dRegardless of how well established an online company is, I guarantee they will still frequently deploy these startegies.
Why?
Because they work!
There is a simple and obvious rule that applies to all websites, "The more people that visit your site, the more money you make." Whether that be via product sales, services, advertising etc.
Here are my top 3 tips, you will note that they are all completely free.
1) Linking: Search engines and directories.The most obvious and generally the first thing any website owner should do is proceed to get their URL on to the top search engines, Yahoo and Google. The majority will leave it at that.
Furthermore you should be submitting to directories, the biggest being dmoz.org; however a quick search and their will be plenty more to choose from - some of which will surprise you by their popularity as you may not have heard of many of them.
You will find some sites that offer multiple submissions for you. One good example being addme.com.
Also, try and get some bloggers on side. There are a few blogs that get ridiculous amounts of traffic so linking with said blogs could be and invaluable source of traffic.
2) E-mailing: Marketing to sales.Once you are established you will have an e-mailing list and you can send thousands of e-mails in a few seconds. Unfortunately if you're reading this, then you are a bit off yet.
Use search engines and business directories to get a list of e-mails relevant to your business. A lot of websites now have a contact form as opposed to direct e-mail addresses, this is fine, just take a note of their URL.
Collecting the addresses is very boring and monotonous but a worthy cause.
Once you have a large list of e-mails (1000+) you can now start contacting potential clients. Before sending out the e-mails re-visit each site, you can tailor your sales pitch according to the site design and content.
Making it personal and individual reduces the chance of it being deemed as spam and immediately deleted.
If you receive negative replies assume this as an opportunity to close a sale, "Why should I advertise at your site?" - you tell them why and you tell them good.
Ultimately if you make no sales you will have at least had 1,000 new visitors to your site.
3) PR: It's like a free full page advert!You'd be amazed at what's considered journalism these days. Don't worry if you don't know where to start, just get on your favorite search engine and input "Free PR Tips". You will quickly understand what you need to do.
Just remember to make the headline as eye catching as possible, the whole balance on having your article published is whether or not the editor reads past the headliner.
Newspapers are always struggling for stories so make yours stand out from the crowd.
Remember to hit all the online news sites as well, however if you get a national newspaper to publish your story you will find the story will be on their site too. National papers of course get plenty of traffic to their site so you will have also created a golden link.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bonus Tip: Search for "Free Marketing Tips" on the major search engines. The majority of results will require you to subscribe to their newsletters, do so and you will receive plenty of excellent marketing tips in your e-mail.
Beware though these guys aren't stupid, but neither or you. All these free tips they are giving you is eventually going to lead to them putting the sell hard on you. When this happens just subscribe to the next guys/gals newsletter.
With all these free tips you will eventually be able to compile a "killer Marketing Strategies" ebook yourself. And of course sell it for $99 per pop - that's half the regular price!
Hope any of this helps.
Cheers.