Whether you have a new business or simply operate in a competitive market space, you need an advertising and promotion strategy that will help drive visitors to your site.

The first step is developing a budget. Among the many ways to develop your budget, the best is simply to allocate a percentage of your total revenues for advertising and promotion.

The second step is deciding how to spend the promotion budget. Once you have an idea of how much money you can invest -- and it is an investment when spent wisely -- experiment with the best methods to reach your target audience with a call to action to your site. Larger companies can consider both traditional and Web-based promotional methods, while smaller businesses should probably stick to Web-based tools -- including text ads (such as Google Adsense), contextual ads (such as Kontera), and banner ads (such as Burst Media).

The final step is evaluating your promotion strategies and changing and correcting them as needed as you strive toward finding the ideal mix for your business.