Before we launched Workitmom.com, I pretended to know a lot about online marketing. In my previous career I was an investor and some of the companies in which I'd invested were online. So I learned as much as I could and tried to sound as smart as possible when talking about marketing a site online.
Well, let me tell you something, I knew nothing. OK, not nothing, but very little. After Workitmom.com went live online I began my ongoing crash course in online marketing and it has already taught me a lot (including the fact that I knew nothing about this beforehand). I wanted to share some of what I've learned with those of you who have a website or a blog and I hope it can be helpful.
If you build it, they might not come.
You might have the best website design in the world, the most fascinating blog, or you might be selling the best most useful product ever. But just getting it up and live and out there does not mean that people will find you. Marketing is hard work, it takes time, and you have to be persistent. There is no magic bullet.
Know your audience.
When you market a site or a product, you're marketing TO someone -- your target audience. Your first task is to figure out who this audience is. Don't be general here -- narrower is better, believe me. For example, if your site is about healthy recipes, don't say your audience is women. Instead, say that your audience is women who like to eat healthy and are looking for healthy recipes.
Find your audience.
Focusing in on your audience will do two things (well, more than two, but two to start): It will help you design a site that welcomes that audience and it will help you find places online where your audience might be spending time. Women interested in healthy living are probably reading healthy-living blogs and frequenting other related healthy-living websites.
Do cheap or free things first.
We would all love a bunch of money to spend on marketing, but I believe that free marketing is the best kind, especially if you're at the early stages of your website or business. Free things you can do:
- Offer to swap links with related sites or blogs.
- Offer to cross-post content with related sites or blogs. Each piece of content you offer should include a one-sentence description of your site and a link back to it.
- Participate in blog discussions by posting comments. DO NOT post comments just to get people to click back to your site -- this is transparent and will backfire. Become a genuine participant in the conversation.
- Hold contests and giveaways. A great way to maximize exposure is to partner with a related site to give away some of their products or services as the prize for your contest. (This way they will promote the contest to their audience as well.)
If you spend money on marketing, make sure you track your success.
I love Google Adwords. I love them for two main reasons: You can target your ads to your audience and you can track how successful your marketing is. (I can write a whole other article about using Google Adwords to market your business, but Google does a great job of laying things out, so if you're new to this, go here and read up.)
My main point here is about measuring success of your marketing. Every dollar you spend is precious and you need to be able to decide whether it's worth it. If you spend $100 to get a person to your site and they buy $50 worth of your products, is this a good marketing campaign? NO. Know your metrics and track them.
About the Author:
I am the co-founder of Work It, Mom!, a freshly minted entrepreneur, and an amateur writer.
