A company, no matter how big or small, will not be complete without an official web site. Millions of people all over the world visit the world wide web everyday, and what better way is there to promote your business?

However, if nobody visits your web site, it will not serve its purpose - which is to inform people about your company.

On the other hand, if there are a lot of visitors on your web site but nobody is enticed to buy your products or take advantage of the services that your company offers, then the web site will still be useless.

The key ingredient to a successful web site is getting leads. The purpose of leads is to guide the customers and prospective clients to your web site.

Here are some tips on how you can get successful leads to your web site:

1. Review the design and content of your web site. Once people are led to your place on the Internet, then the next thing that you need to do is keep them there.

- Make sure that the site tells people about the products and services that your company offers.

- The web site itself should be user-friendly. A visitor will be annoyed and will browse away from your company's web site if it has a lot of useless information and the links are not organized.

- More importantly, the web site should be visually pleasing and have eye-catching graphics, helpful articles and easy-to-follow links.

2. Conduct a study of your target market. Learn about their age and social group and location. If your customer base is mostly teens, check out their online forums to find out about their likes and dislikes, and their opinions.

If most of your prospective customers are regulars of this kind of web sites, you may actually join their online forums and give out your opinions but do not directly advertise.

What you can do instead is give your e-mail address and other contact information while posting on such forums.

You can also contact the creators of the web site for the online forums and ask them about your advertising options.

3. Build a mailing list to make your advertising campaign more effective.

You may employ paid and unpaid methods when building your list.

With the unpaid method, you are making an effort to convince people to give out their e-mail address.

Here, you would have a solid mailing list to make up your customer base because when people volunteer information, it only means that they are interested with your company.

On the other hand, there is a "paid"? method of building your mailing list. With this, you actually shell out advertising money for your products to be promoted on popular web sites.

There are also "partner" web sites that would let you advertise for free, in return for a service or product that your company may provide. This is how affiliations are built towards a mutual, beneficial gain.

You may also convince your current customers to refer your company and web site to their friends and relatives to increase your mailing list.

Freebies, discounts, and coupons may be given out to customers who can give you a friend's e-mail address.

This should be an additional incentive, aside from the free mailings that they will receive from your company.

Follow these steps and you will be able to promote your business, find local and national customers and help your company grow through targeted advertising online.