While Web fever has every organization examining its commitment to cyberspace, Internet consultants warn that without the proper marketing and promotional strategies in place, your Web site can quickly become a virtual ghost town.

"The cliche—if you build it, they will come—has lulled many on-line marketers into a false sense of opportunity. The truth is that Web site traffic building has its own set of needs and requires its own system of aggressive, attention-getting tactics," says Charles Sayers, an Internet marketing consultant based in Acworth, GA, USA. Specifically, says Sayers, companies seeking to maximize the Web's potential should first attempt to determine how many of their customers or clients are actually on-line and how easy it will be to reach them. "Don't rationalize the numbers. Don't inflate your projections," cautions Sayers. "Be conservative, and determine whether it's a number you can live with." It makes no sense to invest resources in a Web page if only a minute percentage of your potential customer base actually has an Internet connection, he adds. Should you decide to take the plunge, Internet consultants advise you to take advantage of as many of the following Web site marketing and promotion strategies as possible.

Rent or Buy a Consumer E-mail List. This is one of the easiest, but also one of the most expensive, ways to promote a Web site. Essentially, customers rent exposure in the e-mail customer distribution list of a firm with an established Internet presence. Typically, the company that owns the list alerts its customers via e-mail of the site and recommends that they visit it. Enticements may include a discount coupon for goods or services purchased at the list renter's site.

Consider a Professional Search Engine Listing Firm. Seasoned Web users turn to search engines like Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) and Excite! (http://www.excite.com) to help them find specific information quickly on the Internet. Given the great power of these search engines to steer thousands of users to specific sites, it should come as no surprise that a number of Web-savvy firms have emerged to help companies to be among the first "links" the search engines return to information seekers. The Web Hitman (http://www.webthemes.com), for example, will guarantee that any site it lists will appear in the top 10 links of one of the "big eight" search engines: Yahoo!, Excite!, Alta Vista, Web Crawler, Hot Bot, Now!, Northern Light Search, and Planet Search. Medical Device Safety Service (http://www.mdss.com), based in Hannover, Germany, is apparently no stranger to this strategy. When the keywords "European medical devices" were entered into Yahoo!, the MDSS site was the first link to be listed. That kind of visibility does not happen accidentally. Another big winner in the listing wars was Medical Devices Agency (http://www.medical-devices.gov.uk), the UK competent authority. Its site was first up when the same keywords were entered into AllTheWeb (http://www.alltheweb.com), another popular search engine.

List Your Site with Hundreds of Search Engines for Free. Those who would rather not spend vast sums of money can still get their site listed in hundreds of search engines by visiting Virtual Promote, a terrific site devoted to the art of Web site promotion. Point your browser to http://www.virtualpromote.com/prmot1.html, and you'll find links to nearly 500 sites that offer links to thousands of search engines. Another option is to use a software program such as Web Site Traffic Builder, developed by Draper, UT, USA–based Intelliquis (http://www.intelliquis.com). Traffic Builder automatically registers your site with more than 900 Internet search engines and will automatically put your company in the appropriate category for each search engine. Plus, you can use the software to check your site's position on the Net's eight most popular search engines. WebPosition Gold, by FirstPlace Software (http://www.firstplace.com) is a similar program.

Keep on Linking. Probably the easiest, least expensive, and most effective way to promote a site is to link it with every other noncompetitive page on the Internet that shares the same interest. Agsa Gomma (http://www.fionline.it/Agsa), a supplier of surgical gloves based in Italy, offers links to the Web sites of satisfied customers.

Enter Web Site Contests. Companies that have crafted a useful and/or attractive home page should attempt to get their new site judged by the many site-of-the-day and site-of-the-week judging services. Those that are judged worthy of an award are given the equivalent to a recommendation that they can post on their site. And the awarding service also provides a free link to the winning page from its own home page, a bonus that can literally generate thousands of visits to your site, according to Sayers.

Start Your Own Contest. A tried-and-true strategy to raise awareness in the bricks-and-mortar world, contests work equally well on the Internet. Insofar as national legislation permits, you can also glean valuable demographic data about site visitors.

Establish a Virtual Press Centre. Probably one of the most overlooked opportunities on the Web is the possibility of establishing a virtual press centre on a company site. Increasingly, journalists are turning to the Internet to search for story leads and to develop new ideas, and there is no reason why any company with a Web presence should pass up this opportunity for free media exposure, says Sayers. For one example of how to set up an effective on-line press centre, go to http://www.armstrong-healthcare.com, the home page for the UK-based company Armstrong Healthcare Ltd.

Start a Newsletter. Newsletters distributed by e-mail are an effective way to establish an ongoing relationship with current and prospective customers. A good industry model can be found at Cellpath plc, Div. of Medical Solutions (http://www.cellpath.co.uk), based in Leeds, UK. Similarly, registered members of Medical Device Link (the on-line resource for device manufacturers) can elect to receive the Web site's weekly e-mailed newsletter. The publication provides brief updates about the site and concise news items about the industry in general. The MDL newsletter is delivered in a plain-text format, so anyone can read it using any platform or computer (including wireless handheld devices). Interested readers can sign up at http://www.devicelink.com/register/.

Thinking about starting your own newsletter? While you can certainly start your own, there are commercial alternatives. See in particular Lyris, which has sites in English (http://www.lyris.com/), French (http://francais.lyris.com/), and German (http://www.lyris.de/).

Offer Free Classified Ads. An advertising staple of newspapers, classified ads are also a big hit on the Internet. Many businesses offer classified domains as a free service just to draw more traffic to their sites.

Add a "Recommend this Site to a Friend" Button. Nothing beats word of mouth to raise awareness, in the virtual world as in the real world. By clicking on a button of this type, the visitor can instantly recommend the site to friends. And a link to the site is automatically forwarded to the friend's e-mail address. Ingenious.

Think Globally. While we bandy about catch phrases like "international marketplace" and "global economy," surprisingly few Web sites are truly global in reach. Some companies, for instance, presume that everyone is fluent in English. And an even greater number have failed to bring in the cultural consultants needed to ensure that international visitors are not offended by conventions that may seem perfectly innocuous at home.

Combining these strategies and being persistent in building your site's traffic will virtually guarantee that within a few short weeks, your access counters will start spinning, says Sayers.

Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Thousand Oaks, CA, USA. He can be contacted via e-mail at joedysart@digitalubiquity.com.