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I’m not going to kid you. Targeted traffic will likely cost you a few bucks. There’s almost no way around that. You usually have to pay for online advertising (on search engines, online banners, etc.), and offline (well, that’s self explanatory: brochures with your web address, business cards, and the like). If you are not prepared to spend money getting traffic, you will have a very hard time succeeding online. This is reality.

I know, I know … everyone wants low-cost/no-cost “guerrilla-style” ways to get traffic. Well, they do exist, but I have to tell you, in my experience, they are very time consuming, and the results are almost always substandard at best (they can be nice additions to your paid efforts, though). In fact, it seems the only people who benefit from this type of marketing are those who sell the information on how to get free traffic (making it not-so-free anymore). Smart, successful web people are ready to spend a few bucks on advertising, so be a smart, successful website owner and do the same. You can experiment with other, cheaper ways of getting traffic later once you are making money.

Okay, here’s how you generally get targeted traffic:

1. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC): When you use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google, Yahoo! (formerly Overture), or similar, this is advertising where you bid on certain keywords (keywords that people would search for if searching for you), and you pay each time someone clicks on your ad (usually anywhere between ten cents and two bucks, depending on the popularity of your keywords). This may seem expensive, and it can get that way, but I have to tell you, I love PPC, and here’s why: The people clicking on your ad searched for your specialty, read your ad, and were compelled to click and go to your website. By and large, that’s seriously targeted traffic. These are people who are really interested in your service.

Now, there are entire books written on PPC advertising, so I’m not going to get into the technical “hows” here — you can figure out “how” by going to these websites (Yahoo!, Google, etc.), and reading about their advertising programs. But, for almost any web business, you are going to have to engage in some form of PPC.

And not only do you have to participate in PPC, you will have to have a sufficient budget (this is the reality of today’s Internet). I can recall rewriting webpages for a guy that had a budget of $2 a day for his PPC ads … That $2 delivered three people, and this was the only advertising he did. Suffice it to say, that’s simply not enough. It is close to impossible to run a serious business on a $60 per month ad budget (to give an example, currently for my little home-based business, I’m spending ten times that).

I’m sure someone out there will argue with me on this point and tell me that they get thousands of people for free, but I gotta tell you, I’ve seen countless good web businesses go belly-up because they were underfunded in an advertising sense.

So PPC, with a sufficient budget, is the first way to deliver targeted traffic. And I’ll have a few tips later in the book about actually writing these ads (in Chapter 8, to be specific).

By the way, most search engines that sell PPC advertising have built-in fraud prevention, meaning your competition can’t sit there in his or her underwear clicking on your ad all day. So don’t worry about that. And in all honesty, people generally do not do this. Your competition is probably more likely to show up, in his or her underwear, at your place of business (which would make for an interesting morning, wouldn’t you say)?

2. Your other advertising: This should go without saying, but your web address should be on every piece of advertising you use — brochures, business cards, letterhead, Yellow Pages, billboards, radio and TV commercials, and even those plastic bags you hand out at the trade show.

I have to mention this here because there are many companies that do not do this. I’ll never understand why, because a website just enhances any other advertising you do — having a Yellow Pages ad with a web address allows you to tell a consumer SO MUCH MORE about your business. Also, anyone who goes to your website from other pieces of advertising is most likely pretty targeted traffic, wouldn’t you agree?

This can be extended whether you utilize expensive advertising or not. It really doesn’t matter if you have a TV commercial or you are just setting up a table at your local craft fair and handing out leaflets — if your web address is not on your advertising, you are missing out. In fact, in some cases, the smaller of my just-mentioned examples (the leaflets) will probably result in more targeted traffic percentage-wise (after all, this might be a stretch, but I’ll bet almost all of the people who go to craft fairs are interested in … I don’t know … crafts? Except that one husband who was dragged along unwillingly. He’s not interested at all. In fact, he’s planning his escape, and will hopefully be joining me on the golf course in a few hours).

Now, attaching your web address to any “big” advertising like a TV commercial might, of course, result in lots of browsers along with targeted traffic, but so what?

A Bit of Advice on Web Addresses

It’s fine to have a website address that’s your company name (in fact, if at all possible, you should). But did you know that you can buy as many web addresses as you want (very cheaply, only about ten to twenty bucks a year), and easily forward them all to the same place?

This means you can have a website address with your “impossible to remember or spell” company name, and also have a few “really simple, catchy names” forwarded to the same place. If you get creative, there are millions of great web addresses still available (and with the additions of other top level domains, like .biz, etc, many more are now available).

To give an example here, say you are a plumber who specializes in water heaters. You already have a website for your plumbing business: www.jpmcgilloughcuttyandsonsplumbingcompany.com. So why not spend the ten bucks and get www.weinstallwaterheaters.com forwarded to your site as well (or even better, to a page or website specifically about water heaters)? You can put this address on all advertising that pertains to water heaters (it’s also easy to remember when said on the radio). There are a million addresses like this that are available.

My company name is Night Owl e-ventures. So my “official” web address is www.nightowleventures.com. But I really use www.clear-writing.com as my main address (they both go to the exact same place, but which one looks better on a business card? And is easier to remember)?

3. Banner ads and email: Banner ads are ads that you can place on other websites. Most popular websites now have some kind of advertising, and some of it can be quite effective. Especially if you advertise on a site that is in the same general area of interest as your business is in (for example, a bike accessories company advertising on a mountain biking forum). You can either search for “banner advertising” for companies that can help you (they can even make your ad), or, if you see websites that you would like to advertise on, look for an “advertise with us” or “your ad here” statement somewhere on the page and follow that link.

Another form of advertising is by email. You can buy email lists of people who are interested in just about anything. If you do that, you can send them an offer that links to your site. Again, search for companies that do this. However, I will caution you here: Many companies who do this get labeled as spammers, so you may want to refrain from blind email bursts. An offshoot (and very non-spammy) method of this is your own client email list; that’s definitely targeted traffic. Just save the email addresses of all your clients, and send them an offer every now and again. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be actual clients; you can have a simple “sign up to receive company updates” form on your website, and send the people who sign up a periodic offer. This is a very effective marketing tactic.

4. Online forums: I’m all over the Internet, and I’ve been posting to forums (essentially discussion groups) for years. There are forums for almost everything. And for each one, I have my website address in my signature.

It’s a really simple way to get traffic, and it’s almost always free (see, I’m mentioning some free ways to get targeted traffic as well).

I post to all manner of forums; I am a regular on several small business forums, and they have gotten me good traffic. I am also a regular on some hobby forums, and my website address is there, too. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get a ton of business from Fantasy Football forums (I am a big fantasy football nut), but hey, who’s to say that “MRNUTZ44” isn’t really the CEO of a medium-sized company, and might need a writer at some point? There’s no harm in posting your website address in your signature.

Join some forums — some related to your business, and some not — and put your web address in your signature. There is no downside, especially if you post helpful stuff. You’d be surprised at how many clients will look in business forums for experts. I got started in my home-based business because I was answering questions on an e-commerce programming site (I did e-commerce programming at my last “real” job), and a guy who needed an e-commerce programmer was reading it and said, “Hey, this guy Dan knows what he’s talking about. He’s answering all the questions!” One thing led to another, and soon I was happily e-commerce programming from my basement (which eventually turned into writing). So forums can really be a great thing.

One caveat to marketing on forums like I am suggesting: It is considered bad form to do anything more than have a signature on most forums. For example, the business forums I post to have a rule: no direct solicitation. People are adults, and they can clearly read my signature, so I don’t need to answer posts with a “use my service” post. So just do what I did. Be a helpful, knowledgeable poster, and sooner or later, someone who needs your service will follow your link and become targeted traffic.

Here’s the signature I use on the business forums I post to:

Dan Furman

Professional Copywriter, Business Author, and Marketing Consultant

www.clear-writing.com — My business writing website.

Also check out my new small business book: Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business

5. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Natural search engine rankings deliver great targeted traffic. People search for certain words and/or terms, and the search engines try to deliver the most relevant sites. But it is VERY hard to get a high ranking.

This is important, so I devote a full chapter (Chapter 8) to SEO writing and search tactics, where I’ll talk about things like press releases, blogs, articles, and writing your pay-per-click ads (and again, a lot of these tactics are free). The key thing to remember is natural search engine rankings in and of themselves are free, which is … in a word … awesome.