It really comes down to 2 major buckets.

1) CONTENT / INBOUND MARKETING

Some people consider this option free, but it's not. Time is money, and it requires an major investment to do it right. The options are:

- Company blog
- Guest post on other blogs
- Engage on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- Press
- Videos on YouTube
- Create a free App (web or mobile)
etc ...

This strategy is all about create amazing content/information/tools for your customers. Think about their major questions they have for your industry, and answer them. Even consider teaching them everything you know about your industry. Doing so will attract them, and make you look like an authority.

I've done this with my past 2 companies Flowtown (300K U/V), and Clarity (40K U/V) blogs.

Each of the items mentioned above have a unique strategy and tactic .. so best to pic the one you'd be most excited about creating, and do just that one with all your resources.

2) PAID MARKETING

Paid means using advertising to introduce your company to potential customers. Some options you have:

- Google Adwords
- Facebook Ads
- Twitter Ads
- Bing Ads
- Banner Ads
etc ...

The only way I would suggest paid marketing is if you truly understand your customer LTV (Lifetime Value). If you don't know that, then you could be wasting money attracting views to your startup that aren't profitable. So be sure to have a product / service that makes profit, then you can test different paid marketing channels.

My rule of thumb, is it'll cost your $200 to get 1 new paying customer (on avg.), so unless you're making $600 profit from a new customer, don't both for now.

If you need to discuss further, you know how to find me.

The first you want to do before anything else is determining who your customer is... Develop a persona that tells a story about your "average" customer... This helps you answer questions for your marketing strategy like : what they might want? Expect? Who they know? How often would they use? What your wording should be? Are they ultimate decision maker? Etc... Once this persons is built then start thinking about what channels this persona is more attracted to....bill boards. Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ , etc...

Call anyone of us with marketing insightful or further help ;)

Be cautious about just "generating traffic". It's easy to get sucked into the trap of vanity numbers. And it's a sure-fire way to spiral into failure.

Instead of generating traffic you must be sure to generate SALES - and do so profitably. Consider traffic and conversions and costs to get them - and measure everything.

If you've sketched out a business model (figured out your minimal viable business, minimal viable product, edgecrafted markets, messages, offers, etc) and have worked out your numbers (pricing, budget projections, lifetime value of a customer, cost of acquisition, etc) then your next step is simply testing your assumptions.

If you haven't done at least those things then, in my experience, your probability of success is unfortunately not high.

If you'd like more direction and help - let me know. And in any case - good luck!

Depending on what your startup is offering, you could create an online course and put it up for free on a website like Udemy.com. There you can build trust with people who will want to look into what you do professionally. I am a Photographer and Web Designer so I created a free intro course on DSLR Photography and another course on Starting a Facebook Page for your business. Both courses have over 10,000 students and it continues to grow. Once you build up enough of an audience, you can start telling them about other opportunities such as what your start up offers.

If you would like, I can send you my VIP link on here and we can spend 10 minutes chatting about it.

Well there are several ways to do it, but if you ask me these are the best ways to increase your traffic:
1. Advertise: This one is so obvious; we are going to look at it first. Paid search, social media advertising and display advertising are all excellent ways of attracting visitors, building your brand, and getting your site in front of people. Adjust your paid strategies to suit your goals do you just want more traffic, or are you looking to increase conversions, too? Each paid channel has its pros and cons, so think carefully about your objectives before you reach for your credit card. If you are hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, you will need to target high commercial intent keywords as part of your paid search strategies. Yes, competition for these search terms can be fierce (and expensive), but the payoffs can be worth it.
2. Get Social: It is not enough to produce great content and hope that people find it you must be proactive. One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is to use social media channels to promote your content. Twitter is ideal for short, snappy links, whereas Google+ promotion can help your site show up in personalized search results and seems especially effective in B2B niches. If you are a B2C product company, you might find great traction with image-heavy social sites like Pinterest and Instagram.
3. Mix It Up: There is no magic formula for content marketing success, despite what some would have you believe. For this reason, vary the length and format of your content to make it as appealing as possible to different kinds of readers. Intersperse shorter, news-based blog posts with long-form content as well as video, infographics, and data-driven pieces for maximum impact.
4. Write Irresistible Headlines: Headlines are one of the most important parts of your content. Without a compelling headline, even the most comprehensive blog post will go unread. Master the art of headline writing. For example, the writers at BuzzFeed and Upworthy often write upward of twenty different headlines before finally settling on the one that will drive the most traffic, so think carefully about your headline before you hit “publish.”
5. Pay Attention to On-Page SEO: Optimizing your content for search engines is still a valuable and worthwhile practice. Are you making the most of image alt text? Are you creating internal links to new content? What about meta descriptions? Optimizing for on-page SEO does not have to take ages, and it could help boost your organic traffic.
6. Target Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords account for most web searches, meaning that if you are not targeting them as part of your paid search or SEO efforts, you are missing out.
7. Start Guest Blogging: True guest blogging is not dead, despite what you may have heard. Securing a guest post on a reputable site can increase blog traffic to your website and help build your brand into the bargain. Be warned, though standards for guest blogging have changed radically during the past eighteen months, and spammy tactics could result in stiff penalties. Proceed with caution.
8. Invite Others to Guest Blog on Your Site: Guest blogging is a two-way street. In addition to posting content to other blogs, invite people in your niche to blog on your own site. They are likely to share and link to their guest article, which could bring new readers to your site. Just be sure that you are only post high-quality, original content without spammy links, because Google is cracking way down on low-quality guest blogging.
9. Go After Referral Traffic: Rather than trying to persuade other sites to link back to you (a tedious and time-intensive process), create content that just begs to be linked to.

When Larry wrote about the kick in the proverbial teeth that eBay took from Google’s Panda update, we managed to secure a link from Ars Technica in the Editor’s Pick section alongside links to The New York Times and National Geographic. Not too shabby – and neither was the resulting spike in referral traffic.
10. Post Content to LinkedIn: LinkedIn has become much more than a means of finding another job. The world’s largest professional social network is now a valuable publishing platform, which means you should be posting content to LinkedIn on a regular basis. Doing so can boost traffic to your site, as well as increase your profile within your industry especially if you have a moderate to large following.
11. Implement Schema Microdata: Implementing schema (or another microdata format) won’t necessarily increase traffic to your website on its own, but it will make it easier for search engine bots to find and index your pages. Another benefit of using schema for SEO is that it can result in better rich site snippets, which can improve click-through rates.
12. Link Internally: The strength of your link profile is not solely determined by how many sites link back to you – it can also be affected by your internal linking structure. When creating and publishing content, be sure to keep an eye out for opportunities for internal links. This not only helps with SEO, but also results in a better, more useful experience for the user the cornerstone of increasing traffic to your website.
13. Interview Industry Thought Leaders: Think interviews are only for the big leaguers? You would be amazed how many people will be willing to talk to you if you just ask them. Send out emails requesting an interview to thought leaders in your industry and publish the interviews on your blog. Not only will the name recognition boost your credibility and increase traffic to your website, the interviewee will probably share the content too, further expanding its reach.
14. Do not Neglect Email Marketing: So many businesses are focused on attracting new customers through content marketing that they forget about more traditional methods. Email marketing can be a powerful tool, and even a moderately successful email blast can result in a significant uptick in traffic. Just be careful not to bombard people with relentless emails about every single update in your business. Also, do not overlook the power of word-of-mouth marketing, especially from people who are already enjoying your products or services. A friendly email reminder about a new service or product can help you boost your traffic, too.
15. Make Sure Your Site is Responsive: The days when internet browsing was done exclusively on desktop PCs are long gone. Today, more people than ever before are using mobile devices to access the web, and if you force your visitors to pinch and scroll their way around your site, you’re basically telling them to go elsewhere. Even if you have a basic website, you still need to ensure that it is accessible and comfortably viewable across a range of devices, including smaller smartphones.
16. Make Sure Your Site is Fast: Ever found yourself waiting thirty seconds for a webpage to load? Me neither. If your site takes forever to load, your bounce rate will be sky high. Make sure that your pages are as technically optimized as possible, including image file sizes, page structure and the functionality of third-party plugins. The faster your site loads, the better.
17. Foster a Sense of Community: People want to speak their minds and weigh in on subjects they feel passionately about, so building a community into your site is a great way to start a conversation and increase traffic to your website. Implement a robust commenting system through third-party solutions such as Facebook comments or Disqus or create a dedicated forum where visitors can ask questions. Do not forget to manage your community to ensure that minimum standards of decorum are met, however.
18. Make Yourself Heard in Comment Sections: You probably visit at least a few sites that are relevant to your business on a regular basis, so why not join the conversation? Commenting doesn’t necessarily provide an immediate boost to referral traffic right away, but making a name for yourself by providing insightful, thought-provoking comments on industry blogs and sites is a great way to get your name out there – which can subsequently result in driving more traffic to your own site. Just remember that, as with guest posting, quality and relevance are key you should be engaging with other people in your niche, not dropping spam links on unrelated websites.
19. Examine Your Analytics Data: Google Analytics is an invaluable source of data on just about every conceivable aspect of your site, from your most popular pages to visitor demographics. Keep a close eye on your Analytics data and use this information to inform your promotional and content strategies. Pay attention to what posts and pages are proving the most popular. Inspect visitor data to see how, where and when your site traffic is coming from.
20. Get Active on Social Media: It is not enough to just share content through social channels – you need to actively participate in the community, too. Got a Twitter account? Then join in group discussions with relevant hashtags. Is your audience leaving comments on your Facebook posts? Answer questions and engage with your readers. Nothing turns people off quicker than using social media as a broadcast channel – use social media as it was intended and interact with your fans.
21. Submit Your Content to Aggregator Sites: Firstly, a disclaimer – do not spam Reddit and other similar sites hoping to “hit the jackpot” of referral traffic, because it is not going to happen. Members of communities like Reddit are extraordinarily savvy to spam disguised as legitimate links, but every now and again, it does not hurt to submit links that these audiences will find genuinely useful. Choose a relevant subreddit, submit your content, then watch the traffic pour in.
22. Incorporate Video into Your Content Strategy: Text-based content is all well and good, but video can be an asset in both attracting new visitors and making your site more engaging. Data shows that information retention is significantly higher for visual material than it is for text, meaning that video marketing is an excellent way to grab and hold your audience’s attention, and boost traffic to your website at the same time.
23. Research the Competition: If you have not used software like BuzzSumo to check out what your competitors are up to, you are at a huge disadvantage. These services aggregate the social performance of specific sites and content to provide you with an at-a-glance view of what topics are resonating with readers and, most importantly, making the rounds on social media. Find out what people are reading and emulate that kind of content to bring traffic to your website.
24. Host Webinars: People love to learn, and webinars are an excellent way to impart your wisdom to your eagerly waiting audience. Combined with an effective social promotion campaign, webinars are a great way to increase traffic to your website. Send out an email a week or so ahead of time, as well as a “last chance to register” reminder the day before the webinar. Make sure to archive the presentation for later viewing and promote your webinars widely through social media. If you are wondering how to do a webinar, click the link for some tips.
25. Attend Conferences: Whatever industry you are in, chances are there are at least one or two major conventions and conferences that are relevant to your business. Attending these events is a good idea speaking at them is even better. Even a halfway decent speaking engagement is an excellent way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and gain significant exposure for your site.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath

I am Marketing responsible for video monetization and have dealt with traffic creation for musical websites (amongst others).

As often, there is no such thing as a best way, in general.
There is the best way for your company.

First things first, what are you selling and thus who is your target, who are your prospects ?
- Are they young and connected using a lot social networks ?
- Are they traditional users that you can attract from search in google ?

Second, what are your objectives and budget.
Once you have answered those two questions, you can start building a strategy to bring people on your website.

It can be a mix of the following :
- SEO : building mid term strategy to bring people on your website through their searches on google
- Adwords : on top of SEO, you might want to buy words within Google (or bing). Still you need to be very cautious on how you spend your money and on the ROI you can expect.
- Social Media Strategy : creating events, animating pages on facebook, twitter, etc
- newsletter : still very powerful (depending on the target of course)
- Video Marketing : Video is a very powerful way to bring people on your website

Of course you will also need to think about mobile strategy; People are still watching website but this is the App reign. How will you address people when they are on the move : App or website that then must be responsive (or both).

And the website should be build AFTER you have those answers...

Many many subjects to go through.
We can address some on the phone.

Depending on what your startup / website is offering, you should focus on different channels for customer acquisition.
As Dan suggests, you can usually categorize the different customer acquisition channels into paid vs. non-paid (meaning you're not directly paying to acquire traffic, not that the traffic comes without you having to spend time and money on getting it). Customer acquisition is the biggest problem startups face by far. Many channels are awfully noisy. Which channel makes sense for you depends entirely on what your startup does and where your audience resides and spends their time.

I hope you have heard about www.meetup.com This site has completely segmented the market across the world. Go find your target market and start promoting in that meetup group. Most of these groups actually meet frequently. Best way to connect and network

There are two tracks to consider -- are you targeting businesses or consumers with your startup (B2B or B2C)?

With business, it's about getting access to stakeholders and decision makers. With consumers, it's about getting traction and building momentum.

Offering something for free is a great way to start. It could be a report with data you've collected or analyzed yourself, or it could be a free online tool or open source software.

But you've still got to get noticed -- and that's different for each group of customers. So, it's a good idea to start by identifying the customers you want to reach. And then reach out to them directly.

It's ok to cold call or run targeted ads to them, even if that's not scalable. What you're trying to do here is prove your market -- do you have the right solution -- and are you positioning it in the right way to the right people. And who knows, you might get lucky and find (and convince) an influencer that you've got the right solution.

Ultimately it comes down to finding those influencers. Those are the people who are early adopters -- experimenters -- who will share their experience and influence others.