Business cards, postcards, flyers and letterheads are all part of the arsenal for a successful offline promotion campaign. Just like your web site you must ensure that your branding material is better and more eyecatching than that of your competitors.

More than DIY masterpieces thrown together on the latest free CD ROM, your branding material should be well designed and kept clean and tidy. It's design should fit in with your web site since customer recognition is the whole goal of branding after all !

With your Branding material created to your satisfaction, it is now the time to get out there and promote, promote, promote!

Here are some great ideas to promote your web site and business OFFLINE :

• Advertise in the local Press


• Advertise in the telephone directory


• Pass out your business card whenever possible


• Advertise in related shops


• Have a launch party and invite the Press!


• Sponsor a charitable event (from printed t-shirts to helping local causes)


• Run a contest where the winner can enjoy your services for one day free of charge


• Advertise in related magazines


• Advertise on the TV


• Join related clubs and societies where you are likely to meet new clients


• Direct Mail (including Flyers)

Here are some great ideas to promote your web site and business online :

The first step to online promotion has to be to have your web site listed in the search engines, this isn't as easy as it souns - techy things like 'meta keywords' can make or break your postion on Google and it is worth spending a little time / money on professional website submission/SEO (visit my site for details). With that done you can move on to some simple and free promotion methods :

• Use an Email Signature (a paragraph of text added to the bottom of every email you send, a bit like the text you see at the bottm of this article) and try to mention your URL whenever you 'talk' online.



• Offer testimonials to web sites that you use or have purchased from - tell them you are willing to write a review as long as they promise to put a link to your web site underneath your review, for example :
  " The excellent product made my life so much easier Mr John Doe www.yoursite.com "
  • Read and follow our link swaps and online directories article
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  • Use a technique known as 'Viral Marketing'. Viral marketing is free and relatively easy and involves the creation of something that will be viewed and passed on to other people (video is a favourite as are PDF Ebooks and free software). Read more in my other articles.

Massively popular web sites including www.youtube.com and www.myspace.com will play your home-made funny video (with your web address shown throughout of course!) whilst web sites relative to your freebie will be happy to add your free Ebook or article.

You can purchase a selection of great ebooks and software that you may use for your own viral marketing campaign on eBay (look for 'ebooks with resell rights').