Ways to promote your website #26 - Specials and Promotions

Everyone likes to get a deal. You might consider having a special promotions section on your Web site. You’ll want to change your promotion fairly frequently and let your site visitors know: “We change our specials every week. Bookmark our site and keep checking back!”

You might employ permission marketing here as well: “We change our specials every week. Click here if you’d like to be notified when we update” or “Click here to receive our e-specials weekly.” If you send e-specials via e-mail, make sure you give them a reason to visit your site
and provide the appropriate hypertext links in the e-mail.

Make it easy to have your site visitors tell their friends about your specials. Have a “Tell a friend about this special” button placed next to each one of your special promotions. You can leverage the viral marketing with an incentive: “Tell three friends about our special and be included in a drawing for (something appropriate for your target market).”

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Ways to promote your website #25 - Everyone Wants the Best Price—Coupons and Discounts

Offer coupons and discount vouchers that can be printed from your site. You can change the coupon daily or weekly to encourage repeat visits.

People will come back to your site again and again if they know they can find good deals there. This is a great strategy to use in conjunction with a free sample giveaway. If people liked the sample, give them a coupon to purchase the regular version at a discount. If they like the regular version, they may purchase it again at full price or recommend the product to a friend. You can also ask people if they want to be notified by e-mail when you update the coupons on your Web site. This once again gives you the opportunity to present them with new information about your business. Offering coupons is a great idea if you have a physical location as well as a Web site. These can be your loss leader to get customers to come into your store.

You can develop a coupon banner ad that links to your site, where the coupon can be printed. The banner ads should be placed on sites frequented by your target market. You can trade coupons with noncompeting sites that target the same market you do. Your coupon on their site links to your site, and their coupon on your site links to their site.

By offering coupons from your Web site, you also cut down your overhead cost because people are printing the coupons on their own printers, thus not using your paper. Remember that you should have terms and conditions on the coupons that are available for printing.

For example, you should have an expiration date. Someone could print a coupon, then visit your store in a year and try to use it. You should try to have the expiration date close to the release of the coupon. This will entice the visitor to use the coupon more quickly and then come back for more coupons.

We are seeing an increase in the number of coupon-related sites that are appearing on the Internet. If you offer coupons from your site, it benefits you to be listed on these types of sites. If you are not aiming for a national appeal, you should search to find out if there are coupon networks in the geographic location that you are targeting.

Coupons provide ideal viral marketing opportunities—for example, “Send this coupon to a friend.”

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Ways to promote your website #24 - Give a Taste of Your Product with Sample Giveaways

Use a traditional marketing approach and give away free samples of your product from your Web site. After giving away the samples, follow up with an e-mail. Ask the people who received a sample what they thought of it, if they had any problems, and if they have any questions.

Direct the samplers back to your Web site for more information and discounts on purchasing the regular version of the product. If you have a number of products, you might consider alternating your free samples.

Ask if visitors would like to be notified by e-mail when you change your free sample. This gives you permission to e-mail the visitors on a regular basis to remind them about the sample. You also get to update them with new information regarding your Web site, your products, or your company. This can entice them to visit your site again. Make sure you include your signature file in your e-mail message.

Free samples also provide a great viral marketing opportunity.

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Ways to promote your website #23 - Free Stuff—Everyone Loves It

Giving things away is a great way to increase traffic—everybody likes a freebie. If you give something different away each week, you are sure to have a steady stream of repeat traffic. When you have freebies or giveaways on your site, your pages can also be listed and linked from the many sites on the Internet that list places where people can receive free stuff. To find these listings of free stuff, simply go to a search engine and do a search on “Free Stuff Index” or “Free Stuff Links.” You will be amazed at how many people are giving things away online.

You don’t have to give something away to everyone. You could simply have a drawing every week. You could then ask entrants if they would like you to notify them of the winner, which again gives you permission to e-mail them.

If you want to bring only people from your target market to your site, then don’t give away mainstream items as screen savers, shareware games, utilities, and so on. Try to give away something that only people interested in your industry would want. If you don’t care what traffic comes your way, and any traffic is good traffic, then give away useful things that everybody needs.

Try to have your logo and URL displayed on the item.
For example, a neat screen saver can be made that displays your logo and URL. When this is made available as a download, there is no handling or shipping charges associated with it. If your freebie is something that has your URL on it and is something that is generally kept around a computer, it reminds and encourages people to visit your site. A mouse pad displaying your URL is a good example.

You should change your freebie often and let your site visitors know how often you do this. Something like “We change our free offer every single week! Keep checking back” or “Click here to be notified by e-mail when we update” also works well.

Freebies provide ideal viral marketing opportunities as well. Have a “Tell a friend about this” button near the freebie so site visitors can quickly and easily tell their friends.

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Ways to promote your website #22 - Use a What’s New Page for Repeat Visits

A What’s New page can mean different things to different sites. For some, this page updates users with the summaries of the most recent product or service offerings. Your What’s New page should be accessible from your home page so that when people visit your site they do not have to search through your entire site to find out what is new.

If visitors repeatedly find interesting additions in the What’s New section, they will come back to your site on a regular basis to check out what’s new. Without this, they might visit and search through your site and find that nothing is new and they just wasted 20 minutes looking for anything new. Here you can leverage this repeat-traffic generator with permission marketing by asking if visitors would like to be notified via e-mail when you’ve added something to the What’s New section. It’s all about getting their permission to send them e-mail and therefore include them in your community.

Another approach is for the What’s New page to cover What’s New in your industry or What’s New in your product line. Whatever it is, you should always make sure that it is of interest to your target market. Again, you can ask your visitors if they would like to be notified when updates are made to this section of your Web site. This once again gives you permission to e-mail them and present them with new information that might make them want to come back to your site again.

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Ways to promote your website #21 - Encourage Repeat Visits

Just as you would want customers to visit your place of business frequently, so too in cyberspace you want customers and potential customers to visit often. The more often people visit your site, the more likely they are to purchase something. You want to ensure that the techniques you use to get repeat traffic are appropriate for your target market.

For example, if you were having a contest on your site targeted toward children, you would not want to give away a bread-maker as the prize. That would be fine, however, if your target market is families or homemakers. You want to offer something of interest to the market you are targeting.

If your target is business professionals, then something along the lines of the latest pocket PC that they could use in their everyday business would be appropriate.

If your target market is skiers, then a weekend in Vail might work. You should always remember your objectives when doing any form of online marketing, because you don’t want to do something inappropriate that might drive your target audience away from your site.

I am a big proponent of leveraging everything you do for maximum marketing results. Almost every repeat traffic generator provides an opportunity for permission marketing and also for viral marketing. Make sure you review the repeat traffic generators you use on your site and incorporate the right permission and viral marketing elements.

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Ways to promote your website #20 - Storyboarding Your Web Site

Next you are ready to visualize and plan your Web site—integrate your objectives, your target market information, the findings of the competitive analysis, and your own ideas as well as those of others. This is done through the process of storyboarding. The storyboard is the foundation of your Web site. Consider it the architectural plan or blueprint of your site. It should show you, on paper, the first draft of the content and layout of your site. It gives you the chance to review the layout and make changes before development begins.
A Web site storyboard can be thought of much like a hierarchical organizational chart in a business. In a typical business structure, the executives sit on top, followed by their subordinates, and so on.

Think of your Web site storyboard like this: You begin with your main page or home page at the top. Under the main page you have your central navigation bar. Each of the navigation options should be available on each page, regardless of where the user is on your site. Within each of the sections listed on your main navigation bar, you’re going to have subsections, and so on.

The storyboard can be created with a software program, with sheets of paper, or with any other mechanism. Quite often when we are starting out we’ll start with yellow sticky notes on a wall. Very low tech, but it works! It is very easy to get a visual of the navigation structure and easy to fill in the content pages (one per sticky note) in the appropriate places. It is also very easy to edit—simply move a sticky from one section to another or add another sticky note for a new page.

Once your first draft is done, you need to go back and review the proposed Web site against each and every one of your objectives, each and every one of your target markets (needs, wants, expectations, WOW factor), and each and every one of your products and services. You need to review the proposed Web site from the competitive analysis viewpoint.

Have you included all the must-haves and left an opportunity for the elements that fit into the would-be-nice category? Will the proposed Web site beat the competition? Review the proposed site with your stakeholders and a few members of your target market. Get feedback from your various target markets and fine-tune the blueprint until you’ve got it right. It is easy (and cheap) at this stage to add new content and change the layout.

When developing your storyboard, remember to keep the layout of your site simple and logical, as this is how it will be laid out for users once the site is completed. Do not move forward with the Web development process until you have finalized the layout of the storyboard, ensuring that the site will be easy for your target audience to use and that it provides all the elements you need to achieve your objectives. Review your storyboard to ensure that all of the target markets have been addressed.

If you want to address the media, be sure to include a Media Center. If you want to attract potential investors, be sure to include a comprehensive Investor Relations section. Give consideration to viral and permission marketing elements that can be included on your site and where they can best be positioned. We discuss these elements in depth in later.

Once you have the completed and approved storyboard, it becomes the blueprint for construction of your site. You are now ready to move on to the actual construction.

Stay tuned... The next we discusses some of the content and design elements of your site.

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Ways to promote your website #19 - Using Competitor Sites to Your Advantage

One of your Web site’s objectives is to always meet and beat the competition in terms of search engine rankings and Web site content.

To do so, you must understand exactly what it is your competition is doing. Take the time to research competitors and compare them on an element-by element basis.

There are a number of ways you can identify your competition online. You can find your competition by conducting searches with the appropriate keywords, seeing which competing Web sites rank highly in the major search engines and directories. Similarly, there are many other resources online you can use to research your competition, including industry-specific Web portals and directories.

Once you have gathered a list of competing Web sites, analyze them element by element to determine which Web elements your competitors include on their sites and how their sites compare to one another. You want to look at what types of content they are providing to your target market.

Other components you should analyze include the visual appeal of your competitors’ sites, content, ease of navigation, search engine friendliness, interactivity, and Web site stickiness, or what they do to keep people on their site. This information can provide you with details on what you need to incorporate into your site to meet and beat the competition.

You have to realize that your online competition is different from your offline competition. Online you are competing with all organizations that have an online presence and sell the same products and services you do. When doing your competitive analysis online, you want to select the “best of breed”—those fantastic Web sites of organizations selling the same products and/or services you do—no matter where theyare physically located.

When we do competitive analysis for clients, we reverse engineer or dissect the competing Web site from a number of different perspectives. Generally, you will choose five or six of the absolute best competing Web sites. Then you start to build a database using Excel or a table in Word.

Start with the first competing Web site and from your review start to add database elements to the first column.

Note any types of content,target markets defined, repeat traffic techniques used, viral marketing techniques used, search engine friendliness features used, download time for different types of Internet connections, cross-platform compatibility, cross-browser compatibility, innovativeelements, etc.

When you have dissected the first competing Web site and have noted appropriate database elements for comparative purposes,move on to the second competing Web site. Go through the same process, but adding only different or new elements to what you alreadyhave in your database. Continue building the first column of your database by continuing through all the sites you want to include in yourcompetitive analysis.

The next step is to develop a column for each of the sites you want to include in the competitive analysis. Add two more columns—one for your existing Web site to see how your site stacks against the competition and the second for future planning purposes.

The next step is to go back and compare each site against the criteria for column one, noting appropriate comments. For content information you want to note whether the particular site has the specific content and how well it was presented. For download speeds note specific minute and seconds for each type of connection.

For each repeat traffic generator, you may choose to include details or just Yes/No. Continue with this process until you have completed thedatabase, including your own existing site.

By this time you should have a good feel for the users’ experience when they visit your competitors’ sites. Now you are ready to do your planning. In the last column of your database, review each of the elements in the first column, review your notes in your competitive analysis,and where appropriate, complete the last column by categorizing each of the elements as one of the following:

• A—Need to have; essential, critical element; can’t live without
• B—Nice to have if it doesn’t cost too much
• C—Don’t need; don’t want at any price.

Now you have done your competitive analysis. Having completed your identification of your objectives, target markets, products and services,and your competitive analysis, you are ready to develop your storyboard or architectural plan or blueprint for your site.

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Ways to promote your website #18 - The Fundamentals

Once you have clearly defined your online objectives, your target markets, and the products and/or services you want to promote online, you are ready to move on to the next phase of planning your Web site—doing your competitve analysis.

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Ways to promote your website #17 - Products and Services

It is important to define the products and services you want to promote on-line. Sometimes the products and services you offer off-line in your physical store are the same as in your online store, but quite often thereare differences.

Business owners who have a bricks-and-mortar location sometimes assume that their online storefront is an extension of their offline storefront and that they will provide exactly the same products and servicesonline as offline. In some cases, fewer products are offered on-line than in the physical store. This is often the case if you are test marketing, butalso if some of the products you sell in your physical location are not appropriate for online sales because of competitive pricing or shippinglogistics.

In other cases, your online store might offer more products or services than the bricks-and-mortar location. For example, your offline bookstore might not offer shipping or gift wrapping. If your online bookstoredoes not offer these services, you will lose a lot of business to your online competition. When a site’s product offerings include items that are appropriate for gift giving, it is essential to also offer wrapping,customized cards, shipping to multiple addresses, and shipping options.

The consumer is “king” and is very demanding. You have to meet and beat your consumers’ expectations online to garner market share. People shopping for gifts online are looking for convenience, and the site thatprovides the greatest convenience and the greatest products at the lowest prices will be the winner.

Web sites and Internet marketing strategies differ depending on the product or service being sold. A company that markets toys has to develop a fun and interactive Web site that is attractive to children.The Web site should also give children a way to tell their friends about the site as well as a reason to return to the site. The toy company might want to offer an electronic postcard service whereby childrencan send a colorful and musical message to their friends and tell them about the site.

Another idea is to provide a “wish list” service. Children can make a list of the toys they want, and this list is sent to the parents via e-mail. The parents can then make better informed purchasing decisions andmight become loyal to the toy company’s site. Likewise, some toy companies offer reminder services that send an e-mail message to visitors who have registered and completed the appropriate questionnaire toremind them of a child’s birthday and to offer suggestions for gift ideas. Once again, this promotes sales and repeat traffic and increases customer loyalty.

In another example, a software development company might want to provide downloadable demo versions of its software products and allow people to review its products for a specified period of time beforethey make a purchasing decision. When consumers decide to buy the software, a robust e-commerce system needs to be in place to handle the orders.

A travel agency’s Web site might include features such as an opt-in mailing list to send people information on weekly vacation specials or a page on the site detailing the latest specials. The travel agency’s sitemight also want to include downloadable or streaming video tours of vacation resorts to entice visitors to buy resort vacation packages. Another idea is to have a system in place to help customers book vacations,rent cars, and check for available flights. The travel agency might also want to store customer profiles so they can track where particular customers like to sit on the plane, the type of hotel room they usuallybook, and their credit card information to make bookings more efficient for the customer and the agency.

If you are marketing a service online, it is difficult to visually depict what your service is all about. Visitors to your site need some reassurance that the service you are selling them is legitimate and valuable.Therefore, you might wish to include a page on your site that lists testimonials from well-known customers. This gives prospective customers more confidence about purchasing your service.

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Ways to promote your website #16 - Target Markets

It is important to define every one of your target markets. Your Web site is designed for them!

For each and every one of your target markets, you need to determine

• Their needs
• Their wants
• Their expectations.

For each and every one of your target markets, you should also try to
determine an appropriate “WOW” factor.

What can you provide for them on your Web site that will WOW them?

Your objective should beto exceed the target market’s expectations. Your main target market might be your potential customer, but other target markets might include existing customers, or the media, or those who influence the buying decision for your potential customers, associates, or affiliates.

When you look at—really look at—potential customers versus existing customers, you realize that what these two groups want and need from your Web site are probably different.

• Someone who is an existing customer knows your company. Your products, your business practices, and the like are not a priority for them on your site.
• A potential customer needs these things before giving you their first order.

“Customer” is such a huge target market; it needs to be broken down into segments.

Every business is different. If you were a hotel, for example, your customer target market might be broken down further into:

• Business travelers
• Vacation travelers
• Family travelers
• Meeting planners
• Handicapped travelers
• Tour operators
• Groups.

You get the idea. You need to segment your customer target market and then, for each segment, you need to do an analysis of needs, wants, and expectations.

If the media is part of your target market, make sure you plan to have a media center or if you want to reach potential investors,make sure you have an investor relations page.

If you intend to market children’s products, your Web site should be colorful and the text simple and easy to understand in keeping with what appeals to your target market. Chances are, fun-looking graphics will be used extensively on your site to draw children further into it.

If you market financial services, your Web site requires a more professional approach. Your graphics must convey a clean appearance, and the text should be informative and written in a business like fashion.

As this example demonstrates, the content and tone of your site must be tailored to your target market. After all, this is the best way to attract the attention of the people who are interested in purchasing your product or service.

Another aspect to consider when designing your Web site is your target market’s propensity to utilize the latest technologies and the configuration they are likely to be using. An online business that markets custom, streaming multimedia presentations expects its clientele to be technically inclined.

These clients are more likely to have the latest software, advanced Web browser technologies, and faster machines.

On the other hand, clients of a vendor who sells gardening supplies online might be less likely to have fully embraced the latest technologies.

Most people looking for these products are connecting from home rather than from their workplace.

• They might have a slow dial-up connection to the Internet, slower machines, and older software.
• They might still be using the Web browser that was originally installed on their system, simply because they are uncomfortable downloading the latest version of the browser, are unaware of the more recent version, or are uninterested in downloading a large file.

If your target market includes this demographic, be careful with your use of Java, Flash, and large graphic files.

What does this mean for developing and designing your Web site?

Well, streaming multimedia developers can design their Web sites with more graphics and dynamic multimedia effects because their clients expect to be impressed when they visit the developer’s site.

If vendors of gardening supplies designed their sites similarly, many of their clients might be alienated because the site would be too slow to load. They might take their business elsewhere. The gardening supplies site requires a more basic design with less concentration on large graphics and multimedia effects and more focus on presenting information.

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Ways to promote your website #15 - A Final Word on Objectives

Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want your Web site to achieve.

You obviously want to create a number of different objectives for your site, but many of the objectives you set can work together to make your Web site complete. Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing strategy to help you achieve them.

Successful marketing on the Web is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the information that is pertinent to the market you are attempting to enter.

Read everything you can find, and examine the findings of industry experts.

Your Web site objectives form a critical element in your Web site design and development, as you will see in the next chapter on Web site design and development methodology.

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Ways to promote your website #14 - Including “Stickiness” Elements

To get your visitors to visit your site often and have them visit a number of pages every time they visit, you need to provide interesting , interactive, and relevant content.

You want to have your site visitors feel as if they are part of your online community and to want to make your site one of the sites they visit every day.

You create “stickiness” by including many elements that keep your visitors’ attention. Your site can have a daily advice column, descriptions of your many products, a discussion forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to your products, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest that site visitors can enter.

The combination of these elements makes a site sticky.

You want your site to be a resource people return to often and not a one-time event.

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Ways to promote your website #13 - Creating Loyalty among Visitors

The way to create loyalty among visitors is to provide them with some incentives for joining your online community and provide them with proof that you really appreciate their business.

You can do this by having a members-only section of your Web site that has special offers for
them as well as discounts or freebies.

When people sign up to join your members-only section, you can ask for their permission and their e-mail address to send them e-mails regarding company or product promotions
and news.

People like to do business with people who appreciate their business. We are seeing a real growth in loyalty programs online.

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Ways to promote your website #12 - Using Permission Marketing

You always want your company to be seen as upholding the highest ethical standards and being in compliance with anti-spam legislation, so it is important not to send out unsolicited e-mail—or spam—promoting your company or its products.

This is why it’s important to develop a mailing list of people who have given you permission to send them messages, including company news and promotions.

When you’re developing your Web site, an objective should be to get as many visitors to your site as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission to be included in your mailings.

You can do this by having numerous ways for your visitors to sign up to receive newsletters, notices of changes to your Web site, coupons, or new giveaways.

Stay tuned, we has many examples of ways to encourage visitors to request to be added to your e-mail list.

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