The most annoying thing about looking for inspiration is having to wade through dozens of superficial articles in which promotional ideas are summed up in tips like: create a blog, do social media well, so that at the end you’re left with only two or three good ideas to learn from.
When you’re probably actually looking practical examples to draw inspiration from, as well as tips and lessons you can apply immediately.
That’s why my goal for this article is simple:
1) to walk away with at least 15 examples of website promotion that you can immediately adapt to your business;
2) understand why and how certain methods work, so you can come up with new ideas on your own in the future;
If you just thought there were no free ways to promote a website, you’re absolutely right. There are very, very few that meet this criterion.
I’ve called the site promotion ideas in this category free because you don’t pay a certain amount of money for each person you bring to your site, such as the cost per click of an ad.
Instead, you still have to invest some resources into promoting your site, even if it’s just your time and effort.
Website promotion idea #20 – Optimize your site for Google to reduce your promotion costs to almost 0
Hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of potential customers visiting your site month after month without you paying. This is the dream of every entrepreneur or marketer.
Well SEO (search engine optimization), has all these benefits:
1. Free traffic
When your website appears in the organic results, you are not charged every time someone clicks on the link to your website, as is the case with paid promotion through Facebook or Google Adwords
Especially nowadays search engine optimization isn’t as technical as it used to be, and anyone with a little patience can learn it.
2. Constant traffic, month after month
Optimising a website is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote yourself online. Let’s make a comparison with Facebook promotion to better understand what I mean.
Facebook, we put a lot of effort into publishing the most creative content that is only seen for a short period of time. After a few days, that post is forgotten and we have to start the cycle all over again.
Instead, a site optimized for search engines requires only initial effort until it appears in the top results.
Then it will continue to attract traffic month after month without you paying for it.
Also read: SEO Guide – Learn how to optimize your website for search engines
Website promotion idea #19 – Create engaging content for both people and journalists
One of the best ways to promote your website is by creating content that is USEFUL but also INTERESTING to people.
At unosoft, we have created an interactive map of entrepreneurship in Romania that has earned us several dozen mentions in the press and over 7000 visits per day.
It allows you to see the number of companies in each county, who are the biggest employers and the most popular fields of activity, and easily compare everything between counties.
Why did it work so well?
The map is useful and interesting for everyone: both for journalists to whom we have provided an interesting story and for the general public who are interested in the state of entrepreneurship in Romania.
Website promotion idea #18 – Use the promotion exchange to make your website more popular
Everyone creates content, whether it’s photos or videos on Facebook or YouTube, or blog articles. 59.3 million articles are published worldwide every month, and that’s just on WordPress-based sites!
Simply put, we fight for people’s attention and trust.
That’s why the best way to short-circuit gaining customers’ attention and trust is to associate with people or brands that have already succeeded in doing so.
Through an exchange of promotion we can enter into various strategic partnerships with those who have the same target audience as we do.
And here I’m not talking about competition. On the contrary, to companies with services/products complementary to ours.
The costs are almost 0. The only investment is time, to find the right partners and to contact them.
And the benefits are far superior to almost any other method of promotion because, after all, it’s a referral from a company or person that people already trust.
Example of website promotion by exchange promotion
Let’s say you sell women’s bracelets and someone sells handbags. You can make a partnership whereby the company with complementary services that you have discounts on bracelets. Or maybe put a link in the footer of their site to your site.
Or if you have a blog, you can link to other blogs similar to yours and others can do the same.
(Photo source: sabicornovac.ro)
Website promotion idea #17 – Guest blogging
Basically, guest blogging involves publishing content – infographics, articles, studies, etc.- on other websites/blogs.
To promote unosoft website, over the years I have published articles on some of the biggest marketing and entrepreneurship websites in Romania.
On Republica alone, we managed to attract over 1500 visitors from a single article. Thanks to Republica :).
What you need to do to make guest blogging work
1) Create quality articles
The owners of other sites receive at least a few dozen requests for guest posts each week. They have no reason to publish an article that their audience wouldn’t appreciate.
2) Be persistent in contacting bloggers/website owners
Some site owners no longer accept guest posts and prefer not to respond to anyone. Others read the email and forget to respond. Or sometimes maybe the email goes into spam.
That’s why at first you may need to email several bloggers or site owners until you get a few positive responses.
Website promotion idea #16 – Contests
Here are some things to keep in mind when using this method of site promotion.
1) Offer prizes relevant to your target audience
If you sell Chinese massage therapy classes and offer iPhones and tablets as prizes, you are likely to then attract a very broad target audience that may not even include your real potential customers.
And then you’ll spend money promoting yourself to people who will never buy from you.
2) Try to do more than just “Like and share”
The folks at Kigurumi – a company that sells all sorts of funny costumes – created a contest where participants had to post a picture of themselves in a Kigurumi costume at a music festival. And the participant with the most likes on the picture won various prizes.
Why this type of contest is 10x more effective than a “Like and share” contest
- The contest naturally encouraged participants to invite as many people as possible to like them. Basically, all invited people were interacting with the Kigurumi brand.
- People naturally exposed the Kigurumi brand at festivals when they took the picture for the contest.
Website promotion idea #15 – Create a video showing how your product is made
Do you have an interesting production process? Does it require special equipment? Or is it just really exciting to watch?
A video might be more powerful than a Facebook photo or a blog post.
Here’s a video about the production process of a wooden ball bearing that has almost 2 million views and over 800 comments.
Website promotion idea #14 – Ask for feedback on your new products/services
With this method of promotion you shoot at least 2 rabbits at once:
1) You make people curious about your new product/service.
If your potential customers have been following you for a while (and they usually do before they buy from you for the first time), they’ll be thrilled to have the opportunity to be the first to be introduced to a new product.
2) You improve your products/services to increase your conversion rate
Customers can help you improve your product if you are a manufacturer.
Or they can help you order only products they like, avoiding situations where you get stuck with a product in stock.
Here’s an example of a company that featured product prototypes on their blog to ask for feedback
Website promotion idea #13 – Keep in touch with potential customers via email
Email remains one of the most profitable promotion channels, firstly because it’s free and secondly because people still use email a lot.
To get results with this method of promotion, we recommend two things:
1) Always test different titles to increase the open rate
At unosoft, in working with clients, we’ve seen how a small change in the headline of an email can double the open rate.
2) Give people quality content
Try not to just send newsletters trying to sell something. Identify exactly who your target audience is, what needs people have, and provide them with information to help them solve different problems.
Once you’ve earned people’s trust, they’ll naturally turn to you when they need your products or services.
By the way!
Would you like access to absolutely all of our strategies that we’ve grown people and businesses with from 0? You can access them right now if you go to this link.
Website Promotion Idea #12 – Start an Affiliate Program
How about having hundreds or thousands of people promote your site, and you only pay them when someone has bought from you?
In short, that’s what affiliation is.
All you have to do is sign up to an affiliate platform and follow a few simple instructions to start a campaign.
As investment for you is:
- Affiliate commission (the one who promotes you)
- A small percentage of affiliate platform sales that automatically intermediates payments and facilitates all affiliate-business owner interaction
But you benefit from:
- Free traffic
- Pay per results (you don’t pay unless someone bought from you)
- Hundreds/thousands of people promoting your site without 0 investment of time and money on your part
Website promotion idea #12 – Answer industry questions
One of the most effective ways to promote yourself is to help people, gain their trust before they buy from you.
And a very simple way to do that is to offer them answers or solutions to questions.
Basically, there would be 2 approaches here: either create content on your platform/website, or look for other platforms that your potential customers use to look for solutions.
If you use your platform to create content
You need to first identify the questions people have about your product/service.
You can use Keyword Planner – a free tool from Google.
If you use other platforms to answer questions
Whatever type of platform you use – Facebook groups, forums, blog comments, etc – try to avoid spam.
When someone needs specific answers to a question or problem, try to be helpful before leaving a link to your site.
Website promotion idea #11 – Promote your website at networking events
Only one thing is mandatory for any promotion idea, tactic or strategy to work: offer something valuable to people.
The same goes for a networking event. For people to visit your site, you have to give them a good enough reason.
For example, if you’ve just launched a new book, you can create a special discount coupon for people attending that event.
Or let’s say you offer graphic design services. You can ask people to leave their email address on your website, because then you’ll choose 3 attendees to create a free logo for.
Website promotion idea #10 – Collaborate with influencers for massive legitimacy and exposure
The 2 hardest things in marketing are exposing your brand to as many people as possible (at the lowest cost) and converting them into customers.
And in a world bombarded with advertisements, influencers are the ones who have already earned the trust and appreciation of a very large audience, precisely because they haven’t tried to sell anything.
That’s why they can help us both to showcase our products or services without encountering that barrier of resistance from people in the first place.
What to consider in influencer promotion
1. Identify influencers with a suitable target audience for your products or services
For example, if you’re in finance, it’s not a good idea to have a fashion influencer promote you.
2. Identify influencers who know how to integrate your brand into their content
To integrate the products of affordable clothing brand, Old Navy, Meghan Rienks created a short tutorial giving her fans outfit ideas suitable for a party.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BNsK6LJhDBx/
A less appropriate variant would have been to post a picture of her dressed in Old Navy clothes and say: “I recommend Old Navy”.
Kind of dry, isn’t it?
Website promotion idea #8 – Don’t bombard people with promotional messages, but try to integrate your product/service into the “Facebook world”
We log on to Facebook to see what our friends have been up to, to see pictures of dogs and cats, or to unwind with a meme or Times New Roman joke.
Not to actively search for products.
That’s why we shouldn’t fill our page with advertisements. Instead, we should use Facebook to make people curious about our product and earn their trust.
Here are some ideas for Facebook posts
Show the human side behind your business
https://www.facebook.com/mindvalleyinsights/photos/a.619204101449036.1073741827.330955086940607/705363729499739/?type=3
Ask for customer feedback
https://www.facebook.com/EntrepreneuressAcademy/photos/a.201225416589744.49466.198797590165860/791788467533433/?type=3
Share useful articles for customers
Show how your products are created
Use the social context
Present your product in a funny way
Website promotion idea #8 – Use Youtube – the second biggest search engine
Over 1 billion users is a pretty good reason to promote your website and business on Youtube.
In addition, Youtube itself being a search engine (even in the top 3) can help you attract relevant traffic to your site.
What types of content are most successful on YouTube
Product reviews
Think with Google found 62% of consumers use YouTube reviews before buying a product.
21 million views! And it’s not even an iPhone review.
How to
How-to videos are among the most viewed videos on Youtube.
Over 100 million hours of how-to video content was watched in 2015 and 91% of mobile users watched such videos when they needed help solving a problem Think With Google).
Site promotion idea #7 – Create your own community
A magical thing happens when you put current customers in the same place as potential ones: if you’ve helped the former, they, in turn, will help the latter, praising you in the process.
It is human nature to return an act done to us (whether pleasant or unpleasant).
And today it’s very easy to create your own community. If you have a WordPress website, you can create a forum by simply installing a module like BuddyPress.
Even better is to keep people where they already are – on Facebook. At least in my experience, most Facebook groups are untidy and full of spammy posts.
If you create and moderate a group that has a set of rules and values that are also followed, where people feel supported, you will create an “army” of fans, a group of people familiar with you and your brand. While creating a community is simple, expect it to take time. But if you provide valuable content and help people, the results will come.
Website promotion ideas – paid methods
Site promotion idea #5 – Use Google Adwords ads to quickly attract relevant traffic to your site
When we use Google, we usually have a clear intention in mind. Either we want to find out about something, or we want to directly buy a certain product or service.
That’s why, Adwords ads have a much higher conversion potential than Facebook ads for examplewhere no matter how well we target a campaign, we still can’t be sure that those people are actually interested in our product or service.
Create more targeted ads to increase conversion rates
To increase the chances that someone will buy, try creating ads with as specific text as possible that will send people to a more specific page.
For example, if you make an ad for Nike men’s sneakers doesn’t send people to a general page where they can find both men’s and women’s sneakers, in the hope that “the user will figure out how to search”.
Instead, send it to a page where it will only find men’s sneakers, only Nike.
Website promotion idea #4 – Create brand awareness at a great cost through the Google Display Network
Google Display ads are displayed as either text or banner ads (image + text) on the network’s more than two million sites.
Key benefits of Google Display are
- Fairly low promotion costs
- Contextual targeting (you can place an ad only on certain sites, which have certain content and contain certain keywords)
For example, if you deliver pizza to your home and you know that gamers are a good target audience, you may choose to display an ad on sites strictly related to gaming.
Site promotion idea #3 – Display paid ads on other sites at a much lower cost than traditional marketing channels
Here the principle is the same as with Google Display promotion, only in this case you negotiate directly with a blog/site owner to display your banner.
For example, you can talk to a well-known blogger in your niche to display your banner for a certain monthly fee.
Advantage These methods of promoting the site, in addition to fairly precise targeting, is the much lower cost.
For a competitive niche, like health for example, it can be much cheaper to negotiate ad space with a blogger than to pay 5-10 lei for a single click on Google Adwords.
To get results with this method of promotion, you need to study your customer profile well
You will need to identify some key sites they visit that are complementary to your service/product.
For example, if you sell handbags, you could identify a few bloggers who offer clothing advice.
Website promotion idea #2 – Study your customers’ profiles carefully to create effective Facebook ads
Once you know even the smallest details about your customers, you can create text and images for ads that grab their attention and target them very precisely.
For example, in the Growth Hacking course run by unosoft, we knew the following about potential customers:
- They are people between 30-50 years old
- I read marketing blogs from Romania and abroad
- They have already tried to promote themselves, but have not been successful
- They have a Facebook page that they promote
If we only stopped at the surface details, like the fact that I follow marketing blogs, we’d probably target people by interest: marketing, entrepreneurship.
And the problem with these interests is that if you’ve ever liked a Facebook page about marketing, you’re considered to be interested in marketing.
That’s why, to make sure we were only promoting to a qualified target audience, we targeted people interested in marketing AND who own a Facebook page.
Site promotion idea #1 – Use retargeting to bring back to the site those who haven’t bought yet
Retargeting is a simple promotion idea that takes no more than 10-15 minutes to implement, but can increase your website conversions by at least 30-50%.
How exactly does it work?
Simply put, through retargeting you can remind people who have already come to your site but haven’t bought your product of your product.
Most promotion platforms offer this option, with Google and Facebook being the most common.
You can read more about how to implement a retargeting campaign on Facebook here.
One thing to keep in mind when creating a retargeting ad
The main reasons people don’t buy something are either price or trust.
That’s why a retargeting ad needs to address these 2 issues.
For price, you can create an ad that offers a bonus or discount.
To gain trust, you can give them more information about your company or your products by:
- Testimonials
- Case studies
- Free guides
- Free trial
Instead of conclusions
One thing all promotional ideas have in common: they answer one of the most important questions that underlie any successful business – “Why”.
Why would I click on this ad? Ah, because now they’re offering me a discount
Why would I buy this program from you? Ah, because you offer me a free trial and I can test the product before I buy it?
How do I know your services are right for me? Hmm, because I can find case studies on your blog where I can see how you have helped other companies similar to mine.
