Times are tough. Marketing budgets are tight. Here are five free things you can do to bring traffic to your website and to your business.
- Google Places – (used to be called Google Local) it’s a free listing that you can enter by going to www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter. You enter your web address, physical address, a description of your business, your contact information, hours– you can even enter photos. Your listing will show up on a Google Maps when someone searches for your business type in your area.
- Bing Local – Same concept as on Google Places only it’s on Bing.
- Facebook and other social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter. If you’re not there you should be — it’s word of mouth advertising. I’ve seen small business really benefit from communicating with their network (friends, fans…whatever you want to call them). It’s a great place to promote your business events, specials promotions and communicate with your clients (friends, fans, etc). Just remember like all networking activities you’ll benefit more from giving then selling. Provide information, tips, advice, and special deals, spread good will and your friends and fans will remember you and spread the word about your business.
- Update your website regularly. Install a content management system like WordPress so you can update your website on a regular basis. Set up a blog that feeds through to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts so you reach out to all neighborhoods of your virtual network.
- Google Analytics – You don’t really know if anything is working unless you have a way to track your traffic. Google analytics provides lots of statistics about traffic to your website.