by Kevin Warrene VP, Sales and Marketing BMRW & Associates, Inc. February 3, 2003

Promoting your own web site should be at top of your marketing strategies. There are many ways to get traffic to your site. You could spend thousands of dollars to search engines, search engine optimization companies or keyword positioning companies or you could follow these simple tips to help you market your web site on a very small budget. These are in no particular order as I feel they are all integral parts in web site promotion.

Tell Everyone - Word of mouth is sometimes very best advertising. Always direct people to your site for more information. This is by far easiest to do as most business people interact with customers, industry specific contacts, vendors and prospects on a daily basis. Tell world... I have a web site!!!

Business Cards - This is a must. Your business cards should have your web site address on it as well as your email address.

Email Signatures - Always put your web site address in your email signature at end of your communication. You can get very creative with signatures for different features you want to talk about. I probably have at least a dozen different email signatures that I use.

Stationery - Make it a point to put your web site address on your letterhead, notepads, post-it notes....for that matter anything printed should have your web site on it.

Advertising - If you are spending money advertising on TV, radio, print or online you need to make sure that your web site address is listed. You should want to drive this targeted traffic to your site.

Linking - Several search engines are starting to use link popularity to begin to rank your web site in search results. If would be in your best interests to find sites that are industry related to yours and work on reciprocal links. Ask your vendors about a link to your site. Work on getting linked to any possible site that would have relevant content to your site.

Customers - I feel very strongly that you need to notify all of your customers that you can about your web site. This can be with a direct mail piece, a flyer at your checkout, a flyer in their statement or an email. Your customer can continue to come back to web site 24/7 to find out what is going on at your company.

But controversy must be chosen wisely and carefully. Not just any controversy will do. You must pick a controversy that will serve you well.

To ignite a controversy, you must first point out a threat to public. Second, you must identify villain responsible for that threat. Third, you must position your company as hero that opposes threat and villain.

All of this must be done subtly. The public must never see your company pulling strings. If you appear to be setting up a straw man just to knock it down, you will lose credibility rather than gain it.

Let’s begin with task of finding, isolating and identifying a risk to public. The place to start is with your product or service. What problem does it solve? Whom does it serve?

All business is a matter of solving a problem for someone. A plumber solves problems of leaking faucets and back-up sewers. A tax attorney solves problems of IRS audits and unsheltered income. A convenience store solves problem of needing quick purchase of a quart of milk.

Every company solves at least one problem. Spend some time analyzing problems your company solves every day. Make a list. Go over list with your employees or co-workers. Uncover every problem or potential problem that your company can handle.

Beside each listed problem, list categories of customers or clients that would use your service to solve these problems. Include not only current categories, but also categories you believe you should be reaching, but aren’t.

Don’t worry about going overboard. Later on, you can always scratch out any categories that don’t make sense.

For now, just brainstorm.

The next step is to weigh each of these identified problems as a true threat to public. We do this by asking ourselves three questions about each problem:

1. Is this a problem that will truly create an intense concern among our consumers?