Belt Auction - what is the best way to promote a website and get customers?

what is the best way to promote a website and get customers?

i have a website www.allegro-furniture.com i did not promote my website yet, so i need to tell me which is the best way to promote it? online or offline (newspaper, magazines....) i sell worldwide furniture, antiques and carpets. i sell living rooms for galleries in hole sale price. i need to find galleries and customers that are interested in. if someone really know a reliable and efficient way, kindly get back to me with full details about it. i really do appreciate your response.

Public Comments

There is no one efficient way to market. You want to reach as many people who will buy your product (target marketing) as possible. There are some great ways to promote your business, both online and off line. Selling an item on ebay for instance, and putting a link to your main site would be one way. The only thing is, while the item is on ebay, you can not have that same item for sale on your website. This will drive traffic of people who are actually looking for furniture. Great search engine ranking is good as well. Google has a way for you to buy your way as a sponsor so anyone who types in furniture will find your site at the top. It's not buying ranking though, your rank will remain the same, you just will get placed in their sponsor area just above the list. Then, of course, there is the physical real world marketing. http://katyclassifieds.com/flyer-distributors.asp passes out flyers to most cities in the united states. All you need to do is send them your flyers and they will pass them out in whichever cities you specify. If you are limited in your budget, pick 1 offline method, and 1 paid online method, and do as many of the no cost online methods as you can. Once you start making some money, put some aside to budget for some more advertising. You just need to start small and reinvest in your marketing.
I checked out your website, and I think you're doing a lot of things right! Your items for sale look great, and the all-important home page photo is very appealing. So, congratulations! Now you want people to find your beautiful site. There are many free and inexpensive ways you can do this. If you deal with RELATED contractors, and by related, I mean somehow related to furnishings and household items, and you have a good relationship with them, you can ask them to link to your site from theirs, especially if their site is well done and has been on the Internet a while. This will increase your search ranking. But try to keep these links within your industry--you don't want to confuse the web spiders. Same with your outbound links. Be sure you are using key words in your text and in your meta tags so that when people search for "furniture" and "your geographic area," they find you. List your business for free on online directories. Above all all, make sure you put interesting and original content on your site, and keep it related to your industry. I see your customer testimonial section is still under construction. You may want to work on that. Brainstorm ideas for articles (or google search) about concerns and interests you think your customers may have, but always keep it related to furniture and home decor. For example, you may want to post an article on your site, such as how to care for fine furniture, the best way rugs should be cleaned, top 10 qualities to look for in an oriental rug, etc. Just be sure to re-write it in your own way -- don't copy content from other sites, because Google will penalize you for this. If you do this, also consider posting your article online on a site like Ezine. All these clicks may come back to your site. Write press releases and send them to your local community newspapers (about interesting content--like how to care for those special rugs!) and include your web address. You can also post press releases on line through an Ezine link. If you're not sure how to write a press release, you can learn how on my blog: http://www.fletcherprince.com/blog2 A great way to promote your site is to create a blog (I recommend Blogger) which links to your site. After you create your blog, be sure to run it through feedburner. These are free strategies. Do you have a mailing list of customers? Send them an email letting them know about your new site, and maybe giving them a special offer, or requesting feedback on it. People like to help and they like it when you ask their opinion :) Maybe a quarterly e-newsletter to them? And a greeting card around the holidays? Very inexpensive and easy to do. You can record a video with a camcorder that gives customers a tour of your store, or features a brief interview with you talking about (for example) how to care for oriental rugs so they last a lifetime. Keep it under 2 minutes, put it on You Tube and Tube Mogul, and voila! More hits. Every time you try one of these strategies, new strategies will suggest themselves to you (through links and cross promotions). Good luck, and have fun living your dreams!
It’s rarely an instant return on the Internet. You need your website coming up relevant to what people "search for" on the Internet. It takes time to get placement in the right places within the Internet and if you're listed in the right category of searches you stand a better chance of returns. The following is one of the better ways. For a small charge you can have a “Permanent” website advertisement placed in an index such as this in a choice of around 750 categories to target your business trade. This will raise your website profile and increase its chances of extra sales because this site is indexed by the search engines placing your site within public searches. The advantage of a site like this is that you don’t have to update your listing again. For a permanent ongoing promotion: http://www.search-the-world.com/form/listing
Besides the <title> metatag which lists your furniture store name, where's the rest of the critical metatags for <description> and <keywords> which allow customers to find your website on major search engines. The following article may prove helpful to you at this time. The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is to first set up a website and publish its domain name on major search directories such as Google.com, Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?...... and MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these search directories to provide them with goods and services. In a sense, these search directories are a very large Internet Yellow Pages. Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using such "generic" queries will not be able to discover your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website, in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable. You may want to consider some simple algorithms which, when observed and committed in designing of a website with placement of various critical metatags that can surely achieve a high search engine presence and increase Internet traffic to your website. These metatag strategies work well with published webpages at Google and Yahoo. Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based website, make sure to fill-in the property entries such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the Internet audience and their incoming setup. For example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages take too long to load up and therefore analog users will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple question, "Who's my end user - is he on dialup or DSL?" And if you had to choose between these two users for maximum marketability, then select analog users since 80% of most resident users are still analog Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages is best for them. A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text, is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a graphic, they are not indexable by search robots. Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots are unable to properly classify textual material. Placement of Metatags: A ranking or search order does take place with Google and Yahoo and it begins with the "Title" metag which should consist of no more than 60 characters separated by commas. The "Title" should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the "Title" is not appropriate, unless your domain name is a major recognizable brand name. The second metatag is the "Description" which is usually up to 41 words to form a complete paragraph which best describes one's goods and services. It is not merely a list. And the very last category - "Keywords" are also somewhat limited to 15 words which can be plural and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which is defined as the loading, and submission of repetitive words into a particular metatag category. "Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported to Google's spamreport.com can result in the elimination of your website from their search directory. Here's an example of a very highly-placed website on Google.com: Begin with the very "generic" search query "sandwiches downtown los angeles," taking note to not abbreviate Los Angeles to "LA" and of course, leave out the parentheses ("). It will bring up some 2.4 million+ search results. Check out where "Nazos.net" is ranked. It's on the SECOND FRONT [ranked 15]! Again, Nazos.net's high web presence was achieved by proper web design and placement of relevant metatags according to Google's publication guidelines. Good luck!
Mary Fletcher Jones pretty much says it all. I like the idea of going to people who would use your furniture in their business. That is interior decorators and people like that. Find their professional association and join it. Get visible by joining a committee. Get the membership directory and contact every member.