Most books I've read on the subject have been almost obsolete by the time they get published, so don't get too high hopes there..
A few that I found to be quite good though are:
- Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
- Eating the big fish (author??)
- Rules for revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki
None is spot on for what you want, but they serve valuable lessons. I'll try to whip up some short stuff from what I know:
First of all I'd like to make a perhaps obvious statement.
It's not the quantity of traffic you get, it's the quality. Agree? Fine 
Now bear with me on a series of steps in reverse engineering marketing communications:
definitions
In order to be able to get quality traffic, you must define what constitutes quality in this context.
And in order to do so, you must know (and define!) what is the purpose of the site.
(agreed, the purpose could be to attract as much traffic as possible. In that case disregard my above statement). By purpose i mean: get really fundamental. Why should anyone go to your site?
To shop? To find a "real-life" store? To find information?
The commercial dreamdate
As long as you're finding the purpose in life for the site, make sure that you identifies who your ideal visitor is. Is it a highprofile yuppie type or a 16-yo *nix nerd? Wall street guy or a construction worker?
Most likely your site would be different in layout and context for these personalities, and so should your promotion. A common excercise is to try to define a few typical characters and build a persona around them. That could include:
Fake name (yes it's being done that way. Makes it easier to separate different classes of ideals)
Age
Living conditions
Marital status
Profession
Income
Interests
and so on. When you've built your ideal visitors, try to envision them. What would they, or would they not like? It's probably easiest to use yourself as an example, but what if you're not your ideal visitor?
That should leave you with a picture of who you would want to attract to the site.
Now, why am I ranting about all this fuzzyness?
Because the more thought you've put into trying to get in to the ideal visitors mind, the better you'll be able to entice them to your site and form the relationship. You got to figure out what bait to use for the fish you want 
Product profile
Ok, so you know why you have your site, what you want to sell and even to whom.
But do you know how the products that you want to sell is ranked brand-wise in context?
"Hell", you might say. "I'm selling off-the-shelf stuff. Water is water and salt is salt, right?"
Sorry, way off. There's a huge pricing different between noname water and Evian, and between ordinary table salt and flake sea salt. It's all about positioning.
How are you going to differentiate? Is it on lower prices, better service or higher profile?
Should the customer feel happy with a decent product for a decent price or should he/she feel that he/she paid a lot, but it was worth it for the feeling of owning this cool high profile gadget? Perhaps he/she should feel that he/she has made a real bargain?
Different approaches yet again!
Hmm... I seem digress into branding and position strategies.. sorry.
Competition
Are others selling what you are selling?
How do they compare in price?
How do they market themselves?
You'd better be different!
If you're new in the market you need to get attention, and attention in the right way and context of your products and presumed target customers. Established companies just needs to remind their customers that they're still around to keep mindshare. You got to fight for it!
And you do not want to pick that fight in the back yard of your competitors. Pick a new turf or have a bunch of aces up your sleeves.
Imagine trying to promote banners at a place where one of your competitors have been for a while. Visitors will probably see your product banner but still think of you competitor, unless you're really creative.
Phase I = OK
And after all this I'd say you're ready with the groundwork that enables you to decide a bit about how you're going to market your site.
Much depends of course on your budget.
My best tip is to try to combine offline and online promotion. Banners might work to some extent, but in that case you should go for smaller sites that attracts the same crowd you are looking for. Better bang for the buck. (In this context specialization is king )
Try to get into partnerships and endorsements with other sites or organisations.
What you want is to get people talking about your site. If it's contextually right (try it by asking your virtual commercial dreamdates!) you might get a long way with flyers, stickers and so on.
Sorry this got kind of long. Although this is just a condesed crash course of some things to keep in mind.
I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have, but to do that I guess I need to know more about the site, hence the lenghty post 
[This message has been edited by Nimraw (edited 07-12-2002).]
posted 07-11-2002 20:20
