Advertising in printed media and popular sites
When we need more traffic
After creating a site and doing what we can to optimize it, for search engines, the next step is not necessarily signing up for Google Adwords or the MSN and yahoo equivalents. Google and yahoo definitely bring in traffic. At some point, we'll want more traffic and that comes from advertising in popular traffic sources.
There are two main traffic sources other than search engines: popular web sites and printed media.
Advertising, to be effective, needs to target people that will be interested in buying your products / services. So lets look at a few groups.
Which group of people are we targeting our marketing efforts?
* women
* expats
* manufacturers
* students
* house wives
* fitness nuts
Lets see some types of media to advertise in.
* Magazines
* newspapers
* trade journals
* popular web sites
Find media that markets towards your target group. Expand your horizons and try some non local media. Who knows, maybe your local market is too small and it makes more sense to swim in a bigger pond (bigger market).
Once advertising media has been identified, try starting with small ads and see what results come out of it. One idea is to place classified ads. Another idea is to write articles, as long as they will link back to your site. Try not to concentrate your marketing budget, spend it out as much as possible. It's not always possible to know what will work and what won't. Learning by trail and error is a process which should result in figuring out what works and what doesn't.
