What Marketing techniques should I use?

[Nick]

I was wondering how I can get people interested and excited about my website. I have been using the normal marketing techniques: adwords, word of mouth (not effective because all my friends have no interest in business), links in signature, and Link exchanges but it just isn't cutting it. What marketing advice do you have for me that could help me improve my visitors?

Some background:

My site contains a bunch of free things for site owners: free advertising forum, free link directory, and an online marketing lounge. Should spark interest for webmasters but I haven't gotten a whole lot of response from it.

Any advice is appreciated.

Feel free to post some good e-books, articles, etc. Maybe this can help other members at v7n too.

[noob_0001]

Dude, you need a blogger or two to talk about your site and create a buzz. Should look in some blogging directories.

[Nick]

I do have a blog but I can think of anything worthwhile to write about. I heard digg.com gives great publicity to blog entries and articles, but then again I have nothing.

[Klaas Koopman]

Originally Posted by NRLMedia

I do have a blog but I can think of anything worthwhile to write about. I heard digg.com gives great publicity to blog entries and articles, but then again I have nothing.

well look at it like this, if you can't think of anything worthwile to write about, how can other bloggers?? try to make it something special that you'd write about if you were a blogger and then let others know about it!

[Vladimir]

Originally Posted by NRLMedia

What marketing advice do you have for me that could help me improve my visitors?

I use service 1ps.biz for promotion my sites.
One domain has pr2, but I'm waiting pr4
May be You must offer your www.advertisespace.com/freedirectory/ to 1ps?
I see only 234 links now ...

And try it reciprocal links? Why not?

[etech-peter]

Send out news releases concerning the free services available on your site. The key here is to have a truly newsworthy event, contest and free services. If your news release is carried by just 5% of the media you send it to, you could have your site's URL in front of thousands of readers. Also encourage readers to forward your e-mail newsletter to their friends.

[avalonstudios]

I didn't notice it in your first message but if you haven't done any article submissions you should do that as that seems to be a fairly solid way to obtain not only inbound links but some traffic as well.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by NRLMedia

I was wondering how I can get people interested and excited about my website.

I'd recommend you read a book entitled "The Anatomy of Buzz", by Emanuel Rosen.

Buzz is great. It's free publicity. The contest we have going now has created a lot of buzz, and that's good. But it doesn't compare to the buzz that was created when we launched BlueFind.

When BlueFind was launched, it hit PR8 within a couple months, and it seemed everybody was talking about it. Was that because of anything we did? Nope. Just because it was new and it had achieved something most web directories never will.

Originally Posted by NRLMedia

My site contains a bunch of free things for site owners: free advertising forum, free link directory, and an online marketing lounge. Should spark interest for webmasters but I haven't gotten a whole lot of response from it.

All that has been done before. Do something special. Like, add a personal touch or do something that's never been done before, or do something that's been done before but do it in a better way. And if all else fails, though a huge marketing budget at it and create extra value for your audience.

[sagbee]

Prweb have a good marketing newsletter. Try that. Syndicate your site with blogrolling and wordpress.org.

[edman]

The key is not just in the visitors, it's in your site concept.

What makes your site captivating?

Say someone who has no clue about your services visits your site [although interested in your type of service offer] and has the usual behavior of web surfer who is only in a hurry.... You've got 5 seconds to get him/her interested!

What do you think is going to happen?

Will they want to find out more? Why?
Will they signup at once? Why?
Do they know what you know? How?
If they don't sign up at once, what will make them remember you at a later date when they have the time to sign up?

Ask yourself these questions and look at your site once more to see what changes you need to make.

Look at all possible scenarios and be prepared to handle them as they come… TEST TEST TEST

Cheers!