Content drives traffic, it’s that simple. People constantly search for how to guides, articles to answer to their questions, and great content to consume.
1. Respond to unanswered questions in your niche on Quora
2. Engage in targeted forums on Reddit, share posts and respond to others
3. Submit a free press release using a service like PRlog
4. Create an infographic, share on free distribution sites like Visual.ly
5. Write a post called “Our competitor vs Our Company” – This will attract search engine traffic looking for reviews of competitor
6. Submit a presentation to Slideshare
7. Giveaway a free e-book, ask users to sign up to your newsletter to download it.
8. Create a “how-to” guide for something that is typically difficult in your industry.
9. Consult copy bloggers attention grabbing headline guides and write posts that fill those templates.
E-MAIL MARKETING TACTICS
Do you check your inbox? Yup, turns out most people do. Go figure. It still astonishes me how underutilized E-mail strategies are. I talk to founders all the time who say “I have over 100 people on my E-mail newsletter”. But when I ask them if they’re sending out newsletters, they usually say “No”. Even if you don’t have a list built up yet, you can still leverage the power of E-mail marketing.
10. Promote your company in your E-mail signature.
11. Launch an E-mail newsletter using a free service like
MailChimp.
12. Get your startup featured on existing newsletters such as
Startupdigest.
13. Integrate a drip marketing campaign
14. If you’re early stage, use Unbounce or any landing page tool and design a simple single page that collects E-mail addresses.
PARTNERSHIP TACTICS
Partnerships should be mutually beneficial. Time and time again, people think they will be able to leverage a partnership with a top brand when they’re just starting out. 99 times out of 100, a top brand will not want to partner with a smaller company. Instead, look for partnership opportunities with companies at a similar size & stage as yours. Better yet, look for smaller companies who will more likely to go out of their way to help you.
15. Partner with other companies in your space and upsell each other’s products
16. Create a deal on AppSumo
17. Run a promotion on Groupon
18. Run promotions on StackSocial
19. Cross promote each others brand on your E-mail newsletters, twitter pages, etc.
CUSTOMER-CENTRIC TACTICS
Existing customers are rarely used for marketing, but they should be. If you don’t have much money to put into marketing, leveraging your top advocates and happiest customers can go a long way. If you’re not talking to your customers on a regular basis, do that first before trying any of these strategies. If you are already talking to your customers, here are some ways to amplify customer promotion.
20. Set Up a Referral Program, offer an incentive for existing users to invite their friends
21. Encourage social shares by using a service like Twilighter
22. Send personalized E-mails to your existing users, ask for their help promoting your company.
23. Add social sharing buttons to your site
24. Use Hellobar as a call to action for a promotion
25. Invite your existing customers to provide feedback on the next version of your product. You
can send them a survey or a WuFoo form to do this easily.
SEO STRATEGIES
SEO is extremely powerful. Anybody that proclaims “SEO is Dead” does not know what they are talking about. As long as websites show up when you search a keyword, and people use search engines, there will ALWAYS be ways to get traffic from search. When people say “SEO is dead” they might mean “manipulating Google is dead”, which I sort of agree with. Solid, well founded, SEO strategies can drive just as much traffic (if not more) then the old, outdated, black-hat tactics… they’re just harder to do.
26. Use the Google Keyword tool to identify high volume, low competition keywords in your niche. Create content around those keywords
27. Determine what questions people in your niche are asking, create blog posts answering
those questions
28. Focus on getting high quality inbound links from blogs, forums and press mentions
29. Use SEO friendly URL’s
30. Write good title tags and H1 tags
31. Submit an XML sitemap to Google webmaster tools
32. Add alt-text and descriptions to all of your images.
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES
33. Run a free promotion or giveaway if users follow you on social media
34. Direct message thought leaders, interact with them, congratulate them on their recent press, etc.
35. Trade shout outs with other companies and thought leaders. Accounts with a similar social following to you will be more willing to cross promote.
36. Sign up for a service like Mention. com, respond to anyone that mentions one your brand, one of your competitors, or asks a question about your space.