What is the best way to promote our website

[Sheffy]

You replied on another thread:

"Start a new thread if you want and we can explore your target market and how to reach them. "
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My question is: we are a new website ( a couple of months old) and sell cutlery and kitchenware, although we have been selling these items for over 25 years.. What is the best way to market our site?
I have submitted to directories, linked with a couple of related websites, posted on forums so far. I also have a blog and linked the site to it.

Our target market is quite diverse, really. Prior to selling on line our main customers were mostly middle class ladies from 25 to 60; some cafes and restaurants and caterers - having said this, the people who buy our children's cutlery are young mums and nurseries; the people who buy our kitchen knives and steak knives are men aged from 25 - 60.

[TWD-Tony]

When you say you have submitted to directories - which directories? Try to stay away from "general" web directories as much as possible - there are a few of these worth listing on but they are generally paid directories and they will only increase your site's "visibility" to the search engines and not directly drive traffic to your website...
Niche directories on the other hand help to increase your site's relevence in your niche and may also drive a few visitors to your website... Try searching for directories for catering equipment, mums and babies etc (the stuff you listed above) and then link (if the directory allows it) to the relevent page on your site.

General forum posting won't really help too much - it may drive a few visitors out of curiosity and there is a small chance that a big / long running thread maybe indexed and ranked well for certain keywords / phrases but generally forum post's on busy forums just drop off the radar... Finding niche forums though is an almost sure fire hit - get yourself registered on forums that target your audience, add a signature link and then participate in the discussions - this is the important part, if people see you as a "good guy" then you will be accepted into the forum community, otherwise you will be seen as a "nasty spammer"...

[Sheffy]

Thank you for your reply. I have been submitting the site to general and local directories but you offer useful advice re niche directories. The forums I belong to are cookery and catering forums or ones where I can offer advice also ones where I can ask advice or participate in genuine discussion. I would not spam a site because I know how irritating this is for forum members.

[lin robinson]

There's a fine line there. I have never seen anything wrong business announcements on forums, especially if titled to let people know it's an announcment or whatever (my forums always welcomed it)

And the idea that somebody in an industry giving tips and mentioning their new items being classed with shotgun ads for Chinese tractors or Viagara or whatever seems strange to me. Some forums don't even allow signatures.

But each forum has their own culture on what it kosher and what isn't. I would say that having my banner image in forum signatures is the number one generator of sales for me.

One way to consider, by the way: start a directory. Seriously. I know a couple of people who did community directories, which present a lot of information and links with their own prominent. I has a couple of niche-within-in directories on my sites (culture and music links and notices, etc)

A similar idea is posting articles of the "101 Best Ways to Run Restaurants" type you see posted on this forum.

[TWD-Tony]

"And the idea that somebody in an industry giving tips and mentioning their new items being classed with shotgun ads for Chinese tractors or Viagara or whatever seems strange to me. Some forums don't even allow signatures. "

No no... you miss understand me - normally when a new member joins a forum and just blatently plugs their website / product / service then it annoys the other longer standing members (who maybe competitors) and can also upset the moderators.
The reason is that most moderators are there to protect a forum from SPAM which can come in many forms - it's not just Viagra / Nokia phones it's when people just start replying to threads with "I can sell you some of those - visit my site at xxxxx.xxx" type posts.

By becoming part of the community you build up TRUST - and important part of getting people to buy from you.

[Brian Turner]

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

By becoming part of the community you build up TRUST - and important part of getting people to buy from you.

Absolutely right.

[lin robinson]

Well, I'd take this forum as a pretty good example. A new guy comes on and says
"Hi, I'm Barney Rumble and I've got this flea-training business in Tottering-on-Brink and it's nice to be here."

what happens? Is he banned? Given a hard time? Not that I've seen. In a few blatant cases people put in chiding remarks.

Again, I fail to see how any post on a topic that might be of interest to people on that forum could be classified as spam. Or that it does damage or bothers anybody other than people who like to get bothered and remonstrate.

A lot of it, I think we'd agree, is in drafting a post that present it in a gracious manner. (I should do seminars on that: people find me so charming online)

[TWD-Tony]

If forsaid new user was to introduce themselves with ""Hi, I'm Barney Rumble and I've got this flea-training business in Tottering-on-Brink and it's nice to be here."" then of course it's normal forum behaviour - but if ALL this user did was drop references to his business into threads then that isn't much help to anyone.

If that user just posted a quick intro and never came back (as a lot do) then again, that is useless (as Barney Rumble could be anyone).

BUT (and this is the point)

If Barney Rumble was an active / friendly member of the community who asked questions and joined in with general discussions then the other members would TRUST him and he would likely generate sales based on this trust... I have recommended members of forums (just as I would any friend) when infact I don't really know them, this is based on what they post on forums and how they conduct themselves...

[Sheffy]

So the moral to this story is to be a really friendly, actively posting Barney Rumble, then!

[lin robinson]

Everybody always says that, as though posters serve the forum instead of vice versa, but if somebody comes by and says, "I'm looking to pay somebody big bucks to deal with this thing for me" and hires people but never comes back, nobody bitches about it.