Advertising people will tell you that before anyone will act on an ad, they have to be reminded 18 times. That’s a lot of dead-horse beating. It’s all the more effective if you can find online and offline places to promote. To get you started, here are 18 ways you can tell people to visit your website:

1. Put your website address on your return address labels
2. Mention your website on your voice mail recording
3. Add your site to your e-mail signature
4. Mention any new development any time you talk to someone
5. Update your business cards with your address
6. List yourself in directories
7. Ask partners to display literature with your website
8. Open a Facebook, MySpace and Flickr page and send people back to your website
9. Create a custom background on Twitter and make sure it has your website on it
10. Wear your web address – have it printed on T-shirts, hats, bags or even cheap buttons
11. Put a custom magnet on your organization’s car
12. Send out press releases
13. Encourage paper newsletter subscribers to read issues online
14. Send an e-mail with your new website to everybody you know, and as them to forward it to anyone they know
15. Have a website launch party/fundraiser
16. Start a blog – more pages means better online coverage
17. Add a Send This Article to Friends button on your website
18. Hang posters with your web address

When going over the designs for his website, a client of mine said, “If we put our newsletter on our website, why do we need to e-mail it to people too?”

My answer: “Because they don’t know it’s there!”

It’s a very common question, and a common misconception. Just because you build a website doesn’t mean that anyone knows it’s there. And it’s not a guarantee they’ll come.

In fact, people are fickle. You have to beat them over the head to make them visit your site, and then you have to make it easy for them to read your site, navigate your site and anticipate what they’re looking for.

All this takes a lot of research into knowing your audience and working with a company that understands the way humans interact with technology, but here are a few tips and tools you can follow to help bring people to your site and help keep them there:

Learn SEO. Make sure you write the copy on your site to attract the most people and the most search engines with search engine optimization (SEO). We’re hosting a free online seminar on this topic on August 5, 2008, so sign up to learn how.

Send a Newsletter. If you didn’t have an electronic newsletter before, get one now. Publishing news regularly gives you a chance to connect with your audience and connect to them while they’re at their computer. That’s the best time for them to click through to your website. We build newsletters into our content management systems, but many independent companies provide powerful newsletter tools, such as Constant Contact.

Advertise Widely and Often. Advertise your site everywhere. On your invoices, business cards, sticky notes, voice mail recordings, newsletters – everywhere. Slap your URL on it. VistaPrint is one of many companies that provides cheap promotional materials that you can use for advertising.