How
to Get Your Visitors To Tell A Friend
by: Dawn Gray
Does your website offer visitors a quick and easy
way to recommend it to a friend? If not, you're missing
out on a potential gold mine of free traffic.
The benefits:
1. Automated website promotion. You set up the program
and your visitors do the work of promoting your website
for you.
2. You receive higher quality visitors. Your visitors
will refer people *really interested* in your products
or services. These people will be more likely to subscribe
to your newsletter, request your free reports, and
ultimately BUY YOUR PRODUCTS!
3. Nobody will every be insulted or upset by this
promotion technique (as long as you make it clear
that the message comes from their friend). People
can only participate if they visit your website, and
email will only be sent by people the recipient knows.
Just asking your visitors to recommend your website
isn't enough. You need to make it easy. Offer a form
on your website your visitors can fill out to recommend
it to a friend. Either put the form on every page
of your website, put it in a pop-up window, or link
to it on every page.
There are many ways to do it:
1. Javascript. See the Javascript resources on my
Webmaster
Resources page at http://www.busymarketing.com/links.shtml
for a website with instructions on how to use the
script.
2. CGI. I really like Birdcast at http://www.bignosebird.com
- it's what I use on my website. You can find more
options on my Webmaster Resources page.
3. A service. Many remotely-hosted scripts are available.
The most popular is Recommend-It at http://www.recommendit.com
(which offers a contest as an incentive and allows
you to add recommendation links to the email you send
out). There is also a free program called Let 'Em
Know at http://www.letemknow.com which allows you
to run your own contest for participants and probably
offers more statistics. Either can be set up in 5
minutes or less.
Javascript and CGI scripts have the benefit of being
completely under your control. You can customize them
to work on your website and decide if and how visitors
are notified about the origin of your script.
Services are easier to set up, but have to make a
living somehow and may use advertising or big, tacky
buttons with their name and/or logo in order to do
so.
Don't delay! Set up a Tell-A-Friend system on your
website to watch the number and quality of your visitors
improve without raising a finger.
About The Author
Would you like to see more articles like this? Dawn
Gray writes Busy Marketing Tips! Subscribe today by
emailing subscribe@busymarketing.com and get a free
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