Then it’s launched, and it’s like, well, now what?

Cause I’m here to tell you, no magical fairies are going to send traffic, leads, or customers to your website just because it exists. Advertising is expensive, and all of those too-good-to-be-true schemes and tricks to drive traffic to your site are just that, too good to be true (trust me, I tried most of them to no avail!). Especially in the beginning, you will need to take action to drive good, targeted traffic to your site, to build your list and make sales.

Here are three strategies you should use to build your list & customer base, now that you’ve launched your website.

1. Publish High Quality Content

You *must* be creating high quality content if you want anyone to come to your website (or for that matter, buy from you). I don’t mean content with a load of keywords, or any particular type of content (could be articles, audios, or videos) … just content that a human being in your target market will get value from and will *love* you for providing.

Not only should this content be on your website, but you will also be using it in teleclasses/webinars, on your social networking sites, as give-aways for joining your list, and in your email promotions. So if you’ve built a site that only contains information about you & your business, now it’s time to add valuable tools, tips, and strategies that your audience will find interesting, useful, and/or enlightening.

2. Develop Relationships With Your Target Market & Others Who Serve Your Target Market

Very few people will stumble upon your site and buy something right away, especially if you are selling high-ticket items or services. You must develop a relationship with them over time if they will trust you enough to start working with you.

My favorite way to develop that relationship is via social networking on Twitter and Facebook. Not only to I provide great content to my networks on these sites, but I engage them in a conversation about themselves and their businesses… and even help them by sending traffic to their sites! If social networking is not your thing yet, the same strategy applies for in person networking, phone calls, and live meetings with potential clients… develop that relationship before you expect them to go to your website (or make the sale).

Same concept applies to other people & businesses who also serve your target market. Once you develop a relationship with them, you may be able to engage in joint ventures where you promote each other, become affiliates for each other, and even create projects together. But this is not going to happen until you develop a relationship with them & they know you are a high quality partner.

3. Ask

There’s nothing wrong with promoting yourself, your website, and your business … as long as you do it in a way that shows “what’s in it for them”. The easiest way to do this is to offer free high quality content. If what you are “selling” is free and valuable to your target market, it will be easy & straightforward to “sell” them to go onto your site. But this only works if you already have valuable content *and* have already developed that relationship.

©2009 Elizabeth Potts Weinstein
www.TheWealthSpa.com

Adding your site navigation menu along the bottom of the page can help increase your traffic as well – if someone is leery about signing up for your offer they may want to investigate who you are a bit more, and adding your site navigation gives them a way to see who you are and what you do.

Add bookmarking links above the content. I recently had a client ask me to add bookmarking links to her page – an idea I had not thought of before! After a bit of research, I found that adding links to diggit, reddit, twitter, facebook (the list goes on) is a very easy way to give people the option to spread the word about your product or offer. Most bookmarking sites have the link code available on their site so all you have to do is copy and paste it into your code!

Say “no!” to clipart! Be mindful of the graphics you add to your sales page. The days of Power Point stick figures are over. With all of the stock photography and stock graphics sites out there, you can add very professional looking images to your sales page with little to no cost to you. People can tell the difference between clipart from Word and professionally designed graphics. In addition to content-driven graphics, if you are selling (or offering for free) an eBook or Audio program, having a 3D graphic custom made to fit that product helps the visitor visualize what they are going to get by signing up.

Personalize! Adding your image, signature or video to the sales page helps the visitor feel connected to you and helps to build the relationship. Show your visitors the results you got from your system or product by adding pictures of you enjoying the benefits (like an image of your vacation house or you having a great time doing something resulting from using this product)

Match their investment to yours. This is especially true for sales pages where you are selling a product (rather then building a list and offering a freebie) – if you have a basic, content rich sales page with little customization, no graphics and no personalization you can give the impression to your visitors that this product is not worth your own time and money!! If it looks like you only spent 15 minutes creating your sales page, there is a good chance people will not be willing to invest hundreds of $$ to your product.

Be mindful of your content. You may have spent hours developing great copy to sell your product, but if you do not format the content correctly, chances are no one will have the patience to read through all of it. Use an easy to read font (like Veranda or Tahoma), don’t let your paragraphs go too long (break up paragraphs into 2-3 sentence statements), use headers and subheaders, & bullet points.

~Victoria Potts Keale is a newbie blogger, website designer, entrepreneur extraordinaire, mom, wife, daughter, sister… well, you get the gist. She lives in her hometown of St. Louis, MO in an old haunted farmhouse with her 2 kids and drummer hubby. She has 15 tattoos and wants more. She loves 80’s music. She thinks writing bios in the 3rd person is wacky. You should email her and tell her what else to put in her bio – victoria@lynnraedesigns.com – but don’t spam her, cause she’ll get angry.

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