Hey guys, I am promoting and marketing a new business site called zakle.com. At first we expected that target audience would be students and older empty nesters; however, the first batch of users are all middle aged. It is still not clear whether this is an accurate representation of our market or there's just not enough users to warrant our original predictions. Can you guys take a look at the site and give some feedback on what you think it should be. For promotion we're doing press release to local media, universities, non-profits. Doing some viral stuff like myspace and digg. What else would be good in terms of cheap viral? Thanks!!!
Well, first of all, try giving a more neat look to your site. Just get a bit more organised with tables and stuff Viral marketing can work for your site but you'll have to do something better than "refer a friend"... Try getting the users more involved. Specifically ask people to use their referral link or code in email signatures and forum signatures. Dont just assume they'll do it... Give them instructions, 1 do this, 2 go here, 3 do that .... Get it? Anyway, your marketing strategies will evolve with time, so keep exploring. Remember, you gotta help your users make this go viral and it will surely happen!
You're probably not viewing your site on a monitor with a widescreen resolution, but it looks horrible. Center the entire thing in a DIV with CSS.