Internet and online marketing for small business

The Most Important Things to Know about Online Marketing

1. You may not need a website

A website is like a brochure online for many businesses. You can create a website, have one created for you, or choose a company that will create a custom website for you.

Or, you can create 60+ business listings and use those listings to give customers and prospective customers the information they need to know about you and/or your company or business.

Or, you can create a blog or Facebook business page and use that as your central online information source.

Or, you can do all or some of the above. The more you create, the larger your online presence will be and the more likely it will be that people will find you online.

You can sell your products on other sites like eBay and Amazon or you can create a custom website that people can buy from. That's called e-commerce.

2. Focus on getting found by people searching online

In the old days, people searching for you or your business would look generally in one place: the Yellow Pages. That's totally changed with the Internet. Now the challenge is how to get found when people are looking for you online. There are more than 60 reputable online directories where you should create a business listing.

Business Listings

Free Listings

TIP: If you're a local business, the most important business listing to set up is with Google. More than 60% of searches are done on Google. You need to claim your Google Places listing so you show up on the front page of Google when someone is doing a search for what you sell or offer.

Google Place How To Guide - there is a sense of urgency about doing this. Google allows the first seven businesses that set up their listing to appear for that search term. For example, someone searching for "Dentist Naperville" will see seven dentists who have an office in Naperville listed in on the map and in the main area of Google. It's first come; first serve to claim these listings. Once seven businesses claim their listing for "Dentist Naperville" they win because they are seen first by the people searching for those terms. You can set up listings for multiple search terms related to what you sell or offer.

You don't need a website to create a business listing or Google Places listing. The listing will function like a website for people searching if you've set it up properly. You do need to remember to update your business listings and recruit people to write reviews. If you have a website, you can set up a link to that from all these listings which will help increase the visitors (for free) who see your website.

3. Make sure people on Smart phones can find your business!

With so many people buying web-enabled phones, the Internet has become the new Yellow Pages. You need to make sure that anyone with a phone that has web access can find your company (you don't need to have a website to do this).

Mobile Marketing How-to Guides

4. You may want to hire someone or a service to handle your online marketing

TIP: There are companies or individuals you can hire to set up all your listings. Some will also create your website and a mobile website for you and keep that updated. It's time consuming to do all this so it may be worthwhile to have someone trustworthy do this for you. You'll need to keep your listings up-to-date and respond to reviews and post offers. You can do this yourself or hire a person or company to do all this for you. It may cost between $50 to $300 a month for this type of service. That's inexpensive advertising if you think about it. If people can't find you or your business online, then you are losing that much or more every month.

Find Marketing Experts to Hire lists your alternatives with pros, cons and cost ranges to help you decide what to do.

Do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you? "I find time to be my biggest challenge. Yes, you can pay people to do some of the necessary work but you still have to do the planning and thinking to guide these people. You are the one who understands your business and niche best -so whatever you delegate, you still have to know the content and processes.

5. If you're selling to other businesses, market yourself and your business on LinkedIn. That's free.

How to Market Yourself & Your Company on LinkedIn

6. Social media is time-consuming to do well

A component of online marketing is social media - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are the most popular. Social media is like business networking - you have to be willing to invest time to build relationships with people online and to post interesting news, information, tidbits or offers. You may want to hire a "social media management" person or service to do this for you. Or, if you like this, do it yourself.

Social Media Marketing How-to Guides

7. Email marketing still works

In fact, it typically works better than social media marketing. Why? Because if you have the permission to contact your customers, they may actually see and scan what you send them via email. If you post to Facebook or Twitter, if the customer is not on those sites within a four hour period of when you made the post or tweet, they won't see it. With email marketing, your email newsletter or message is there when they open their email and it's their choice whether they want to open and/or read it.

Email Marketing How-to Guides

More Advanced Internet Online Marketing

Here are how-to guides that explain:

Search Engine Optimization - also referred to as SEO
Search Engine Marketing - also referred to as SEM
Keyword Research - learning what people are searching for
Google Advertising

Internet and Online Marketing