Five proven techniques to drive qualified traffic to your web site. (Online Promotion).

Okay, you've been working on your brand new web site for months--the graphics look great, it's user-friendly, it's easy to navigate, and it takes your prospects where you want them to go. Now your job is to get qualified visitors to your site and keep them coming back.

Let's look at five proven techniques for accomplishing that. All five may or may not work for you. Like other marketing channels, you'll need to test and re-test these approaches to find what works for you.

1. Search engine optimization. Separate studies show that anywhere from 75 percent to over 90 percent of internet users find the web sites they're looking for--and revisit--through search engines and directories.

Experienced users will rarely go further than the first 20 results in a search engine. That means you need prominent positioning for your site on the most popular search engines and directories. These include Yahoo!, Look-Smart, Iwon, Direct Hit, Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, AOL, MSN, Google, DMOZ, and Netscape.

So how do you get started? First, analyze the keywords and phrases in your meta tags, as well as those of your top competitors. Concentrate first on your home page, and then work with any other sub pages within the site that are more specific to certain keywords or phrases.

When you're ready, submit directly to the search engines and directories you choose. And pay for express submission, if it's available. It's worth it. Also, be sure to continually follow-up with, or re-submit to, the search engines.

Don't be afraid to seek the help of a professional. And do shop around; a freelancer may be able to do the job as well as a company that specializes in this area, often at a much lower cost.

[For another view of this subject, please see the article by Steve Laliberte on page 4.--Ed.]

2. Viral, or referral, marketing. Word-of-mouth has always been a powerful tool for driving sales. When it comes to considering a purchase, we're all more likely to take the word of a friend or trusted colleague. But how do you generate these kinds of referrals to your web site?

If you have e-newsletters or other useful features on your site, add a "forward this page to a friend" button. Or simply add "recommend it" boxes in appropriate places on your site.

You can also offer FREE interactive content like tutorials, online calculators (for training costs, industry-specific calculations, etc.), downloads, news headlines, white papers-whatever you feel your audience will value enough to share with their colleagues.

Setting up chat rooms and newsgroups on your site provides an excellent opportunity to create a community on your web site, bringing like-minded users together to learn and network. It also helps you build a relationship with your users and gives you the opportunity to "talk up" your web site, your product, and your company. You should also participate in other newsgroups and chat rooms that focus on your niche area.

Other options include online polls and surveys (on such topics as industry trends, salaries, work and lifestyle issues). To get even more mileage out of them, publish the results on your site and/or as a press release, along with mention of your product as a solution, if appropriate.

Webinars, or online seminars, have gained considerable popularity. Bring in an "expert" (or use one of your own editors) on a current topic of interest to your audience. Put the presentation up on a dedicated web site, along with a telephone hook-up, and Bingo!--your credibility gets a big boost, while you and your audience save the expense of hotels and meeting facilities.

3. Links and affiliations. Linking your web site to other sites compatible with your product and your audience is one of the most affordable ways to reach your target audience. This also helps your web site achieve more popularity on several important search engines, and it makes your site a valuable portal to finding related sites.

Once you've identified your target sites, contact the webmasters to get linked (check out axandra.com for a software program that can help with this). Your links will be managed, too. You can either do that manually or buy the software to automate the process (for example, linksmanager.com).

To take linking a step further, set up affiliate programs with other web sites. Typically, the sites you partner with will act as resellers of your products and services. You may or may not do the same in return. Depending on how the partnership is set up, one or both parties may receive a percentage of sales generated through their sites, or some other kind of negotiated compensation. Some good places to check for help in setting these up include commissionjunction.com and myaffilateprograrn.com.

4. Integrated marketing. For years, marketers have used direct mail, telemarketing and other media in concert as components of an overall, integrated marketing mix. So where does web marketing fit in?

It can start as simply as including your web address on all your business communications, including direct mail, correspondence, faxes, business cards, and outgoing e-mail signatures.

From there you can try dedicated landing pages set up for offers made through other channels. Then get into testing different mixes--telemarketing follow-up to an e-mail campaign, a broadcast e-mail prior to a direct mail campaign, etc.

There are a lot of choices--direct mail, broadcast fax, broadcast e-mail, print advertising, broadcast media, billboards, for example. But rather than asking, "What do I want to do and how do I want to do it?," ask yourself how your customers want to be communicated with. You'll probably have to test and re-test to find the answer.

5. Advertising and sponsorships. Banner ads and broadcast e-mail have been around for a while. And though response rates for banners have fallen off dramatically, they can still be effective for certain marketing objectives, such as branding. Pop-ups and other types of intrusive ads have a slightly better response rate than banners.

E-mail lists tend to be expensive and still not as responsive as direct mail lists, although that is starting to change. The best way to test prospecting e-mail is to arrange swaps with other mailers with a compatible audience.

Sweepstakes have also been successful. They can easily and economically be run online, and they are great for collecting a lot of names for your prospecting database. Just be sure to watch out for the "professional sweeps entrants" and be ready to make some quick decisions regarding the quality of those names.

Finally, don't forget traditional advertising channels like print magazines, trade journals, direct mail, classifieds, trade shows, and postcards. If you have found these effective in the past, then test promoting your web site through these channels to a targeted audience.

Lomit Patel is director of electronic marketing at Mosaic Media Inc., Chicago. His e-mail address is [e-mail].