Once your site is online, the content is up-to date, it looks good and all of the necessary search engine optimisation has been covered, it’s time to market your site. 

Why market your site? 

Just about every web site is selling something, whether it’s a service, an idea, or products through an ecommerce system. Therefore, you want as many visitors to that site as possible. After all, the best web site in the world is no use, if no one knows about it. 

If you don’t market yourself and give your visitors a reason for coming (and coming back) to your site, you may well become lost in the vast abyss of the web. Especially if the site in question is totally brand new and doesn’t have any search engine history. 

The tools and techniques 

Of course if you have endless wads of cash, marketing your site may be reasonably easy, as you can employ hoards of marketing and PR people to run your campaigns for you. As this isn’t the case for the majority of businesses, we’re going to concentrate on getting your site noticed on a budget. 

Online communities 

There are online communities for just about any subject you can think of. Get your site noticed by joining one these communities and offer fair and reasoned advice. But be careful not to go straight into a sales pitch. Using the signature in your profile to advertise your site subtly is the best way to go, as you’ll most likely be ignored if you’re blatantly trying to sell yourself. These communities usually have several highly respected experts, or community leaders, by specifically targeting these people, they may well end up championing your site, and therefore selling for you! Try and target communities that contain as many of your customers as possible, rather than competitors. 

Viral Marketing 

We’ve all seen this before. It’s the jokes, comedy videos and other interesting things you may find in your email inbox from your friends and family. If you can conjure up a hilarious homemade video or anything at all that when sent to people you know, they will feel compelled to pass it on to others, you’re on to a winner. The viral marketing will spread itself, costing little or nothing, yet could end up in millions of inboxes and on thousands of web sites, if it’s good enough. 

Blogs & Podcasts 

Regularly updated news or a blog is the number one way to keep your visitors coming back for more. If you think about the web sites you visit on a regular basis I would be willing to bet that they are updated very regularly. 

Beyond this, there are loads of ways to get your blog out there to a bigger audience. Services like Technorati, del.icio.us and Digg tag, track, index and cross reference millions of blog posts, and by adding your own blog to these services you will make your web site and your information much easier to find. Most blogs also generate a RSS feed which can allow your visitors to instantly see when your content has been updated, or they can even use the RSS feed to populate their own web site or put on their desktops. 

Podcasts have also seen a massive increase in popularity over the last year or two. These are audio (or sometimes video) blogs and generally have one or two people chatting about various topics within their speciality subject. Again with very little money being spent some companies have gone on to receive cult status through their podcasts, meaning a greater audience and more profit. 

Local Advertising 

These next few tips are most likely to work on a local market, although if done well enough may work on a wider basis. 

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is massive today. You can sponsor local events, charities and organisations for very little per year, (unless your local organisation of choice is Chelsea Football Club) this will not only help you feel better as you're helping a needy cause, but will give you more contacts in the community, more press coverage and advertising on anything to do with the cause you have sponsored.

Guerilla Style 

Fly-posting, stickering, stunts and other imaginative advertising ideas fall into the guerrilla advertising category. Large cities tend to have designated areas for fly-posting etc so find out where these areas are and get something printed off and stuck up. To get the most out of this, make sure you don’t clutter your printed material and try and make it stand out. Also, don't go too far and get arrested!

Press Releases 

You can easily write your own press releases with a little time and effort. Taking care of a few basics should get your press release noticed and hopefully published. Don’t waffle and make your point early on, and with a good, straight to the point headline. Editors have to waft through all sorts of rubbish, so make it easy for them to understand your point. Also, provide a quote or two, some facts and figures and a picture.

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