Best way to publizice

TV? Radio? Banners? Flyers?

[transistor]

In your own experience and opinion, which is the best way (meaning cost-effective, or plain cheap, yet effective) to publizice your e-commerce site?
Specially if your site is NOT linked to a major corporation or trademark.
What would you do? What have you done? Can you share it with us?

[George]

Cheapest cutomer aquisition?

The internet.

If you are only on line, my experience is that advertising off-line is very expensive. The problem being, is that your customers are such a long way away from a pc that is turned on. That makes radio possibly the worst i think.

It works for some however.(I am told:))!

George

[Filipe]

Word of mouth works for an eCommerce site I run:

[webmasterworld.com...]

I find that the following also work wonders:

1. Email lists with special options (Opt-in/Opt-out, of course)
2. Notifications of new products related to customers interested (Keeping them coming back is just as important as hooking them the first time 'round)
3. Tell-a-friend function (make it item/page specific. Don't just send them the entire site. Give them room for entering a brief message too.)

These are cheap ways that you can promote, given some technical skill. If you need details on any of these, ask.

[transistor]

Thanks for that thread Filipe, very interesting and enlightning.
So far, and apparently in this order: Search engines, browsing (I'm guessing link exchange and banners) and personal/friend recommedation (also word of mouth, implies an overall good experience: from browsing and shopping to support and service).

Do you agree? Anything else?

[Bentler]

Online marketing works the best in my experience, but some worthwhile old-world techniques we use are news releases, trade shows, newsletters, and bus advertising.

If the site provides the right content targeting a young audience, handing out cool stickers works well. Mountainzone did this when they started-- their stickers could be seen in public places from Canada to Mexico.