Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

PART 6

START HANGING OUT WHERE YOUR PROSPECTS HANG OUT

By now you probably realize that just having a website isn't enough. You're going to need traffic. Some of the most consistent advice that I've given other online entrepreneurs over the years is to go to where the traffic already is instead of trying to start your online venture by building your own website.

In my opinion far too many entrepreneurs consider building a website as their first step towards success online. As an alternate approach I teach my students and clients to find the places online where their target audience (or prospects) are already gathering and then actively engage with them in some fashion. Building a website comes much later, or possibly never.

For many entrepreneurs this means they should be finding other popular websites and then finding creative ways to serve their target audience or find ways to partner with the owner of the popular site.

In other sections of this book I've written about how I've used e-mail marketing to grow a large, loyal audience and I haven't needed any fancy websites in order to accomplish this. Instead I've gone to other online experts and popular websites and found ways to creatively partner with them in order to grow my own audience. Once I have an audience I can then determine what needs they have through a simple survey. In some cases a website was necessary in order to accommodate the needs of my audience, and only then was a website built.