Some months ago I had a talk with my CPA friend about his newfound interest in internet marketing. He told me he’d been hearing about it for some time now and that he had invested a significant amount to put together a team who would develop his personal website. He talked with an air of accomplishment and pride.

Several weeks later I talked to my friend again and he told me his website was attracting little to no traffic. He said he wanted to regret his decision to invest on the project.

So I consulted with him about what I knew regarding internet marketing for local businesses. After several meetings, we came up with a decent plan to attract visitors to his website. Simply put, a pretty website doesn’t guarantee it would pay for itself over time. If you want online presence, you need to be able to market it like a pro. Here are some of tips that came up during our talks.

1. Free giveaways
Small businesses all want the same thing – a regular flow of customers – and sometimes you need to band together if you want even a slice of that. As a business looking to gain online presence, why don’t you consider offering giveaways to attract visitors to your website?

For instance, if you own a small restaurant, you can tempt customers with something as simple as a free desert whenever they spend a minimum amount at the local bookstore. You provide the free coupons to the bookstore. This coupon instructs the customer to visit your website to verify a secret code that would entitle them to a free desert.

You secure online traffic coming to your website, and at the same time you get a customer to try your house menu. That’s two birds with one stone.

2. The truth behind business cards
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Business cards are a healthy source of credible information. People don’t write fake names and email addresses on business cards.

Partner with another local business again. This time ask them to put out a small bowl or box on the counter where people would drop their business cards. In exchange, you pay for the customer’s free service. What you get out of this is a list of email addresses you can advertise to again and again. Electronic mailing lists are the bloodline of any business or company’s internet marketing campaign.

3. Do something for the community
Don’t ask me why. I didn’t start it. In the US, a small town is almost always a sports fanatic town. Like I said, don’t ask me.

You could try sponsoring to develop, and maintain, the town’s local sports website. Get a couple of volunteer high school students to help you with the design. You’ll have banners and links leading back to your business website. After all, you sponsored it. You are entitled to at least a banner and several links in the pages.

It’s worth remembering that goodwill always pays off in the long run.

4. You endorse mine, I’ll endorse yours
It looks like I’m never going to run out of ideas for internet marketing where you’d have to partner with other local businesses. Anyway, here’s an idea.

You could strike up a deal with a fellow local business to endorse your services to its electronic mailing list and sending its customers a link to your website. In return, you’d do the same for them.

The thing is to partner with credible businesses. If your partner is well-known in your area, its spreading a good word about your services is bound to bring something good to your doorstep soon.

My CPA friend soon called me and said the traffic to his website was finally starting to pick up. Which of these four tips did you find useful in promoting your local business online?

Feel free to leave a comment.