Domaining, Online Business and Web Development Link Roundup for June

Domaining, Online Business and Web Development Link Roundup for June

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Another month brings another big collection of resources related to branding, domaining, online business, marketing, web development and SEO. I’m always on the lookout for educational and inspiring articles and editorials that can help better myself as an online entrepreneur. And, of course, I am eager to share what I have learned with adsense97779 blog readers.

I have categorized and selected choice updates from the month of June in today’s link roundup.

Most of these links are also shared on the DotSauce Facebook page.

Branding & Domain Names

Each month it seems the domain name industry is featured in the mainstream media more and more. With ICANN’s approval of the new generic TLD space this month, I am confident this trend will continue. I found these headlines and resources particularly interesting.

Online Business

I’ve been pleased to read many informative and inspiring articles from respected entrepreneurs and industry leaders this month.

Web Development & SEO

Nearly a dozen great articles on SEO have been featured this month. The industry is evolving rapidly; optimizing for site performance, social engagement and producing quality content are becoming increasingly important to become an authority site.

Marketing & Social Media

These articles can help get you on the right path towards social media success. Get updated on the latest trends and social marketing techniques.

You’re welcome to retweet any of these links to your own following or share the entire link roundup. Have a great holiday weekend!

Twitter for Business: 7 Tips to Maximize Results in the Inspiration Age [Podcast]

Twitter for Business: 7 Tips to Maximize Results in the Inspiration Age [Podcast]

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Is it true that you are sick of listening to business and advertising pioneer companions boast about the quantifiable results they are accomplishing utilizing Twitter? They discuss all their new companions, new groups and even new customers. Do you have an inclination that you are as a rule left in the Twitter dust and that you're never going to make up for lost time or truly realize what it's about? 

Have you attempted to utilize Twitter for business however genuinely have no clue how to accomplish anything near a ROI on your speculation of time and asset? 

We live in a universe of motivation. On the off chance that you can't figure out how to motivate and interface with your gathering of people, you're going to have a troublesome time accomplishing any sort of profit for any informal community, including Twitter 

You can't simply jump on Twitter and begin spamming connections, coupons and blurbs about you and your image, you need to give esteem and discover human ways that you can genuinely interface at the human level with your gathering of people, group, companions, online family and adherents. 

Actually we're all the media. Me, you, your children, your mother and even your Grandma on the off chance that she has a Facebook account. On the off chance that you need to transcend the commotion you have to unite with genuine individuals, not simply site URLs. 

Do these Twitter for Business inquiries sound well known? 

You need to reach new crowds and markets? 

You need to expand and improve brand mindfulness? 

You utilize Twitter yet have no clue what you are doing? 

You wish you could better sustain connections utilizing online networking? 

You need to figure out how to better utilize Twitter for business? 

You need to take in more about what your opposition is doing? 

In the event that you'd like responses to these inquiries, then you must listen to scene 174 of the Social Zoom Factor podcast. I impart to you 5 demonstrated systems to amplify your outcomes utilizing Twitter as a part of the motivation age. 

Make sure to subscribe to this whole fresh out of the plastic new arrangement, "Welcome to The Inspiration Age. Are You Ready?" on iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud 

In this 25 moment podcast you will learn: 

Why you must figure out how to grasp the motivation age for achievement utilizing online networking for business 

The most effective method to take advantage of the force of Twitter to support connections 

Step by step instructions to influence Twitter to develop your email rundown of endorsers 

Step by step instructions to utilize Twitter to take in more about your business sector and rivalry 

Step by step instructions to test new items, administrations, taglines and other advertising messages with Twitter 

Step by step instructions to really rouse and join with your gatherings of people utilizing Twitter 

Step by step instructions to know whether it's an ideal opportunity to get assistance from a third gathering organization or counseling 

Step by step instructions to utilize Twitter for social offering and to build deals 

Step by step instructions to utilize Twitter to achieve groups of onlookers you can't reach generally 

Why you should not utilize Twitter as a spam device 

Supporting Resources 

Gathering of people Analysis (worksheet to assist you with organizing your specialty) 

Welcome to the Inspiration Age (scene 170) 

50 Ways to Inspire Your Audience (white paper) 

Twitter Persona (worksheet to assist you with building up your Twitter Persona) 

Twitter in a Nutshell 

Twitter Lists in a Nutshell 

Hashtags in a Nutshell 

7 Metrics to Measure Value of Your Content in the Inspiration Age (scene 172) 

Should You Narrow Your Marketing Niche? (scene 171) 

Brand Humanization in a Nutshell 

20 Tips to Humanize Your Brand

5 online marketing strategies for small business that work

Online marketing strategies are no different than traditional marketing strategies when it comes to goals and purpose. Both types aim to increase brand awareness and find more customers for the particular company.

Online marketing or digital marketing as it is more widely known, has a number of components that cover every aspect of online promotion from content creation to delivery and sales. These components can be combined together and form 5 basic strategies that can be used by any type of online business to get more traffic and customers online.

1. Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the first online marketing strategy you can use and it has two major components. First is SEO (Search engine optimization) and second is PSA (Paid Search Advertising). In simple words SEO will help you get more organic visits from search engines for free while PSA can get you visits from search traffic but you will have to pay for them.

What is your goal with SEM? Your goal with SEM is clear: get more visits from search engines either from organic search or through carefully designed and targeted PPC campaigns.

How: To get more visits from search engines you need to make sure that your website is optimized for search. Things like your page titles, descriptions, web page speed, Google authorship, design and structure, incoming links, content freshness, ALT text for images and many more are important.

Best tool for SEO?

I use a number of tools to build organic traffic to my websites but this one is my favorite keyword tool. I use it for SEO, keyword research and rank tracking.

Finding profitable keywords you can actually rank has never been easier

Click here

Tools: There are many SEO guidelines you can follow and although each rule is important on its own, if you apply a number of rules together, that would produce better results.  You can use these 2 articles (5 on page SEO techniques and SEO tips for beginners) to guide you through the process and once you are done, you can perform an SEO Audit of your website to ensure that it is in good shape before continuing with the rest of the online marketing strategies.

Tip: When you make changes to your website to improve SEO, these changes will not be immediately taken into account by Google or other search engines. You have to be patient and monitor your pages for improvements in their ranking through google webmaster tools (search queries report).

2. Mobile Marketing

Normally after search engine marketing you can expect to find social media marketing or content marketing as the next online marketing strategy for small businesses but the increase in the number of mobile searches raises the importance of mobile marketing. As stated by Google, mobile marketing isn’t an option but it’s an imperative for every business. Some recent statistics about mobile usage re-enforce this statement:

mobile-statistics

What is your goal with mobile marketing? To provide your users with the best possible experience when browsing your website using their mobile devices.

How: How can you achieve the ‘best possible experience’? First you need to make sure that your website looks good and usable when viewed through a mobile browser i.e. you need to have a mobile friendly version of your website. Second, you can also offer your users native apps to download (from the itunes store, Google play, amazon store, windows store) and install on their devices.

Tools: If you are using wordpress you can easily create a mobile friendly version by either changing to a responsive theme or by using a plugin. I am using wp-touch pro on this website and I am very happy with the results.

If you are not using wordpress you can use services like dudamobile or conduit to create mobile friendly versions of your website.

Make sure that you understand the difference between a mobile friendly version of your website and a native app. A native app is different than a mobile website and you need to hire a mobile developer to build an application for the specific platform.  For example if you want to create an application for your website and have this application published on the Apple Store then you need to hire an apple developer to code the application and prepare it for submission to itunes.

Hint: We also offer mobile development services at very competitive prices so contact us to discuss your next mobile project together.

3. Content marketing

Content marketing is the heart of every digital marketing campaign. Once you have a good foundation (that’s search engine marketing) and a good delivery platform that can cover all your user needs (that’s mobile marketing) then the next step is to take all actions needed to create content that rocks!

Content is what will create loyal visitors, comments, social media shares and most important of all sales.

What is your goal with content marketing? To put it simply, your goal is to create high quality content that your readers want to read and try to convince readers to become customers or execute a call-to-action process (register to a newsletter, follow on social media, vote for a poll etc.).

How: Before even creating content, whether it is an article, a video, a table or image, try to think how that particular content will benefit your readers or customers. Don’t just create and publish content for the sake of keeping a publishing schedule or to satisfy your desire to have something to publish.

In the past this technique of publishing mass amounts of content to trick search engines used to work but not anymore. It is more important to have less published pages but with good content rather than lots of published pages with low quality content.

4. Social Media marketing

Social media marketing is naturally the next marketing strategy for your business. You managed to have in your hands great content (from the previous strategy) so now it’s time to spread the word out and the best way to do that is through a well-designed social media marketing strategy.

What is your goal with social media marketing?  Your social media campaigns should serve two purposes. First is to gain as many targeted followers so that your content and brand gets as much attention possible and second to get visits from social networks that will eventually convert into customers.

How: You need to establish a good presence in all major social networks (Facebook, google+, twitter, Pinterest) by sharing useful related content on a regular basis and by engaging with people interested in your website, products or brand. Have a look at these 3 articles to get started: 10 social media marketing tips for beginners, social media mistakes to avoid, how to get more followers on facebook.

I know that it’s not an easy process to follow and it is rather time consuming to run campaigns on many networks at the same time but this is how online marketing works for small businesses these days and you have to do it too.

The good news is that social media traffic does convert (despite the initial believes a few years back that visitors from social media don’t become customers) and if you don’t have the time or knowledge to manage your social media presence, there are professionals (see our seo packages for small business for more details) that can do it for you.

5. Local SEO strategy

Since we are talking about small businesses, I thought that it is more appropriate to have local SEO listed as a separate strategy because it is very important for them. Local SEO is a must for every company that has a physical address. Whether you are a doctor or florist, a mechanic or retailer, local seo can help you find more customers online.

What is your goal from local seo? The goal from local seo is more than clear: to get high rankings for searches related to your area. When people search for long tail keywords with the addition of location in the query (for example: “divorce lawyers in las vegas”) you want your website to be listed in the top positions.

How: There is no straightforward answer for that, as with any other SEO related question. What you can do is follow Google seo best practices to ensure that Google will not penalize you for trying to cheat on their algorithm and optimize your website for local SEO.

Think outside the box

While the 5 online marketing strategies explained above are great and can generate fantastic results, you need to also think outside of the box for even better results. For example besides search engines, mobiles and social media what are some other ways to increase traffic coming to your small business website? To be more precise here are some ideas that worked for some of my clients:

Chrome web store: Registering your website as a web app in the chrome store can generate an additional flow of quality traffic coming to your site. I have used this method many times and the results are very good.

Slideshare.net: For some niches slideshare is a great way to get traffic or even leads.

Direct Advertising on other websites: Besides running PPC campaigns on Adwords and Facebook you can also try to ‘rent’ advertising space per month or other related websites. You can easily find related websites in your niche that offer advertising and contact the webmasters directly and ask for their rates. It will cost you less than PPC and with proper tracking you can evaluate the results and ROI.

Guest posting on high traffic websites: Guest posting for traffic (and not for links) is a good way to increase your online reputation but also gain traffic from other websites. If the website you are guest posting on has a good social media presence then the benefits are even more.

Conclusion

Small businesses can succeed online if they follow proven techniques and practices. When you build your website the first thing that you should look at is search engine optimization. Once you get this right then you need to enhance your delivery channels by going mobile. After that you need to revisit your content strategy and ensure that you have content that matters and makes sense. Next in line is social media marketing that will help you to push your content to the world.

Why every business needs a blog

Blogging is not just for bloggers but it’s for businesses as well. Every online business whether it’s a services company, retailer, manufacturer or wholesaler should maintain an active blog. The reasons are a lot and below I will try to explain why every business needs a blog, what to expect from it and how to do it correctly so that you won’t lose your money and time.

Why you need to have a blog?

A blog is part of a well-designed content marketing strategy and if run correctly can very quickly become the best source of referrals for a company. If you think about it, the blog is the ‘face’ and ‘voice’ of the company and a great direct way to reach out and communicate with your existing or potential customers. Besides that, a blog can also provide the following advantages:

Content freshness – One of the most important reasons as to why you should run a blog on your business website is content freshness. A blog will help you publish fresh content and provide another incentive for search engines and people to come back and check out what’s new.

Content on a business website is usually static. You have pages about your products and services, you have your contact us and about page and pretty much that’s the type of content you have on most business websites.

A blog will contribute in keeping the site active and also increase the number of pages a website has, something that will gradually generate more benefits in the long run.

Best tool for SEO?

I use a number of tools to build organic traffic to my websites but this one is my favorite keyword tool. I use it for SEO, keyword research and rank tracking.

Finding profitable keywords you can actually rank has never been easier

Click here

Fresh content is also good for SEO and particularly one of the most effective practices for google SEO.

Better internal linking – I have talked extensively about the importance of internal linking and a blog is the best way to do it naturally. Through your blog posts you can highlight and pinpoint the most important pages of your website and ‘assist’ both users and search engine crawlers find them easier.

Cross selling and up selling – Through a blog you can create new needs for your existing customers and sell them more products (cross selling) or convince them to buy your most expensive products (up selling).

For example let’s say you are selling different types of wireless mouse, a well prepared blog post about the benefits of having a wireless mouse and the advantages of a particular type can help new customers realise that they should get a wireless mouse and not wired and that spending $20 more to buy the particular type is worth it.

Customer service – A blog is another form of communication between you (the company) and its customers. You can use it to answer customer questions, educate them about your services and give them another way to contact and interact with you via blog comments.

Demonstrate your expertise – The most valuable asset of any company are the human resources and the expertise and experience they have about their business. A blog can help a company demonstrate their areas of expertise to the outside World. You can use the blog to pass more messages to your audience than an advertisement and you can do it for free and any time you want.

For social media – In order to succeed with social media you need to share good quality content on a regular basis and a company blog can be one of your best sources. The combination of content marketing with a solid social media strategy is what differentiates successful online businesses from businesses that strive to survive online.

You can also read 5 online marketing strategies for small businesses that work for more information on how small businesses can take advantage of online marketing strategies.

Announce new products and special offers – Besides enhancing customer service a blog is another way to say thank you to your customers by giving them special offers and announcing new product launches. You can use the blog to publish exclusive information about your new products or services, find beta users depending on the niche etc.

Get Customer feedback – You can use the blog as the medium to run polls or questionnaires to get direct feedback from your customers. Remember to always give incentives to people to fill in a questionnaire or poll otherwise the participation levels will be low.

Get more traffic – I left this one for last but one of the reasons you should run a blog is to get more traffic to your business website. If you run the blog correctly (as we will see in more details below) it can become one of your major sources of traffic.

How to run a business blog correctly

A business blog is not the same as a normal blog where a blogger writes about a subject he/she is passionate about. Business blogs are more difficult to gain loyal followers especially if readers are not customers or interested to become customers of the company. That’s why it is more important to do it correctly.

You don’t need to have good content – That’s correct, you don’t need to have good content on your business blog but you need to have great content! Your business blog is a mirror of your business experience and expertise and this should be reflected in the published content.

Anyone reading your articles should be one step closer to become a customer otherwise your better stop thinking of having a blog altogether.

A common mistake I see in many businesses is maintaining a blog for the sake of having a blog and they only publish mediocre content they buy from content writers. The result is a waste of time, money and for some cases a negative impact on their brand, services or products.

It’s an investment – Consider your business blog as a long term investment instead of a short term tool. As with any other investment you need to be patient and follow a specific plan with measurable targets in order for your investment to be effective.

Don’t look for cheap ways to publish content but look on how your published content can really make a difference.

A good blog needs to have a face – A blog needs to have a face. Readers should know who is behind the blog, what is their background and expertise and how to connect with them.

Have employees contribute – Instead of buying content why not have all the employees of the company contribute to the company blog. Create a policy that all employees should contribute once a month in the blog by creating relevant content related to your products or services. Maybe this is a new project they are working on or their experience so far with customer support… A brain storming session during the next staff meeting can do wonders in this area.

Implement Google authorship – This is strongly related with the note made above about the need to show a face in your blog. Good company blogs should take it a step further where all contributors to the blog have a verified Google+ profile. This will not only help your SEO efforts but it will increase traffic and social mentions.

Need to have a newsletter – A blog and newsletter are two strongly related concepts. Email marketing has a lot to offer to businesses and a blog is a fantastic way to grow your email list naturally.

A nice way to stay in touch with your users is to send out a newsletter every time you update your blog. There are many services like mailchimp or feedburner that can help you automate this task.

Make sure you reply to comments – I mentioned above that a blog is a good way to communicate with your customers and this means that you should reply to each and every comment made on your posts. Show your readers that you care about what they say and that you actually respond to their requests.  Finally make sure that you do not publish spam comments for the sake of increasing your comment count but only concentrate on what has value for your readers.

Conclusion

A blog is a very useful tool for every business. The biggest mistake that most companies make is running a blog without having a content strategy or without having specific measurable targets for the blog. They only have a blog because it’s good to have one or because their web designers told them that they need to have a blog option in their website.

Although you can employ many of the ingredients of having a successful blog and use them on your business blog, what you should concentrate more is having a steady increase in followers, loyal readers and user interaction rather than just plain increase in rankings and traffic.

Contact us today to help you design your business blog strategy and make another step to bypass your online competitors.

How to promote your small business online

How do you promote a small business online these days? As a small business owner what steps should you take to ensure that you are not missing out any opportunities? How can you utilize the internet to find more customers and make more sales?

These are some of the questions I will try to answer in this post by explaining 7 methods for promoting a business online that are proven to work.

1- You need to have a business website

I know that this sounds weird and while this is obvious for many people, still more than 55% of the businesses in America do not have a website or if they have, it is outdated.

So your first step is to get your business online. How you will do it depends on your budget and the type of website you want to create but the general principles you should follow are:

Get your own domain name – register a .com or .net domain name for your company

Host your website on a reliable hosting provider – don’t always go for the cheapest solution but choose a hosting provider that is reliable and trustworthy. Don’t forget that your website represents your business image. Read my article on SEO Web Hosting for more information.

Make sure that your website loads as fast as possible – The hosting provider has to play a very important role about this but also the company that will develop your website. Fast websites have many benefits to offer to businesses and this should not be forgotten.

Mobile friendly – As we will see below, more and more people use their mobiles to search the web so having a mobile friendly website is a must.

Provide information about your business, products or services – Last but not least, do not forget the primary mission of your website i.e. to provide information about your business, products and services in a professional manner. Better do something really simple and functional rather than something stylish but slow and non-user friendly.

2- Optimize your business website for search engines

Creating a website is the first step, the second step is to make sure that your website is search engine friendly. Search engine optimization or SEO as it is widely known is a set of changes you need to do on a website so that it can be understood by search engines.

The more information you give to search engines about your website, the greater are your chances of receiving traffic from them. You can read these 4 articles that explain the benefits of SEO for small businesses and how to do it correctly.

Benefits of SEO for small businesses

Small business SEO in simple terms

10 SEO tips for startups and small business owners

SEO Packages for small business

3 -it’s not just about the desktop

A large majority of users are surfing the net using a variety of devices besides the desktop and your objective as a business owner is to make your website accessible to the device of their choice. Whether it’s a smartphone, iPad, Android Tablet, Amazon Kindle or even TV (Smart TV, Google TV, Apple TV) they should be able to find, read and interact with your website without any problems.

The best way to do that is by adopting a responsive web design which is a design technique that makes a website adaptable to different screen sizes and resolutions. As an example make sure that you view this website on various devices and resolutions.

4- Build your online reputation

As a business owner you already know how important the reputation of your company is and that this is something you build with careful moves and patience over time.  You also know that a good reputation will make people trust you and this will eventually lead to sales, loyal customers and much more.

Well, the Internet is no exception to this rule. You have to work hard to build your online reputation as a trusted service provider or retailer.

How can you do that?

By consistently providing quality services and products to customers

By having good customer service

How can you make sure that the online world knows that you are a reputable and trusted company?

Through Social Media – Yes social media is the modern way to spread a word, build a brand and find new customers. Social media networks have millions of users per day and that includes your potential customers.

By running targeted social media campaigns, publishing useful and high quality content on a regular basis and engaging with people related to your niche, you can gradually build your online reputation.

If you are not sure where to start or if you just don’t have the time to deal with social media, let us handle and build your online reputation. View more details about our social media marketing packages.

Another important factor you need to have in mind is that besides building your online reputation you should also take measures to protect it. In other words once you start the social media game you need to be in position to monitor what others say about you in the different social networks and reply to them in case they have a question, bad review or complaint.

You can also read the following posts for more information on how to utilize Facebook and google plus for business:

How to get your first 10,000 fans on Facebook

How to use Google plus for business (for beginners)

5- In the online World you also need content

Search engines and social media networks can only understand one thing and that’s content. Whether its news, product information, text, images, video, infographics, reviews, user’s opinions, forums, questions; you need content in order to be able to promote your business online.

This process of using content for promotion purposes is known as content marketing and those businesses that managed to do this correctly have seen great success.

If you are still not sure how content marketing can help in promoting your business, consider the example of what I am doing now in the article you are reading. I am using content to help you understand a process i.e. how to promote your small business online and at the same time I am indirectly advertising my expertise and services.

What if your niche is not as content rich as SEO, what do you do in such cases? That’s one of the challenges you have to solve but believe me with careful thought you can find a solution. For starters you can make a company blog and write about your products or services and how they can solve people’s problem. You can share industry tips and news, you can talk about the leaders in your industry etc.

When talking with new clients this is always a topic of further discussion but at the end we are always able to find a solution and once they see the results from content marketing then everything becomes easier for both sites.

To get started read: 10 content marketing tips for beginners

6- Mobile Markets are on the rise

As I mentioned above, besides the desktops you should also make sure that you provide your users with a mobile friendly version of your website so that they can access it on the go. Over and above that you should also take advantage of the different mobile markets (Apple app store, Google Play, Amazon marketplace, Windows Mobile Market).

There are millions and millions of users downloading different kind of apps and games from those markets on a daily basis and if you are not there (i.e. have a native app about your business submitted in those stores), they will not be able to find you.

What kind of app you can create? Depending on your niche it can be a content rich app, a game or a showcase app. If you are selling a product for example, the app can have more images and videos about your products in a mobile friendly format. The possibilities are endless and the only limitation is the budget you can allocate for establishing your presence in the mobile markets.

7 -Advertise

The Internet offers a plethora of advertising tools suitable for promoting a small business:

Advertise with Google Adwords – Google has the largest advertising network in the World and you can use it to promote your business online. It is based on a pay per click (PPPC) auction system and it can help you bring your ad in front of the millions of people using Google to search the web and the millions of websites that show Google ads.

Advertise with Yahoo / Bing ads – Yahoo and Bing have a system similar to Google for placing ads in their network and the websites running their ads.

Direct Advertising – If you prefer not to use the PPC advertising model you can search the web and find websites that are relevant to your business, contact them and negotiate with them a price for showing your ads.

Conclusion

What I have outlined above are only 7 of the available tools you have in your arsenal for promoting a business online. In my opinion these are the most important methods that are also proven to work by generating a high return on investment.

If you are new to internet marketing but understand that you have to do this otherwise it will be difficult to grow your business, the best way to start is by discussing with a digital marketing agency your strategy and create both a short term but also long term implementation plan.

How long will it take to see some good results?

 This depends on a lot of factor including budget, implementation methods, complexity of your business, competition etc but when you work consistently, with a plan and towards clear measurable goals, you can have great success online and grow your business 40% faster.

Internet Marketing tips for small business owners

Small business owners have a lot to gain from Internet Marketing.  The Internet can help a business grow and Internet Marketing will help you take full advantage of all the opportunities created in the online world.

How Internet Marketing can help small businesses?

What do we mean by small businesses?

When we talk about small businesses we essentially mean any company that operates in the online or offline World and may or may not have clients online. We tend to use the term ‘small businesses’ since large corporations most probably have dedicated departments that take care of their Internet marketing and online presence.

I have the opportunity to talk with small business owners on a daily basis explaining to them how Internet marketing can help them expand and find new customers and there are a couple of questions that I am asked all the time from people operating in different niches. I am sharing the questions below since I am sure that it will help other business owners understand a bit more about Internet Marketing.

I am not selling online, why do I need Internet Marketing? 

This is the top question coming from business owners who are not selling any products or services online. The answer is very simple and straightforward.

Even if you are not selling online you still need Internet Marketing because nowadays purchasing decisions are influenced by online searches. People like to research a product or service before making the decision to purchase and if you are not found when they are doing their searches, you are missing great opportunities.

To give you a more convincing reason, in a recent study by Nielsen and Google regarding the use of mobile for shopping, it was found that 84% of smartphone shoppers use their devices to shop while in store. This is only a very simple example that shows the importance of having an efficient online presence (both web and mobile) for small businesses.

My customers are not on Facebook, why spend money on something that won’t give me any return? This is another question that is worth discussing. Internet Marketing is not only about Facebook or Google as many people believe. As we will see below (and as it is shown in the picture above), Social Media is only one of the tools available in your campaign (see also: difference between digital marketing and social media).

A proper Internet Marketing campaign will cover a number of online technologies and will concentrate more on those that provide a higher ROI for your business. If your customers don’t use Facebook but they search related items in Google then more preference will be given to Search Engine Marketing.

I am already into this but so far I haven’t seen any results? Another common comment I hear very often is people telling me that they are already doing Internet marketing but they have not noticed any good results. After we discuss in detail their particular case, we come to the conclusion that:

They either hired a person or company that they don’t know what they are doing (besides taking their money)

They don’t use metrics so they don’t know if what they are doing is for the better or worse

They concentrate on measuring traffic and not conversions – traffic is very important but what is more important for a businesses is to make more sales, find new customers, explore new markets etc

In order to take advantage of Internet Marketing it is essential not to make the above 3 mistakes i.e. to hire the wrong person or company (read this: How to outsource SEO without paying a fortune ), not having statistics before, during and after each campaign and giving more value to traffic than to actual conversions.

Benefits of internet marketing for small businesses

I have mentioned many times above that Internet marketing can help a business grow, but this is only one of the advantages or benefits to small business owners. In summary Internet Marketing can help you:

Find new customers from the different online markets – As you are reading this there are millions of people searching Google, Yahoo and Bing for content or products, there are thousands of people that use the Apple Store, Google Play Store and Amazon AppStore to download applications on their mobiles and there are millions of people using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and a dozen of other social networks.

A well designed and efficient Internet Marketing campaign will penetrate all those markets and get your company in the monitor of every potential customer.

Get you in front of the competition – Take the example I mentioned above from the Nielsen / Google study where users use their mobile for research before making a purchasing decision. If during their research they don’t find your website (either because you don’t have one or because it is not optimized) and they find your competitors website then what will happen? Most probably you will be losing customers to your competitors.

On the other hand if you have a good website that is optimized for all devices and users then you have more chances of getting those customers and the investment you are making to Internet Marketing will keep you in front of the competition.

Get to know your customers better, what they prefer and need – I am sure that you have read about customer engagement before but let me give you a real example on how Internet Marketing can help you achieve this.

One of my clients is BezAmbar.com (designer of innovative jewelry for men and women) and they are using Facebook to get their customers opinion about new designs and products. Check their Facebook page and look at the comments. It is a fantastic example of how companies can ‘hear’ their customers and get their feedback for products even before they are released.

Internet Marketing Tips for businesses

Now that we are all in synch as to what Internet Marketing can offer to businesses let us examine below how you can do that in practice.

Note: If you are confused as to what you need to do or if you don’t have the time or staff to deal with Internet Marketing then your next best choice is to hire an Internet Marketing company to do the work for you. You can review our seo packages and contact us to discuss how we can help you, always taking into account that the cost of internet marketing services is reasonable and there is a great return for your investment.

Internet Marketing (as shown in the above diagram) has a number of components. If you follow the list from the left we have:

Web Site: It may sound silly but Yes you need to have a website in order to do Internet Marketing and still more than 50% of businesses in America don’t have a website. Once you create your website, you need to make sure that it is of high quality and that it is based on best standards and practices.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing): When you have a high quality website the next step is to work on Search Engine Marketing. SEM has 3 parts which are very important for the overall success of any campaign:

1)      On page SEO – Optimizations to give your website better visibility in search engines but also to make it friendlier to use by people

2)      Off page SEO – techniques you can use to promote your website using legitimate white hat practices

3)      PPC – Take advantage of the Pay per click advertising platforms (Google Adwords, Yahoo ads etc) to bring your message to more people.

These 3 parts are independent from each other but for optimum results you need to utilize them all.

Social Media Marketing: Very popular method to promote your online business and recent studies show that there is an increasing rate of conversion from social media traffic, something that is very encouraging for social media marketers. Read my social media marketing tips for beginners for more detail information.

Content Marketing: People love content and the companies that can provide their potential clients with the right content are winning at the end. This is not something new but with the increasing number of people online and their continuous hunt for quality information, if you want to stay on top you need to invest in content marketing.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

If you are selling coffee makers then your website needs to have top quality content related to coffee makers including product descriptions, technical characteristics, customer reviews, maintenance information, customer support forums, images, videos, comparison tools etc.

If you are not selling online but you have a law firm looking for local clients then your website should have information about your company, staff, expertise, location, portfolio, ways to make an appointment, general advice about law related matters etc.

Email Marketing: Everybody has an email address and companies that can get valid email addresses of their potential and existing customers have many opportunities to make cross selling or increase their customer base. The success or not of email marketing depends on many factors but it is important to use email marketing as part of your overall Internet marketing campaign and not as a standalone service.

For example, when you are about to release a new product or service or open a new store you can email your customers and let them know by also giving them a 10% discount or some other form of reward to make them happy for receiving your message.

If instead you use email to send messages with no real value for them, most probably they will consider it as spam and this will gradually have a bigger impact on your business.

Mobile Marketing: Mobile usage is on the rise and as more people get their hands into smartphones, the importance of mobile marketing is increasing. Google is already investing a lot of money on mobile research and they believe that mobile marketing isn’t an option but it’s an imperative for every business.

The first thing you need to make sure is that your website is mobile friendly i.e. it is optimized for viewing on the various mobile devices. Next is to ensure that your mobile friendly website is SEO optimized. Google has started penalizing mobile websites that are not SEO optimized so it is very important not only to have a mobile friendly website but to have an optimized site.

Other than that, you can also invest in creating native mobile apps for the different mobile markets and find even more customers. Read this Mobile web site Vs Native App if you don’t know the difference between the two.

Banner Advertising: Besides the above methods there is also the traditional option to advertise on other related websites. If there are quality websites or blogs in your niche that offer advertising space, it’s not a bad idea to run a couple of test campaigns and evaluate the results.

The biggest mistake that people do when it comes to buying advertising from other websites is not measuring the return on investment. In other words you need to know what users do from the time they click on your ad, how much time they spend on your site, which pages they visit, what actions they take and how many of them convert i.e. made a purchase. When you have all this info you can decide whether or not to continue running the ads.

Conclusion

Internet marketing is a must of every serious business even if it is not depending on the Internet to make sales. Whether you are selling a product or service you need to invest in your Internet presence of all the reasons explained above and for the simplest reason of all: this is how business is done today and you have no other choice than follow the trend.

Internet marketing works and there are many examples of businesses that have expanded because of the Internet but you need to do it correctly and consistently in an ongoing process.

Finally, if you don’t have the knowledge to do this in-house, it is one of the most appropriate services to outsource and gain from the main benefits.