We have long said, “A website is a marketing tool which needs to be marketed.” You can’t just put a website up and hope people will find it. You can’t count on Google and other search engines to send everybody who searches for your keywords. You have to drive traffic to your site.
How? There are many ways, not all of which are web-based. In this article we will go over some offline ways to drive traffic to your site.
Put your web address (URL) on anything and everything you print. Your stationery, business cards, product labels, gift bags, pens, and promotional giveaways. If you are putting your name on it, put your URL under it. You should put it on your products packaging and even on the product if it has a label.
Direct mail can work too – we use it at CItyCenter. We’ve put together a good size mailing list of companies who fit our target markets and send out postcards to them several times a year to keep CityCenter on their radar while driving them to our website.
Depending on your product, there are probably magazines and newspapers (on and off line) which reach the people you want to reach. While a full page might be a bit pricey, a small or business card ad promoting your business and including your web address may be just enough to get your target market to your website. You should also be submitting articles to these mags with your web address in the byline.
The more you promote your website the more traffic you’ll get.
In our next article, we’ll go into some online places for marketing your website.