In order to take advantage of your site's exposure, it's fitting to use a combination of the tactics that suit your website.



When you are into online marketing, you only have to remember these words: LOCATION, LOCATION, and LOCATION. Your site needs to be mentioned frequently in places where your niche market hangs out if you want your site to be seen by as many potential customers as possible.

If you think you could be doing more to boost your site's traffic numbers, start putting these two Traffic strategies to work for you now and you can then sit back and enjoy all that free traffic coming your way. These strategies are Solo Ads and Viral Marketing.

Solo ads are the best advertising vehicle available today. If you use ezines or coops to send out your solo ads, your ad is only going to interested marketers that have requested to be contacted. Your ad has nothing else to compete with for the readers attention.

Process of publishing a solo ad:

Choose a newsletter/Ezine

Write the Solo Ad

Write an Effective Title

Design the website where your visitors go

Tips to Create Effective:

Choose the Ezine you want to advertise in very carefully

Get the readers attention with the headline

Don't sell anything in your ad

Make your ad easy to read

Tell the benefits

Create sense of urgency

The solo ad is not placed with a well targeted ezine or website. By using automatic ad submitters, or even an advertising co-op, you are not going to receive the type of audience you need for your ad.

Viral advertising, on the other hand, refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of a computer virus. It can often be word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it can harness the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

The term "viral advertising" refers to the idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content; this is often sponsored by a brand, which is looking to build awareness of a product or service.

An effective viral marketing strategy includes:

Gives away products or services

Provides for effortless transfer to others

Scales easily from small to very large

Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Utilizes existing communication networks

Takes advantage of others' resources

For a viral marketing campaign to be successful, it must be easy to use. For example, if the promotion is some sort of game or contest, then asking for referrals should be an option immediately after the game, not as a condition to play.

Notable examples of viral marketing:

The spread of text messaging

The spread of IRC / Chatting

Gmail

McDonald's "McRib Farewell Tour"

Microsoft's Origami Project campaign

Microsoft's Xbox 360 campaigns, called OurColony and Hex168

Tupperware parties

The Ring movie and its massive cursed video secret promotion, possibly the greatest effort of viral marketing ever

You see, people tend to equate traffic with success online. But that is not really the case. What is success online? Is it not the accomplishment of a desired goal, for example, making money online, teaching people about your pet cause, etc. The traffic building is simply one of many tools that you can use to do your goal better and faster.

That's it. Traffic generation is not an end in itself, by any means.