Learn how to how to attract website traffic by posting on freebies forums and hot deals forums and get free Internet marketing, search engine placement, and advertising. Online freebie finders and bargain hunters will visit your site to check out your freebies and hot deals.
The word “free” creates excitement in the minds of many consumers. Who wouldn’t want something free, or at such a low cost they think they’d better hurry up and buy it before someone catches the price mistake? If you want to increase website traffic, how about offering something free, or at such a low price that online forums, or bulletin boards, will spread the word for you? These forums are sometimes forgotten as a resource for Internet advertising, and they charge nothing.
Two popular websites with hot deal and freebies forums are retailmenot.com and slickdeals.net. These forums get thousands of visitors every day–some looking for anything free, others for a good price on a specific item, and others for a great deal on just about anything. The referral visitors from these forums, known as “Online Freebie Finders” and “Bargain Hunters,” can give you more traffic, and of course, more business. Once your website gets more traffic than competitive websites, it will be ranked higher in search engines, so increasing traffic with freebies and hot deals can help you get to the top of the list.
Your Freebie Campaign
As a business owner with an advertising budget, offering an item free for the asking is one way to enhance brand image and increase website traffic. The type of freebie to give away depends on your type of business. If you are in manufacturing, a free sample of a small or new item could get you more traffic than you can handle. Besides free samples of your products, you could offer trade-show-like items, such as stickers, coasters, calendars, pens, mugs, hats or t-shirts, imprinted with your logo. For best results, freebies should appeal to your target audience (teens love metal pins/buttons).
When offering freebies, you will need to limit the number of items you are willing to give away (first 5,000 for example), or limit the amount of time the offer is available. Some businesses set up a special set of pages to collect visitor information on their website, while others just have customers request the item by email (although in this case the customers may not even visit your website.) Companies can also require that visitors sign up for their mailing lists to receive the freebies. If you have a B2B site, require that customers list their business on the freebie submission form. And remember, freebie finders may try to falsify their email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, or even names, so requiring a confirmation email is a good idea.
Get Creative!
A less expensive possibility for a freebie would be to offer a free printable coupon or a free download. If you have a retail outlet, providing a printable coupon for a free item will get you both website and B&M (Brick & Mortar, or store building) visitors, and you will avoid shipping expenses. More download possibilities are how-to videos and printable e-books, maps, or other documents. If you have rights to recorded songs, you could allow visitors to download a free sample. Downloaded items may not get a large increase in traffic all at once, but they can be kept on your site for a longer time, resulting in a long-term traffic increase. Downloadable items should be updated frequently to attract return visitors, and each new item can be posted in a new thread on the freebies forums.
Ideally, you want your free item to help customers learn about your products and/or make them more appealing. For example, a website that sells perfume or richly scented candles can send scratch ‘n sniff samples of their more unusual scents. A family-oriented website, like Tastefully Gluten Free, can offer printable coloring pages of kids helping mom bake cookies, updating them for holidays or seasons throughout the year. It may take creativity and imagination, but there is bound to be a perfect freebie—one that will boost your business and that customers will value.
Posting A Great Deal
Online hot deal forums are another way to attract visitors. Consider a 50%-off select items sale for your new spring line, or a great clearance price to clear out some old stock. Combine that with a deal for free or low-cost shipping and you may have a deal these forum shop-a-holics find hard to resist. Even if they just visit your site to check it out, you will get increased traffic. Some bargain hunters will visit your site only for the best deals, but others will buy additional products and may even become regular customers, especially when they are impressed with your excellent customer service.
Caveats and Tips for Using Hot Deal Forums to Attract Website Traffic
- Terms of Service on many deal forums prohibit advertising your own sales, so you will need a genuine customer or deal finder to post the deals—got any friends who shop online?
- Hot deals forums encourage other members to comment on and rate the deals, so if it isn’t actually a good bargain, the OP, or Original Poster of the deal, will get negative feedback, and your site won’t get too many additional visitors.
- If it’s a great deal, your server could get swamped, or you could sell out sooner than expected (on the Fatwallet forum, this is called the “Fatwallet Effect.”) Make sure your system can’t sell more items than you have in stock. Bargain Hunters dread getting an email stating that their orders have been cancelled.
- Savvy bargain hunters know when items are priced exorbitantly in order be marked down, so if you want to attract buying customers, give them a real deal they can’t resist.
- Learn the terminology: FAR means ‘a long distance’ to many of us, but in deal forum lingo, it stands for Free After Rebate. Many deal forums have a thread with a list of acronyms to teach you the ropes.
Who Are They?
One last suggestion is to be aware of your visitors’ viewpoints. Online Freebie Finders and Bargain Hunters are a strange breed, often spending hours every day hunting for treasure they can get free or at a great discount. They share their ‘finds’ on forums because they have benefited from what others have shared with them. Freebie Finders love going to the mailbox and getting free items, and who can blame them? As for Bargain Hunters, sometimes it doesn’t matter what they are ordering; just the thought of finding a 50-90% off clearance item with free shipping gets them so excited, they may order it even though they have no idea what they will do with it. They are thrilled with the hunt, and nothing can stop them, except a high shipping cost.
If your goal is increased website traffic, get creative and think of a feasible freebie, or arrange to clear out some of your old stock by offering it as a bargain online. Then, have it posted on one or more freebie and hot deal forums. You will not only attract website traffic immediately, but your site will also place higher in search engine results, so you’ll get more visitors in the future. By offering a hot deal or give-away, you can get free forum advertising and you will make your customers happy!
About the Author
Beverly Mapes
Founder & President, Top Of The ListBev founded Top Of The List in 2006 and has over 25 years of experience working with technology. In her free time, she competes in dog agility competitions with her Golden Retrievers, Cosmo, and Finn.