Jay Conrad Levinson offers an exceptional introduction to a range of Internet marketing tools. It’s great for newbies, but it also has ideas that a lot of industry experts fail to use. Read them to get effective guerilla strategies, case studies, and low-cost tactics for maximizing traffic. In short, read them to learn the rules of guerilla Internet marketing.

With a website, your primary rule is obtain contact information from your visitor. Your visitors‘ email addresses are very valuable to you – collect them and you’ll be sitting on a gold mine!

* There are many things you can offer your visitors in exchange for their contact info (specifically, e-mail address):

Free „White-Paper,“ E-Book, or How-to-Article (ex: see our web design landing page offer – 9 Tips for Better Web Marketing)

Give them a subscription to your industry-centric periodical with the latest news.

Discounts or special offers available only by email

Anything else irresistible that your visitor can’t help but be intrigued by (ex: ‚Little Known ______ Secrets Revealed!“) – it may sound corny, but it works!

* Use your web site as the first resource for customer support.

Once you have your site visualized, think about it from the perspective of a new visitor. What questions would you have? Create one or more FAQ pages to answer these questions, possibly creating links to articles within the site. Remember to keep your answers brief and to the point. Your objective is to give your visitors some quick answers to their questions to get them interested in looking around further.

* Use your website to sell your product.

It’s easy to learn how to write direct sales copy that will sell a product by presenting compelling arguments, flow, and calls to action. If you compare the cost of setting up a physical store location and the cost of a great website with professionally written sales copy, and a full-feature e-commerce store, you could have an entire online business set up for the cost of your first year lease.

Most Internet users feel comfortable making purchases online if they trust the website, but this will depend on your client base. Visitors psychologically program themselves to trust sites that meet their expectations through the online experience it gives them. Being compliant to these expectations is the name of the trust game. Streamline the steps between the visitor first landing on your web page, and the end of the checkout process, or you’ll experience a much higher abandonment rate on your transactions.

* Your website can market itself by using guerilla marketing techniques.

Using what is called ‚Search Engine Optimization,‘ (SEO) you can help move your site to the top of the search engine results pages for your important keywords. The website traffic you generate from these leads is absolutely free, but can require a small to large investment depending on how competitive your industry is. 10 times out of 10, it’s worth it. Talk to an expert or start researching yourself to find out how you can get to the #1 spot.

While your SEO campaign is ramping up (for most keywords, it can take anywhere from 4 months to 2 years to reach the top spot, depending on industry competition), the easiest way to get traffic is to pay for it. You can advertise on Google, which essentially can send you as much or as little traffic as you’d like – for a price. It can be an excellent way to bring instant traffic to your website, but it’s not sustainable unless you effectively monetize it.

These last few days I’ve been out of town on vacation, and have been using Google Maps to help me find my way around. Searching for grocery stores, coffee shops, and free wi-fi reminded me how important it is to list your business with Google Maps and Yahoo Local. In case you?re not familiar with those services, they?re the listings that come up at the top of normal organic search results next to the map.

Want to get on top of the organic search listings in a hurry? The secret is to register your business with Yahoo Local and Google Maps. As an added bonus, it’s 100% free.

So what exactly does it mean to have a local listing anyway? Let me show you. Search on Yahoo for ‚Portland Graphic Design.‘ When you use a metropolitan or regional name in your search, it knows you’re location-sensitive, and returns a list of the businesses in that area. It generates this list from its Yahoo Local database. Looking at the results for ‚Portland Graphic Design,‘ my company, Vanivo, appears as the second listing. The same thing happens on the Google search results page, and these links account for a large percentage of our website traffic for these keywords. As you can see, a free, easy-to-create listing is an excellent way to increase your customer base.

It’s a very simple process to get your business listed in these local directories:

How to use Google Maps to promote your business:

1. Search Google for „Google Maps Local Business Center“ and login or get a new Google username. 2. Follow the ‚Add a New Listing‘ link 3. Complete the form with as much company info as possible, and make certain to emphasize your target keywords for your business. 4. To make sure you gave them the correct information, Google will want to send you a letter with a confirmation pin to the address you provided, or will call you at your request and ask you to enter a verification pin. I recommend using the phone option if it is available, since it is much quicker than the postal mail method. 5. After you’ve verified your info, your listing should start appearing within a few hours or days. Ensure all your business info is accurate, and dress it up by uploading a graphic.

How to use Yahoo Local to promote your business:

1. This process is even more simple than Google Maps. Just navigate to local.yahoo.com and click ‚Add a Business‘ in the blue section at the bottom. 2. Complete your company information and click ’submit.‘ 3. Yahoo Local staff will receive your request and include it in their listings after they review it.

ESSENTIAL TIP: To get listed higher in Google/Yahoo Local Results, rent a mailbox in the downtown metro area where you are targeting, and use that as your address so you have a very central listing. We did this on accident, but found out it worked very much to our advantage to get listed higher.

So you’ve finished creating your listings, but now they blend in with all the others. You need them to stand out in a positive light from the rest of your competition. The only way to do this (besides a catchier title, which is hard because you’re limited to your business name and keywords) is to get reviews associated with your business. We asked some of our past clients if they would do us the favor and post a review of our business on Google Maps and Yahoo Local, and now we have a 5-star rating next to our name. This is invaluable credibility on the web.

Armed with this tutorial, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be bringing in lots of free, targeted traffic to your website in a matter of days or weeks. If you run into any problems or have comments, I’m always available by email: tony-at-vanivo-dot-com.