Website Marketing

You might have the most beautifully designed website and the best cause in the world to promote, but getting the website on the net is not enough.  In order for people to learn about your cause, you have to to get visitors to come to your site!  

Even though you are a not for profit organization, you must think as though you own a business.  How do you get the visitors to your site?  Once there, how do you get them to become supporters?  Once supporters, how do you get them to come back again and again and tell their families and friends to also visit your site?  

You want these people who visit your site to clearly understand what your cause is about, to easily navigate and feel comfortable at your site, and to want to do something to help your cause. You want them to become supporters!  As supporters, they will happily shop through your mall, buy your t-shirts, donate directly, and sign up under you for various services!  

You must market your site!

How?  This is one of the most frequently asked questions in internet business.  To begin with, you must submit your site to be listed on the search engines.  Despite what most people think, being listed on search engines does not automatically happen.  There are certain guidelines that you must know in order to submit to the major search engines.  Also, if you are a nonprofit that deals with more universal themes like ecology or homelessness, it would be beneficial to try to rank high on certain keywords like "save the earth".  

Depending on the focus of your organization, you can come up with different creative ways to get supporters to your site.  Here are some ideas:

For community  based nonprofits like schools and churches:

• Mail out a colored postcard of the front page of your new site inviting members to visit your site.
• Write an email about your new and improved site to all your members and encourage them to forward the letter to people in their address book.  

You can also:

• Create a product and start an affiliate program for it (please see Selling Your Own Product for more info)
• Advertise your site for free in the local newsgroups.  
• Sponsor local events.
• Offer contests with great prizes and advertise this.
• Get your site listed (usually for free) on all the local community information sites.
• Exchange links with other sites that deal with the same subject.
• Write articles about your cause to appropriate publications and always sign with your website address.  
• Participate in related newsgroups or forums and always sign with your name and your website (if the readers like what you are saying, many will visit your website).
• Cook up some kind of service that might be useful to other sites, like a calculator of costs of something, a great resource page or the best forum on your subject on the internet.  If you offer such a wonderful service on your site, you will get other sites happily linking to your service and your site.  

You've marketed your site and you are attracting visitors, now you need to make your site "sticky"...

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