexpensive marketing machine.