Advertising your E-business Responsibly

For example, let's say you have a business venture you wish to promote. In order to do this, you will need to advertise. For the purposes of this essay, we will assume you already know your market, product, and potential audience. We will also assume you have established a toll-free telephone number, office space, and a website. We may also assume you have a limited budget with which you are working.

Obviously, your website will simply be one massive ad page regarding your business. This is perfectly acceptable, considering e-commerce in this fashion is totally non-invasive to your visitors and their privacy. After all, they came looking for you. However, you wish to extend the reach of your business. The first thing to do would be placing meta-tags in your site's code that describe your business and will show up in a search engine. Next, of course, is registering your site with as many search engines as you can find. Now, when potential visitors are simply looking for the type of product you are offering, your page will show up alongside many others with similar offerings. You would also include your toll-free number on your site in order to generate sales via telephone. Place a form amongst your pages so orders can be placed that way as well. In short, you can do pretty much whatever you can think of that is non-invasive to your visitors.

Now, however, you wish to reach further yet. That's simple. (I use "simple" as opposed to "easy" because what is about to be suggested will be simple, but not easy.) Find sites that have the potential to attract visitors to yours. See if they allow banner ads on their site, and if so, the prices charged for doing so. If banners are allowed, and the price is reasonable, place a banner ad on their site, and as many others as you can find and afford.

Since your budget is limited (you're just getting started, right?), radio, TV, and most print mediums are unusable to you right now. They are extremely expensive, when you consider their reach; and you want to reach as far as you can when you first launch. You also want to avoid offending anyone with your advertisement, because doing that will alienate potential visitors and cost you in the long run. Again, unhappy people say bad things about you. That will give you a bad reputation, and people have a powerful tendency to avoid anything and/or anyone with a bad reputation.

Now we've reached the touchy part. You want to use mass e-mail as an advertising medium. You should not, under any circumstances, simply fire off a cascade of UCE. Do not hire anyone to mass mail for you; you will have no control over what that person does with your list and/or advertisement. Get a proper listbot that will maintain the list of opted-in addresses; or you can find someone who already has a listbot. In all truth, you should simply use the previously suggested advertising methods at first, and include a subscribe option on your website. Then, and only then, should you begin to use mass mailings to advertise; and only to those who subscribed to your list. The subscription process should include a subscription confirmation method to prevent false subscriptions, and the removal process should also confirm subscription cancellations. Do not ever sell your list; nor should you even give it to anyone. Whoever obtains your list from you will most likely use it to compete with you, and may use it for purposes which may offend your subscribers or in a fashion which could cause you headaches later on. Keeping your list to yourself will save you many, many problems later on. After all, those addresses are YOUR targeted audience. You worked long, and waited long, to obtain your audience's trust in you and your business; violate that trust in any way, and they will flee faster than rats leaving a sinking ship.