There are hundreds of ways to market your website and they do not have to break the bank. As a Business Owner I know how hard it is to stay ahead of the Marketing Game! I know what you are saying, “who has the time or money to start another marketing strategies?” Well, guess what it doesn’t have to be time consuming or bank breaking!

I have put together a list of low cost or free web marketing tools you can use right away to increase your web presence, get better search engine rankings and drive quality leads to your website.

1. Your email signature line: If you think about how many people you email-existing customers, vendors & new customers; you will be amazed at the marketing potential. You can add a simple link or if you’re using and HTML email editor, you can add a banner ad (a simple search engine search for “HTML coding” can give you free information on how to create the code).

2. Create your Own Blog: If you are avoiding this marketing strategy than you are loosing potential customers & website traffic. A simple paragraph a week with pertinent industry information and links to your website can turn a visitor into a hot lead. While you can outsource this task you can also easily maintain this task yourself. Here are some free blog hosts:
Blogger.com – Free to set up & customize.
WordPress.org – Free program to download & install on your web server.
Movable Type – Free & paid subscriptions available.
Live Journal – Free to set up & customize with an upgrade available.
My Space – Free to set up & customize (You should set this up in addition to a blog.)

3. Commenting on Other Blogs: A very simple way to market your website is to visit other blogs within your industry and submit comments to their blog entries. To bring traffic to your website you will need to leave intelligent comments that will draw in your potential clients and a link to your website or blog. For example: If the subject is low cost marketing, I would post… “I have put to use an Article Submission plan and it has brought me tons of business. I now offer my clients this service and you can find out more about it at www.mjondemand.com.” Just make sure you respect the blog you are commenting on. You want to give the editor and the audience good information and not annoying advertising copy.

4. Classified Ad Sites: Although some will argue that use of these websites (craigslist.com, backpage.com, etc.) will bring you some spam, it is worth it to increase your web presence for free. The ads on Craigslist.com come up in the top search engines when potential clients search for the keywords in the ad and drive free traffic to your website. Also because of the high traffic to these sites you will receive a great high quality back link to your site.

*Bonus Tip:To limit the spam you receive, do not put your email address; just put your website address. The spammers are less likely to go to your website to find your email address.

5. Article Submission: Another free way to increase your web presence and your search engine rankings is to submit articles to article submission sites or directories. Your articles are put out there for thousands of customers, publishers and editors to view and may be selected for media publishing and that is the most cost-effective marketing there is!

6. Link Submission: With the same premise as article submission this will increase your web presence and search engine ranking. But remember don’t buy in to those link blasts. Search engines only like back links that are created over a period of time.

7. eBooks: If you are a consultant with only services to sell this will allow you to get away from selling your time. Imagine sleeping and making money! If you have a proven method or information that can help your customer why not write it down and sell it. There are tons of free information on how to go about this process or you can enlist a company to help you manage the process.

8. Offer something for Free: Want to increase site traffic or your contact list, offer a free product. You can offer a mini eBook, a coupon or a list of free sites/links that will help your client. If you keep a list or free article or eBook on your site chances are customers will come back to it and will provide more traffic to your site and in turn increase your search engine rankings.

9. Newsletters/Auto Responders: Depending on the level of design and advertising copy you can maintain these services yourself with little to no cost. Constant Contact and iContact have made these tasks easier, although you must watch your spam count with these programs. When I create email newsletters for my clients there are many factors that go into the creation to assure a low spam grade. But the best thing to do is to watch your click-through and open rates closely.

If you do not have a list yet I would start by sending simple emails with tips and tricks of your industry and start building. Add a newsletter sign up page to your website and a link to your email signature. Once you have a large list, you can use a database manager with reporting features to send out your emails to a larger database. Outsourcing this task is a great idea, but make sure you start out small and build your list before you hire a separate company to maintain this task for you. Auto Responders can help you give e-courses, mini eBooks and other free information to your customers without having to send it each time an order is placed.

10. Market to Your Inactive Clients: You worked with John Doe six months ago and you haven’t heard from him since completion of your last project. Give John Doe a reason to use your services again. Offer them a “Gold Client Discount” or a “Customer Appreciation Sale” in an e-mail or even better with a friendly phone call. Set up a special web page for them to visit so your client feels like they are really getting the red carpet treatment.

*Bonus Tip: Do you have a product? Create a separate splash page that is dedicated to that product and market it separately. Each one of your products should have special attention and separate marketing plans. Yahoo!, Google & Microsoft have website building programs that will allow you to build a splash page for free!

All of these tips can be done & maintained by you or your staff. ON Demand Virtual Services has used all these tactics and more and can help you to implement them. Go to www.MJOnDemand.com today to learn more. If you need some guidance but are not ready to hire a virtual assistant yet you can get fabulous advice from the eZine Queen’s product “Online Success Blueprint Workshop.”