Online Marketing Strategies?

[TheLogo-Mat]

Hello All,
I've been a self employed designer for 5 years now. Although business has been steady, I'm interested in getting my name out there a little more, but don't want to spend a ton. Can anyone suggest strategies more effective than your run-of-the-mill CPC campaigns, or link swapping- to increase website traffic?
-Matt

[Flux_nutrition]

Ive just started reading a book by entrepreneur magazine about Adwords tips. It is very informative on how to be successful, and do it without spending tons of money. I totally recommend giving it a read.

[jennyonbay]

Google Adwords is a good place to make your presence felt and this will certainly help and you need not spend a ton on it.

[nicegrl78]

@ Flux_Nutrition...do you mind telling us the name of that book. Please and thank you.

[veikoh]

Basically there is only three ways:
1. PPC as Pay per Click and Google Adwords is the leader, consider a Facebook campaigns as well. The issue is to optimise your visitors conversion rate there.
2. SEO so you will get visitors from natural search and links
3. Affiliate Marketing where you build your network of salesmen working on commision basis.

[Flux_nutrition]

Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords: How to Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes

[Flux_nutrition]

K i lied its not written by the magazine, but i saw the entrepreneur magazine thing on the top left which made me think it.

[Lachlan Charlotte]

Hello,

Thank you and your question so valuable. Search engine is the best way to make your presence felt and you need not spend a ton on it. A lot of online users go to search engines when they are looking for goods or services.

Best Regards
Lachlan Charlotte
(businessplanninghq.com)

[jennyonbay]

Social media tools like FB, Twitter can be used and you can also do commenting which can also help to increase you web presence.

Recently posted : OBVA Social Media Certified Professionals Share 5 Ways Of Using Comments To Increase Your Web Presence | OBVA BLOG

[Elsoft]

Veikoh has classified in broad terms the different ways to increase traffic to a website.Be careful with Adwords,make a thorough keyword research and make appropriate bids for the keywords.SEO is the best way to put your site among the top for the chosen keywords.There are methods to do this - link building,press releases,blog/forum commenting,article marketing,onsite optimisation.Affiliate marketing is a good idea too,but again you need to market your product for the affilates to take up your product.I hope this helps you get started.

[bsk0609]

Marketing is arguably the most difficult aspect of running a business online. As you know, the greatest opportunities often hide beneath the greatest dangers. Marketing need basically depend on the type of business you have and on competition. Marketing involves creating customer value by delivering customer satisfaction. Every effort and activity that is carried out to create the customer value starting from creating awareness of your product to the distribution of this product to the customer involves marketing.

[sullivan]

On line market strategies are forum posting, Link building, Blogs, Social book marking, Article Submission and press release......

[Arob]

you forgot storytelling, the most important one of all

[borisfowler]

Online marketing can be done in many different ways. It is not just limited to PPC or other online campaigns. Comment marketing, link building, guest blogging, and writing articles for well known websites are important also.

[MobileMKTGDirectory]

Definitely suggest Fb and twitter to connect with your customers. Make sure you are putting valuable information out there that the customers/followers(twitter)/friends(on FB) are going to be able to use. Like updates on sales and other related aspects of your business. And make sure that if you decide to start a fb or twitter or any other social media site presence, that you actually KEEP updating it with fresh information, and actually respond to your followers on twitter if they tweet at you. If your social media presence is stale it will have a negative effect.

Other than internet marketing, have you thought about using mobile marketing? Getting a short code (i.e. 20394) and then using that short code for your customers to "opt-in" to so you can start sending them deals and updates straight to their phone via text message. Its a very personalized way to connect with your customers and the metrics can be easily identified. For example, if you send out a coupon to your mobile subscribers, you know how many you sent out and then can see the response rate by seeing who actually brought in the coupon and used it (because they would have to show it to the cashier). Many firms who can help you in mobile marketing will have an easy way to see who is actually opening your texts as well to see if they are actually interested. But, the same with social media, you have to keep it relevant to your customers and what they want. And definitely don't send too many too often.

If you go to 3rdscreen.org (1st screen: TV, 2nd screen: Computer, 3rd Screen: Mobile device) they have all kinds of articles about how you can use mobile marketing if you want to check it out.