There are hundreds of ways of spending your money and this post discusses some of these.
Online or traditional?
Probably a bit of both. The internet has had a huge impact on the way people find products and services, so get an online presence as soon as you can. This doesn’t mean you necessarily need to spend thousands, but people will find it odd if you have no web presence.
Websites
If you can’t afford to pay for a website you can always look at free methods of having some kind of web presence. Join Facebook and set-up a page, use BT Tradespace or start a blog; all of these will cost you nothing and with some effort can be made to look very professional.
The most important thing is to create something that’s relevant to your audience and they find easy to use.
If you can afford a designer, there are hundreds to choose from, so make sure you put together a brief, outlining what you want, look at some of their previous work and obtain a few quotes. Make sure they know something about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and they make the site with a Content Management System (CMS) so you can update it yourself.
I have a website but nobody visits.
To find your website, most internet users will type a word or phrase into a search engine and then follow the results the search engine generates. Alternatively they will see your website address printed somewhere and type it or follow a link from another site.
Website Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
This is the process of making your website more likely to be found than your competitors’ and is based around the keyword phrases people type into search engines like Google and Yahoo. If I type ‘Scuba’ I will see results about Scuba equipment, dive shops, training courses, holidays and much more. If I am running a Scuba holiday company in the Red Sea, I really need to worry more about phrases like ‘Red Sea diving holidays’.
Using tools like Wordtracker and your own knowledge of your business, you can make your website match the relevant searches that people are using, generating relevant traffic to your site.
Pay per click (PPC) advertising
These are the sponsored links that appear above and to the right of the search results pages. They work in similar way to SEO, as they use keyword phrases to match adverts to phrases but you have to pay when a user clicks on your advert.
They are an excellent way of driving relevant traffic to a website but need to be handled well to make sure the money spent generates a good return.
Tags: pay per click, ppc, search engine optimisation, seo, website marketing