Promoting any website means promoting the website address.
In traditional advertising, you can promote your business perfectly well by promoting its name, products, or business description--as long as you give customers an easy way to get in touch with you, of course.
In online advertising, all of those attributes should be included within your website--leaving you only the method of contacting you, the link, to promote.
A link is not only your digital "phone number", but with a well-designed website, it's an advertisement in and of itself.
Direct response website promotion still follows this basic rule, but varies it to some extent, pushing it more in the direction of traditional advertising.
This is because with direct response marketing, you're not ultimately selling your website to people (from which they can then order any products you have to offer), you're selling the product itself.
The website is only a means to an end.
And if you simply market your link without any information about the product you're selling, your customers aren't necessarily going to be interested in your product once they get to your site--making the work that your site has to do much harder.
The simplest solution to this is simply to market your link as a short description of your product.
A typical link might look like this: http://yoursite.
com.
People click on the link, go to your site, and your promotion is successful.
A direct response link should instead look like this: New Foo From YourCompany at yoursite.
com, in natural language.
When people click on those words, set up the link to take them to your site.
This way, you get two benefits for the price of one: your URL is still being mentioned (raising the possibility that people will remember it and type it in independently in the future), but you're also letting customers know what you're selling before they even get to your site.
If you have the opportunity to give a brief product description as well as your link, take it.
These descriptions shouldn't be on the same order of complexity as your website is, of course, but in a sentence or two you can get across to customers the basic nature of your product, a notable feature, and possibly a price (which, if it's low enough, may spark interest all on its own.
) This makes your link more attractive to customers, making them more likely to click on it--and once they click on it, if you've done your job right, they'll be infinitely more likely to purchase your product.
In traditional advertising, you can promote your business perfectly well by promoting its name, products, or business description--as long as you give customers an easy way to get in touch with you, of course.
In online advertising, all of those attributes should be included within your website--leaving you only the method of contacting you, the link, to promote.
A link is not only your digital "phone number", but with a well-designed website, it's an advertisement in and of itself.
Direct response website promotion still follows this basic rule, but varies it to some extent, pushing it more in the direction of traditional advertising.
This is because with direct response marketing, you're not ultimately selling your website to people (from which they can then order any products you have to offer), you're selling the product itself.
The website is only a means to an end.
And if you simply market your link without any information about the product you're selling, your customers aren't necessarily going to be interested in your product once they get to your site--making the work that your site has to do much harder.
The simplest solution to this is simply to market your link as a short description of your product.
A typical link might look like this: http://yoursite.
com.
People click on the link, go to your site, and your promotion is successful.
A direct response link should instead look like this: New Foo From YourCompany at yoursite.
com, in natural language.
When people click on those words, set up the link to take them to your site.
This way, you get two benefits for the price of one: your URL is still being mentioned (raising the possibility that people will remember it and type it in independently in the future), but you're also letting customers know what you're selling before they even get to your site.
If you have the opportunity to give a brief product description as well as your link, take it.
These descriptions shouldn't be on the same order of complexity as your website is, of course, but in a sentence or two you can get across to customers the basic nature of your product, a notable feature, and possibly a price (which, if it's low enough, may spark interest all on its own.
) This makes your link more attractive to customers, making them more likely to click on it--and once they click on it, if you've done your job right, they'll be infinitely more likely to purchase your product.