In the first part of this article I explained that if you want to grow your online customer base then you must build a good stream of incoming traffic to your web site. We covered Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, and Article Marketing. In Part Two we now look at Free Ebooks, Viral Marketing, Classified Advertising, and Advertising Swaps.
4. Free Ebooks
Ebooks are books that are made available in an electronic format. The beauty of ebooks is they cost virtually nothing to produce and distribute. Ebooks initially became popular as the perfect format for information products being sold and delivered online, but they have now been recognized as a very effective resource for building traffic.
After you have written an ebook you can give it away to visitors as a reward for subscribing to your mailing list or newsletter. Your ebook for traffic building does not need to be the same number of pages as a full-length book. Many ebooks being used as free incentives are in the range of 12 to 25 pages.
You can even recruit related businesses and web sites to give away your ebook to their customers. The other site benefits because their visitors get something for free. And you benefit because you reach new readers with your information including a link to your web site.
Many ebook authors include a few advertising and affiliate links towards the end of their ebooks which can lead to additional revenue, especially if their free ebooks are heavily distributed.
5. Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is any advertising method that propagates itself. It is built on the concept of a message spreading by 'word of mouth'. Two examples of viral marketing online are "Tell a Friend" forms, and Viral Ebooks.
The idea with viral marketing is to induce visitors or readers to pass along your marketing message to other sites or people, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and response.
A "Tell a Friend" form is designed to get one person that you have already reached to recommend your site or service to a number of their friends. You can offer an incentive for them to make the recommendation, for example giving them a free report or ebook in return for recommending you to five friends.
To make a viral ebook, you use special tools to make your ebook rebrandable. In a rebrandable ebook, certain parts of your ebook are set up for customization. By doing this you enable your partners to insert their own business name, web site links, or even their own affiliate ID into your ebook. This gives them an additional incentive to pass on copies of it, ultimately helping you to promote your business and grow your traffic.
6. Classified Advertising
Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers and magazines. Many online ezines and email newsletters offer classified advertising spots and advertising in these can be one of the best sources of targeted traffic.
The best traffic growth comes from carefully targeting your potential visitors and with classified advertising you have the ability to select newsletters and with an audience that closely resembles your own target audience.
With online classified advertising it is especially important to consider the position of the advertisement you are purchasing. An ad spot at the very top of an email newsletter will receive considerably more clicks than an ad spot further down the message.
And while we are on the subject of classified advertising, don't dismiss offline classified advertising as irrelevant. It is possible to run a classified advertisement in an offline publication such as newspaper or carefully targeted magazine and get an excellent response of readers checking out your web site.
7. Advertising Swaps
Once you have a mailing list of your own with several thousand subscribers consider setting up 'ad swaps' with other newsletters. Make a list of possible newsletters that would make good swapping targets. This list might include newsletters on the very same topic as yours, but it could also include publications on closely related topics.
A newsletter on copywriting, for example, might do an ad swap with another copywriting newsletter. Or they might swap with newsletters on related topics such as advertising, editing, and freelance writing.
Swapping ads one of the most effective low cost techniques for building traffic. There is only the opportunity cost of not having paid advertising in those spots of your newsletter. I can assure you that the traffic growth will be worth more in the long term than a one-off advertising payment from someone for a classified ad.
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