If you're getting ready to launch your website, you don't have to wait until it's fully operational before you start marketing it. 

This is especially important to know if you're counting on the site to be a source of income for you because you're offering some kind of service. There are actually quite a few ways to reach out to your potential clients and customers even while your website is under construction. 

Not only does that help you raise your brand awareness and get people interested in your product, but it can also be quite beneficial for the website's traffic, which means it will rank better on search engines. So, it pays to learn a thing or two about marketing your business while your site is still in progress. Here's what can help you!

Coming Soon

Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode is a WordPress plugin that is exceptionally easy to use and can help you establish contact with your potential clients much before your website is up and running. The concept is simple: instead of the full website, your chosen address will show visitors one well-crafted page instead of that terrible 404 error notification. And that’s why you should always start with a coming soon page.

This page is what Coming Soon is all about. With more than one million free images at your disposal, you will surely find the one that fits your site best, and when you add to that the fact that there are more than 120 themes available too, you will start getting the idea how extensive this plugin is. And it will take you less than a minute to set everything up. 

But that's just the beginning.

Putting a pretty picture up is not going to get you marketing results. If, on the other hand, that picture can lead to a potential client subscribing to your newsletter or something like that, then you can maintain contact with them before the site is up. Coming Soon supports subscription forms and e-mail services, which will make this process a walk in the park.

Remember when we said in the introduction that doing this can be beneficial for your website? Well, the team behind Coming Soon is well aware that this presents a huge opportunity, so they've implemented a detailed SEO guide that can help you set everything up in the most efficient manner. Furthermore, you have loads of design options, from setting a progress or countdown timer, to putting the logo of your company on the page. A great way to show your clients that you value them is to allow them to see the status of your website if they register and log in, and Coming Soon gives you that option, too.  

You will also get excellent support from the team and even a money-back guarantee! And considering that you can choose between an annual subscription model or a life-long purchase of this plugin, we can really say that this product has everything covered.

Social media

Another thing you can do to promote your website while it's still under construction is to create its official profiles/pages on social networks. The more social networks you cover, the better. This allows you to start building your audience and announce to the world that your website is coming because these things have hundreds of millions of users. Not only that, but you can target the people who are interested in the same field your website/business covers, so the chances are that you will be able to get their attention.
Profiles on social networks will allow you to communicate with your potential clients and clear up any potential misconceptions they may have about your business. Well crafted posts may even get people to engage with it and expand your reach, bringing in more people into your fold. This is also a great way to build up hype about the upcoming website by leaking small parts of it every now and again.

Setting up a profile is free on the most popular networks, so financially speaking you can only profit from it. And most of them allow you to publish ads for a very reasonable price, meaning that you can start building your website's presence and brand awareness for just a few dollars, which is always a great investment. And if you have the Coming Soon plugin ready to go, it becomes very easy to reroute the followers from the social network to your Coming Soon page and start getting even more palpable results.

Do your keyword research

While this may not always be considered as marketing per se, it is nevertheless incredibly important. Keywords are the words (or expressions) people use when searching something online, so you need to know which keywords are the most popular ones in your industry in order to be able to fulfill your clients' needs. 

Knowing what people are looking for will help you optimize your website so that it ranks highly on search engines, and it can also help you a whole lot to plan out a decent strategy for the foreseeable future. 

Also, if you're specializing in a particularly narrow niche of your industry, you will want to find the most popular longtail keywords to position yourself even better. In short, knowing which keywords are the most popular ones tells you exactly what people want, and then it's up to you to provide that.

Create a profile on Google My Business

Google searches are personalized, and when someone is looking for something like a cafe, restaurant, or any other facility, the search engine will always show them the ones in their vicinity. So, if you get yourself a profile on Google My Business, you have a good chance to attract people who are close to you. At the very least, you will raise awareness about your brand.

Your address, working hours, and contact information will be displayed to everyone, and it's all very easy (and completely free) to set up. On top of that, customers can leave reviews, thus giving you valuable honest feedback, and you can also add photos related to your business in order to showcase what you do best.   

Answer questions from your line of work

Across the internet, millions of people every day are asking millions of different questions. Forums, Q&A websites, even various groups and pages on social networks, they all present a great opportunity to divert attention to yourself and your product. 

All you have to do is create a profile and set aside a bit of time to search online for the right website. Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn Groups... these are the kind of places you should be looking for.

Find a question that relates to what you're doing and then engage in a discussion with the website's users, but don't be too aggressive in promoting yourself. If you have a product that can solve a user's problem, gently suggest they try it out. If you're offering some kind of service, try giving a few tips and tricks from your line of work. Anything you can do that helps keep a healthy discussion going and is not blatant advertising is great. Think about it – if you create a profile with your business' name in it, for example, and answer a question on something like Quora, you will get free promotion on a huge platform.

Be active offline

But apart from many tricks, you can use to book your business online, you can also spread awareness about your brand offline. Trade shows, conferences, even local community events can be a great way to promote your brand if the audience is right for you. Sure, booking a spot on a trade show can sometimes be fairly expensive, but maybe you can make a deal with someone to go in on it together and split the costs.

In any case, the point here is to identify real-life events where a lot of people interested in your line of work will gather. After that, it's all about exchanging e-mails and creating a good marketing strategy. So don't be afraid to go out among the people and get up close and personal with them. Many of them will consider your business much closer to them if they can see who the person behind it actually is.

Invest in a paid membership

Back to online marketing methods. If there is a popular website in your niche that asks for a paid membership before you can interact with other members, consider making that investment. Doing this will allow you to access a group of people who have already demonstrated not only that they're interested in the type of product or service you're offering, but that they're willing to pay for it, too. Therefore, becoming a part of this community so that you can subtly promote your business and get in touch with everyone could very well be worth the monthly fee you have to pay. Do be careful not to break any rules when trying to promote yourself. Therefore, apply the same principle here as we have discussed in the part about answering questions online – be subtle and try to be helpful; don't be annoying and too aggressive when approaching a potential client and pointing them to your business.

Use YouTube

YouTube has about 2 BILLION monthly active users, so it's safe to say that there's a lot of potential when it comes to advertising. If you're good at creating videos or you're willing to learn it, posting a few of them can help you a lot, especially if you show in your videos how to solve a problem many people have or explain some common misconception. Just like with other search engines, the idea here is to create content that is likely to appeal to a wide audience, name it correctly, and hope the YouTube community picks it up.

The thing is that videos posted here don't have to have spectacular production. In some cases, just you recording yourself as you talk into a microphone can be enough. It's important that you draw attention to yourself with quality content, and once you do that, you can start engaging with your viewers in the comment section of your videos, for example, and promote yourself that way. People will love it if you actually take the time to read their comments and give them an answer. 

Alternatively, you can provide more info about your business/website in the video's description, which can also help a lot to drive traffic to you or just to inform people more about what you do.
And don't forget – the videos you make for YouTube can be monetized and thus turned into an additional source of income on top of being an awesome marketing tool.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are loads of ways to promote your business while your website is still in progress. The Internet offers loads of excellent, and potentially incredibly powerful, free opportunities. Using social networks is pretty much a must these days, the more accounts you can maintain, the better, and Google has some neat features to offer, too. One of them being the fact that they own YouTube, for example.

But answering questions, participating in online discussions, and generally being helpful to people who need advice or suggestions from your field of expertise can also be incredibly beneficial. Of course, don't forget that you can be active in promoting your brand offline, especially if your business is something small that is aiming at becoming a part of the community. In that case, getting out there and meeting people can really help a lot, while attending various community events gets you in direct contact with your target audience. 

But these are by no means the only ways to promote your business for free while you're waiting for your website to be finished. Be creative and don't waste even the slightest opportunity to get in touch with someone who is interested in what you offer, especially if it doesn't cost you anything to do it. You never know what it can lead to.