I want to follow up on a few discussions that have been floating around the Search Engine Marketing community.
The conversation started at Patrick Sexton’s Seoish.com.
How do you market a website on a limited budget?
I took it a step deeper. Below is how I would market a product online, with limited funds.
1. Content is still king – If you have nothing to say, then consumers do not want to visit. Paying visitors to come to a bad site is a poor investment. Clean up the content on the site, by giving the users what they want. Create link-worthy, non-sales content for users. Good content creates good links.
Cost – Hours of Writing
2. Contribute to the online community – By getting involved in online discussions, a buzz will be created. Of course, this only happens if you have something worthy to say. Commenting on a blog by trying to sell your product, does not create buzz. Research social sites, tagging and other Web 2.0 sites and find discussions to contribute to.
Cost – Hours of Web Searching
3. Give the product away – Find the most vocal, excited, web-friendly customers and give them your product. If you are confident in your product and they enjoy it like you know they should, then they will quickly spread the word. Find the driest tender (per PyroMarketing) by going back to step 2.
Cost – Expense of giving away product
4. Start Spending on 2nd tier search engines - The cost per conversion is usually very low with smaller sponsored search options. This should provide a stronger ROI, and provide you with the funds needed to invest in Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search.
Cost – Low Cost, High ROI
5. Open up a Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search account - Follow steps from prior post (Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Pay-Per-Click Advertisers).
Cost – Great value when done properly, but initial funds are required to get started
Tags: Google, PPC, Social Media, website
June 8th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Thank you for this valuable information.
What 2nd tier search engines do you recommend for #4?
June 9th, 2007 at 3:03 am
If “Content is King” then I guess that the major Article Directories are the Palaces in which the King may reside. Writing and posting articles is probably the best free method of building both links and traffic.
This is very hard work and has to be persisted with for long enough to build your mailing list and daily traffic to your target levels-typically a few months
Alex
June 11th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Sarah,
As far as 2nd tier, I think MSN / Live.com is a great solution.
Although, many probably debate that it is a 2nd tier. MSN only gets about less then 10% of search engine traffic.
Ask.com gets less then 5%. Although they both have little traffic compared to Google, the ROI should be pretty good.
I would start with MSN and Ask.com and see how that pans out for you. It will give you a chance to tweak your ads and keyword list, before investing the big dollars in Google.
December 15th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Unique content is king! As a directory owner, one of my main concerns is duplicate content. I have found one company, Unique content wizard, that probably does the best job of all of the auto submission services.