Before you invest a whole lot of effort into setting up your own website, check out what online resources are available that may meet your goals.
Here are some suggestions.
If you have a local business, a restaurant, for example, you may not be looking for wide geographical marketing coverage, unless your trade is mostly from tourists or other travelers. If your clientele is local, you might better spend your website building budget on getting a listing on a yellow pages site such as Yahoo or Local.com
that break listings down by location. A variant on this are social sites such as Yelp
, which give you a free listing and then let people review your business online.
Here's a totally free suggestion: Add your business to Google Maps.
You get to add details about your business to your listing, then when someone searches for — say — furniture
in Pleasantville NY, your business will show up.
Email Marketing
Another choice, if your business is local in scope and you want to communicate only with your local customers or club members, is an electronic Newsletter.
An electronic newsletter is an email, usually formatted, which is sent out periodically to a list of people who've subscribed to it. It's a good way to communicate to people if you've got new things to say frequently, and you know who you want to say them to.
So-called opt-in email marketing tools like Constant Contact
or
iContact or StreamSend
are easy to use and allow you to communicate frequently with your base. Email marketing is also inexpensive -- just a few dollars a month to send a couple of thousand attractively formatted emails. They also know the rules to prevent you from inadvertently breaking spamming laws, while still getting your mail into people's mailboxes. Most mailing services offer a free trial.
Email marketing is also good for reminding people you're there, sending news of weekly specials, or sending out notices of sales or new products.
If you're a professional, you might get more exposure for your practice by paying for a listing on a site that presents itself as a "resource" for members of your profession. For example, a lawyer may get more referrals from a page on Lawyers.com than her own website. Even though there are other lawyers listed there, the site has already invested a great deal of time, effort and money in attracting lots of visitors. In other words, a small piece of a very large pie may be larger than a very small pie you bake yourself.
Social Sites
Sites like
Yelp let you post reviews
of local businesses. Get a friend or customer to post one for you.
Viewpoints is another
review site, more focused on products, so if you have a great new widget,
get it listed there.
Online Services
Online invoicing
If you don't need to market online but would like to simplify your invoicing process, try Blinksale.. For as little as $6 a month, you can send and track formatted invoices online.
Online scheduling
If you're a dentist or a hairstylist, perhaps all you need is
Online Appointment Scheduling
from a company such as Schedulicity.
"Wiki" Sites: Sharing knowledge
Wiki's are sites that anyone can edit. The biggest is Wikipedia, which is an
encyclopedia. If you want to promote a town or an organization, or you want
to share your expertise on a subject, you simply go to
Wikipedia.org,
find the appropriate subject, click on "Edit" and start typing.
If your entry is worthwhile, it will remain.
WikiTravel is
a listing of travel related businesses. If you own a restaurant or a B&B,
just find your geographic location and enter your business for free.
Archiplanet is a wiki about architecture;
Architecture Week's directory lists architectural firms listed there.
If you are interested in ecommerce, but want to sell just a few items, such as a couple of novelty t-shirts,
you probably will find that EBay will meet your needs.
(If you need help with Ebay you can send for a kit
to help you get started.) You can also
create a free basic online store
at freewebstore.
Sharing photos
Film companies like
Snapfish.com by HP
want you to store your photos on their site because they're hoping to sell you extra prints, coasters, calendars and so forth. These sites are a great deal. You're not obligated to buy anything, and you get free online photo albums for your friends and relatives to view. Most let you put up slide shows as well as organized albums. A good choice for clubs and organizations or just showing slides of your latest trip to Samoa.
Sharing files
If you primarily want a web presence in order to have a way to send large
files back and forth over the web, you may just want to acquire some
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software. There are free programs like
FileZilla, but even the ones
that cost money are pretty inexpensive. They do, however, require a slight learning curve.
For a simple online solution, try a company like Mongofiles.com
You can upload files to your own section of their site, and share files easily and
securely with others. They claim it's easier to use than FTP, which is the way large files are traditionally shared.
An Intranet
Google has an interesting tool for sharing information internally, within a group or company. It's called Google Sites. It's free for small groups and requires no HTML skills.
Offline PR
Perhaps you're promoting an event, like a walk for a charity, or the opening of a
new shop. Will you need the website after the event? Perhaps you're better off
concentrating your efforts on getting publicity in your local news outlets, both
online and offline. Send press releases to your local news outlets and radio stations.
Join local blogs. Look for online calendars. Ask your town to post your event on their
website, newsletters, TV feed and bulletin boards. If you're not a good writer, you
can have a company like
24-7PressRelease.com
write your press releases.
You can have a whole campaign set up for you by a company like
PR Web Direct
. or PRWeb (not the same company), which will give you
10% off your first news release.
