How to market on the internet?

[drpflores]

I'm trying to start a business, I have a website I just need people to be interested and purchase the products. How can I introduce the products or the website for people to be interested and purchase the products?

[Heather M]

What is your website? I would be happy to take a look at your products!

[Hooshmand]

Well, there are literally thousands of methods and techniques that help you market your website. In my personal point of view, I think you should start with one of them and dig into it until you succeed and then you can move on to the next method.

I would like to mention some of the most popular methods for marketing your website:

1. Search Engine Marketing: Getting traffic from search engines which consists of 2 parts:
A) Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Getting free traffic
B) Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: Paying to get traffic.

2. E-Mail Marketing: Getting traffic by sending e-mails to your contacts list. A list of your friends and people who requested information from you. Do Not Spam!

3. Article Marketing: Getting traffic from the articles you have written and submitted to Article Direcotries. Actually from the links in the resource or bio box at the bottom of your articles, If allowed. Do Not Spam!

4. Forum Marketing: Getting traffic from your signature links attached to your forum posts, if allowed. Do Not Spam!

5. Network Marketing: Getting traffic from your profile at Network websites such as MySpace, MyBloglog, BlogCatalog and so on. If allowed. Do Not Spam!

6. Blogging and Blog Marketing. Getting traffic from your blog.

7. Word of Mouth Marketing. Getting traffic through telling your family members, friends and colleagues about your website.

And much much more!!!

I hope it would be helpful!

[Sharing Mind]

there is so many ways to promote biz online. even there are some free ways that is quite effective but it depends on your products and your creativity, expertise and skill. these things all require knowledge. so if you need to learn some of that you can check out my site.

[Ego Fatigo]

Firstly, are you sure that customers want your products? (Have you done the market research? Wordtracker.com is one way of doing so.) Secondly, and if that's the case, use content to a) educate your site visitors about your products and b) get the search engines to list your site - a list of products is just not going to get listed on Google, say, unless you are a big, established site like Amazon.

So, create content - lots of it - and keep on doing so. The content will attract search engines and educate your customers (and it also helps build trust).

Content can be articles or even videos - just make it useful (the free ebook Make Your Content PREsell is an invaluable read, in this regard - http://www.site-buildit.com/mycps.html)

[Johnny B]

This site has a permanent website listing basis for you:
http://www.search-the-world.com

By listing your website details on a search index like this it gets spidered throughout the Internet better increasing your overall website search results in the search engines. People find your site better when they enter a search term.

Also this site has PERMANENT website listings so you don't have to update on a regular basis like most other sites. Choose the right category and target your viewers. It always takes some time for the main search engines to update you into their databases. But this is the best way into them. There's around 750 different categories to choose from to target your website listing.

http://www.search-the-world.com

You normally get listed in a day or two.

[Geoffrey Curtis]

In most cases companies will charge a fee to optimize your website for the search engines. This makes your website more appealing to the searches and also gives your better ranking.
I know of another product call SEO Godfather. It does the same thing without the cost of hiring an outside company.
It can be found at http://www.thebulkpro.com

[happybrain814]

As others have stated, this is a big question that many, many people ask. There are lots of methods to online/internet marketing, and there's no one perfect answer: Any given method or combination of tactics can work brilliantly for one site and flounder miserably for the next.

You could seek out an online marketer or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professional for hire to help you. There's certainly a cost associated with this, but experience in this area is worth a great deal.

If you were my client, here's what I'd recommend:

1) Answer these two questions to identify your target audience and begin to narrow your online marketing focus - the more specifically you can answer these questions, the better:

a) Who is the ideal customer for your product(s)?

b) How do these ideal customers use the Internet?

As an example, if your answer to 1a was something like "Teenage girls in the USA" and 1b was "Shopping, updating their MySpace page, Twitter, etc." then you can see you pretty quickly get a general idea where you should be marketing.


2) What can you give away to your customers?

Everyone likes freebies, and especially when they can receive something they value at no cost - the keys here are "value" (it has to be valuable to the customer, not necessarily to you) and "no cost" (you can ask for something in return, but it shouldn't be money).

For example, some companies will send samples of their products to you - in exchange for an email address they use to follow-up and send additional announcements / information. It could be a "free" catalog, it could be coupons - these are generic examples of course. For a website, though, obtaining someone's email address (and their permission to email them) can be a very powerful tool in your marketing toolbox.

3) How optimized is your website?

It's great that you have a website - have you confirmed that it is easy to navigate, is it "findable" by all the major search engines, is the content compelling to your would-be customers? Any marketing success you have will be quickly erased if your website isn't solid.

4) Take it off-line

Starting any website is a big deal - be sure to tap everyone you know for help, even just visiting the site and offering suggestions can be a life-saver (see #3 above). Send an email to everyone you know inviting them to your website, and ask them to do the same.

Again, these are my basic suggestions in the absence of knowing your specific products, website, etc.

In my opinion, the critical steps are: Know as much as you can about your ideal customer, then try to get your products and/or website in front of them.

Regards,

Jason