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How to Write an Online Digital Internet Marketing Business Plan

It’s common for businesses embarking in internet marketing and social media to think they need to build their strategies around technology and not look at audience needs first. Every business needs an integrated marketing plan. Sometimes businesses see digital planning as a separate thing but ideally your online marketing plan should be integrated with wider business objectives so it is part of an overall marketing plan.

There are two models that provide a framework for writing an integrated digital marketing plan. The first is called SOSTAC® planning model developed by PR Smith. In plain English this approach means breaking your plan down into six parts: –

S stands for Situation Analysis – which means where are we now?
O stands for Objectives which means where do we want to go?
S stands for Strategy which summarises how we are going to get there
T stands for Tactics which are the details of strategy
A is for Action or implementation – putting the plan to work.
C is for Control which means measurement, monitoring, reviewing, updating and modifying.

You can use the SOSTAC® planning model to build a digital marketing template to fit your business needs and customer profiles.

The second model that’s useful for mapping out a social media marketing plan is Forrester’s POST method. The POST method helps define your social media goals, plan and prioritise your actions. By thinking this through you can create a clear purpose and vision, as well as implementing goals, strategies and tools that will help you to reach the people you are looking to connect with online. The POST method in a nutshell looks at:

People – Start by looking at your customer’s social behaviours and attitudes. Who do you want to attract on sites like Facebook and Twitter?
Objectives – Next decide on your social technology goals. Do you want to build relationships or, create brand awareness or improve customer service?
Strategy – What strategies do you plan to carry out and what is your priority? Determine how your goals will change the way you interact with customers through twitter, a blog, LinkedIn or Facebook page
Technologies – which ones will you use? Pick the most right technologies that will meet your goals you don’t have to use them all!

These methods will ensure your integrated digital marketing plan put audiences and customers first, identifying their needs and developing a plan with the right mix of online and offline channels to build strong relationships,drive leads and generate traffic to your website.

Internet Marketing For Small Business – A Guide

Most small businesses don’t have huge marketing budgets, so they are looking for the most cost efficient way to get their marketing message to the most people possible. Only a few years ago, this would have been next to impossible. However, with the growth of the internet, what was recently impossible is not only possible, but is now quite easy for small business owners.

A popular internet marketing tool for small businesses wanting to start marketing online is Google AdWords. With the Google AdWords system, you can reach millions of people with your advertising message, while only paying for the people who show interest in your ads by clicking on them. This is in contrast to a more popular form of advertising which charges businesses based on how many people see their ad. The Google AdWords system of “cost per click” is much superior as it only costs the advertiser based on how many people are interested enough in their product or service to click.

One main way businesses can use Google AdWords is to advertise on the Google search engine and the rest of Google search network, which includes sites like Ask.com.

All you as an advertiser have to do to start seeing ads on these search sites is to follow these easy steps:

– Create a Google AdWords account: It is very easy to set up a Google AdWords account. All you need to do is create a Google account, or use an existing Google Account. It is very quick and easy to create your new Google AdWords account.
– The second step is to create a “campaign”. While creating your first campaign, just pick the option for showing your ads on the Google Search Network.
– Next, you’ll want to pick some keywords that searchers would use to find the product or service you offer. The closer the keywords are to what people will search, the better success you will have.
– Then write some ads that are related to your keywords and product. Make them very catchy and appealing, as you will want searchers to click on the ad and visit your site. However, make sure they are also accurate, because if your product or service doesn’t match what you advertised, the searcher won’t buy, and you’ll pay for their click without getting anything from it.
– You’ll also have to set your bid for how much you want to pay for clicks, and maybe a few other smaller settings.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you’ll soon see your ads on Google and their related search sites. This is a great way to reach millions of people, as Google has over 70% of the entire search volume on the web. If you want to reach even more people, check out Google’s display network, which allows you to advertise on other websites, even sites like the New York Times. You can start advertising on these sites within the same Google AdWords account you’ve already set up.

Within a few minutes, you could be set up to get your product or service in front of millions of people, while only paying for those that are interested in your product or service. This ability gives you a huge advantage over businesspeople of the past, who could only have dreamed about such a great opportunity!

Internet Marketing For Small Business – Part 2 of 5 Steps to Succeeding With Google AdWords

Continuing on from my last article ‘Internet Marketing For Small Business – Part 1 of 5 Steps to Succeeding With Google AdWords”, here are the final steps to ensuring a successful Google AdWords Campaign.

2. Understanding Quality Score:

Once you have added your keywords, Google will tell you your quality score. Its important that you have a good to great quality score in your keywords (usually rated out of 10), if you get a poor or OK quality score, it means you have done something wrong. It could be that you are bidding on the wrong keywords, that your landing page is not specific enough for those keywords or Google does not think your ad is related to your keywords or that the page you are sending people does not have those keywords in it.

The quality score will be determined from a number of things:

You need to have a high CTR: A high quality score must be over 1% and this will also depend on how your ads are showing up. If your ad is appearing on the 2nd or 3rd page, then this will mean your quality score is lower but if you are in the top 5 or 6 positions, your CTR should be over 1%. Therefore you need to work on getting that CTR as high as you with a baseline of 1% as the CTR. You should always get a CTR of over 1%, even as high as 15% and the way you get a high CTR is by testing. You write 2 different ads and see which ones performs better. Usually after 30 to a 100 clicks, you pick the ad that gets a higher click rate and write a variation on it. You then go on and write another ad that is different to that one and see which one performs better again (beating the control). When you have found a theme that performs very well, you can tweak your ads by adding a question mark, quotations around it, switch the descriptions lines or even change your url. You can do any of these things to tweak your ad so that you can get a higher CTR, thus a higher quality score.
Its Not A Bidding War….Most people when starting out with Google AdWords usually say “I want to be in the top position, at number 1 and I am willing to pay more than anyone else to be there”. This is the wrong way to go about it. It should not be a bidding war, it should be a fight over who is the better advertiser, that is what Google really wants. Google wants you to write an ad that gets the highest CTR so that they make more money ie. the more clicks, the more money you pay them. So if you can write a better ad than your competitors, Google will be very willing to reward you for that. They reward you by charging you less per click and putting you in a higher position on the page. Lets say your ad gets a 2% CTR and your competitor gets a 1% CTR, it probably means you are going to pay half as much per click and be ranked higher than your competitor because Google will know the user is having a better searching experience. Hence you should always have two ads running and check which ad is performing better. If one is performing badly, pause it, write a better ad and see if you can beat your better performing ad.

3. Tracking:

AdWords is probably the best system for tracking that exists. It is very easy with Google AdWords to set up your keywords and track how well they are performing ( i.e. by making you money). What is most important is to track whether the clicks are making you sales or converting into leads or sales. If your clicks are not converting, you are obviously just wasting money so it is very important that you track down at a keyword level which ones are making money for you. This is called keyword conversion tracking and there are a couple ways of doing it. The best way is to have Google do it for you. Google has some keyword conversion tracking code which they will allow you put it on your thank you or finished page and they will let you track a sale or a conversion.

The other way you can track conversions is by assigning a specific URL to every keyword (help can be found at the Google AdWords Tutorial). The better you understand how to track conversions, the better your results will be with AdWords. You will find that as you get more clicks on your campaign and by tracking everything, different keywords will perform very differently even though they may seem very similar. For example ‘dog training’ maybe very different to ‘train my dog’, you may find that one of them may convert much higher than the other one.

On another level, you can track conversions through the success of your ad campaigns. Some ads may perform better than other ads, for example one ad may have a price and the other may not, this means anyone that clicks on the ad with a price knows that they have to buy something when they go to that page – that ad will convert at a higher percentage than if you did not have the price on the ad. It will probably have a much lower CTR but also a higher conversion rate. This is really something that needs to be tested on every campaign to see if you are getting a return on investment because in the end the goal is to make the greatest amount of money. Track everything!

4. Bidding:

Over the years bidding has changed, it use to be bid low and then raise your bid and to see what the lowest point was. That is probably not the wisest thing to do anymore – at least not right now. Right now what I suggest is start by bidding high, what this does is allow you to get a good position on AdWords and a good CTR. As you establish the CTR, Google will recognize that you are a good advertiser and then you can lower your bid everyday to what Google is actually charging you (whilst maintaining your high CTR). What you need to figure out is whether you are getting a good returns for the money you are actually spending so if you are spending a $1 and getting $2 back – you know its worth continuing the campaign.

5. Last words:

Please don’t get emotional attached to a keyword because you ‘like’ the keyword or believe it should work. Do not expect to learn everything upfront and then go implementing a Google AdWords campaign effectively. If you have your own full time business and love what you are doing – then get a professional in to run your own PPC campaigns.

The Nigeria New Country Code Domain Extension Dot NG Is A New Internet Business Boom

The Nigeria new domain Country code extension is a force to be reckoned with and there is no doubt about that, but the question that runs across my mind every time, is; will it be a blessing to this great country or another curse like the black gold or call it petroleum.

Nigeria Internet Registry Association has released .ng to further improve the usages of internet names. However, .ng is not restricted to Nigerians alone; the new Country Code that has just been released has been embraced by bing.com and Google and others to protect their brands, also embraced by some domain business gurus. The new extension is a new source of money income for Nigeria and those who have the ideas for domain business.

The extension will surely improve the economy of the country like that of petroleum, if taking into consideration some important factors as early as possible. .ng ccTLD is a second level extension that rings bell for every caliber of domain traders.

WHY is .NG A FORCE To BE RECKONED WITH?

Unlike.com.ng extension, .ng is far more virtuous for those who have the knowledge and foresight for domain business; this particular extension cut across all industries of mankind ever known in existence, like the king of domain extensions known as.com; the .ng enable one to get premium names that are no longer available when add .ng instead of.com; it also makes premium domains available when add .ng to some unavailable premium names that has to do with vowels; most generic words such as the following: ki.ng Instead of king.com also bi.ng instead of bing.com while gives ri.ng instead of ring.com.

As I am writing this message, most of the premium names with .ng extension have been registered or secured, because they are no longer available or been reserved by the Nigeria Internet Registry Association.

As of now within two months, some highly profile domains have been registered such as property.ng insurance.ng, banking.ng, banki.ng, mortgagi.ng, hosti.ng and so on. Also most of the premium short four letters are now rear like that of the.com extension i.e. sex.ng, etc. I am not very sure if USA.ng will be available now or soonest. The extension was just released on 16th April, 2013 and now in May, for one to get the highly profile generic is like passing through the needle eye.

The extension has to do with any industry be it law or whatever trade or business you can mention, you even need it more when you have the.com, so as to avoid some traffic or lost of customer to your competitors.

This is another source of making money for Nigeria as a nation and individuals if quickly invest in the right domains now before acquired by someone else; domain is far profitable in hard currency. Most of these domains are sure to cost millions of dollars in the nearest future.

I am now inviting business entrepreneurs to come and invest in this lucrative market before all the good ones are taken by others; though, domain business is highly investment in nature, but it appreciates in good time like the landed properties, it is unlike stock; domain is highly profitable if you can get good generic now and this is the actual time to invest real money in the business.

This is a business that brings wealth far better than stock exchange, every individual can buy/register any available short generic one word and highly profile domain in this new country code extension.

Lastly, I am writing this, to invite Nigerians to avoid loss of bulk of our internet fortune shares or opportunity to many readily learned individuals of other nations to come in at the right time to have their own share in the internet virtual property as early as possible.

Google Search Engine Optimization – My Own Road Map For Internet Success

One of the most profitable marketing techniques I’ve used for my businesses is without any doubt search engine optimization.

Since venturing into SEO, I’ve encountered much success for my websites. At first when I saw the top 10 websites in Google for a popular search term in one of my markets, it was kind of dream for me. I knew what they did to get there but I knew there was hard work to be done. But certainly it was achievable.

I have to admit it was a kind of obsession to get my website in the top 10 placement because I knew once I am there I will receive targeted traffic and sales for a long time to come. That thought just keep coming in my mind.

All I know is I have to take action right now and I was also really motivated to attain my goals. I know getting search engine traffic is passive and that to profit from passive traffic, I have to start promoting my site right now or else it will take more time to get those coveted rankings.

And once I’ve worked on my search engine rankings, I can leave it aside and concentrate on other aspects of my business but also look for other ways to promote my business. One fundamental thing you should always remember is to FOCUS. Focus on one marketing strategy and keep at it. Give it all you can before moving on to the next one. If you try to do too many things at once, it’s very difficult to find success and you will most likely fail.

The day will come when you will do a search for a keyword phrase that you have been working on and to your surprise, you’ll see your site in the SERPs(Search Engine Result Pages). This will just prove that what you’re doing is working. I’ve been there and I can tell you that you will feel proud and happy with such an accomplishment. It’s an amazing feeling. It’s kind of you don’t believe you are really there.

If you want to achieve those top search engine rankings in Google and other major search engines, educate yourself well and learn the search engine optimization strategies and techniques that work because you won’t be wasting your time and time is so precious in search engine marketing. Have a plan like what you’re going to do everyday to achieve your objectives ie doing some valuable link exchanges with related and relevant websites, article writing, directory submissions, text link advertising.

Link exchanges are not useless. In the past, they were the major ways to get top rankings but now they have been a bit devalued but still they are worth getting. Why? Simply because related and relevant links will bring direct traffic to your website and will help your link popularity too. They will help you in rankings automatically but less as compared to several years ago. Well just focus in getting targeted links and you will be surprised how much traffic you can get just with links from related and relevant sites. Even if one day, reciprocal links are completely dead, those links will still be of value in terms of direct traffic. So don’t get reciprocal links just for search engine ranking benefits and for a boost in link popularity. Article writing should be an ongoing process for direct traffic and automatically, it will help your link popularity. Directory submissions will give your site a solid foundation for link building and can make your site stable in the rankings. Concerning text link advertising, if you can afford it, it’s worth it. Just advertise your website on relevant and related sites and if they are high traffic sites, you can get good traffic and potential business. There was a discussion about paid text links and that Google might detect those in the future and maybe devalues them and here is what I have to say.

I think this would have happened sooner or later. Google might detect paid links depending on some criteria. Suppose a website is new and is getting a bunch of high quality links eg sites with good link popularity, high PageRank, high traffic, this might raise a red flag like this site is buying links. But that as well, it can be getting good links due to article submission.

Whatever happen in the future concerning paid links, I believe if you have to do it, do so such that you are getting targeted traffic from those links and websites alone and bypassing PageRank and backlinks. But first, check that website’s alexa ranking to get an idea of its traffic levels(the lower the number, usually the higher the traffic) and check its rankings for its primary keywords in the major search engines as an additional plus because you can have high traffic websites which don’t depend on search engine rankings. They can depend on other traffic sources. Now if you were to check the rankings, a top 10, a top 20 and even a top 30 is worth considering. The website’s homepage html title will usually contain the primary keywords. By knowing the alexa ranking and search engine rankings, this should give you an idea whether it’s worth advertising or not. This alone can justify your investment.

If there is good return on investment, why bother about the search engine ranking benefits from that link. Even if you don’t get any benefit, you won’t care as long as you’re getting business from your text link advertisement. You might need to test which sites bring you results or not. Advertise for a month with one or two good sites and see if there is any improvement in traffic and business. You can know which site brings you more traffic via your traffic logs. You will see visitors coming to your site from another website. If you’re getting traffic but no business, you have to work on your conversion and tweak it. You can have different business models like selling your own products, affiliate products and generating money from AdSense for instance. Here as well, focus is important. Don’t try to give too many options to your visitors or else they can get confused and leave for good. You need to test which business model is more profitable and lucrative for your Internet business. Testing is absolutely crucial in Internet marketing.

I don’t think there is anything wrong if you purchase links on relevant and related sites for the purpose of advertising but if you have to do it solely for PageRank and link popularity, you might be affected if Google detects paid links in the future and devalues them. You might not get any PageRank passed to your website and your rankings might not benefit. So what’s the use? You can be advertising for nothing. No traffic, no backlinks and no PageRank. You have just wasted your money. Usually when you go for PageRank and link popularity only and not focusing on the traffic rewards, you will not be too concerned about what type of sites you are advertising on whether they are related and relevant or not. You can just buy links on unrelated and irrelevant sites simply for the sake of getting PageRank and backlinks. And usually, you will go after high PageRank websites. Well this is not recommended at all. Opt for a long term strategy which can produce results time and time again not short term results.

On another note, it’s important to remember that before starting a search engine promotion campaign, it’s fundamental that you have already created useful, quality and original content on your site. You might need to outsource your content creation if you have problems coming up with original content. A website without useful content won’t have much merit for the search engines. Search engines love content and best of all if it’s original. It’s also a good idea to build a solid link structure for your site.

So here you are, to get top Google rankings, create your own Google search engine optimization plan and have your own road map for Internet success. You’ll be glad you did.

Learn My Internet Business Top 5 Free Marketing Strategies

I would like to share with you mine My Internet Business free marketing strategies that are generating for me great results. There are many free marketing strategies online, most of them will require to put some effort and not necessary much skill.

Here are some top free advertising strategies:

Article Marketing – writing articles can be a great way to generate consistent traffic to your website. If you are able to write few articles per day you will see descent traffic. Before writing any article first make some research for some good keyword you will be optimizing to. Include this keyword in article title and few times in body. Remember also to share some valuable content, share some knowledge and experience. Make your article easy to read and understand, simple language is a key.
Video Marketing – popularity of videos on the internet is growing constantly. The leader of video sharing sites is of course YouTube. If you want to use full potential of videos post it to the top video sites, with most traffic. The main benefit of making video is branding yourself and marketing your program. People will know you better, you will build a relationship with them even though you didn’t spoke to them. I’m promoting My Internet Business on YouTube and get amazing traffic. Google is listing videos really high in result pages.
Forum Marketing – forums is another great place to branding yourself, making contacts and relationships and of course promoting your business. Under any post you can write own signature, few lines promoting your site. Remember to make your signature short and sweet, offer free report or training, encourage people to click in your sig. There are forums about every possible topic. It won’t be hard for you to find some descent forums, just use Google.
Classified Sites – it’s a great free marketing strategy because it’s the easiest way to promote your business. Look for top classified sites first like Craigslist, Backpage, Kijiji, USFreeAds and start posting your ads regularly. The headline of your ad is playing a key role of getting more traffic. Make your title creating curiosity to people. To really see some good traffic from classified sites you will have to post consistently many ads to many sites. I mostly focus on posting ads only on Craigslist. Conversion rates for My Internet Business are great. Each site will bring you a little traffic that’s why to see some significant results you will have to post your add massively.
Blogging – blogs can be a great sample of free advertising. Blogs are trendy right now, Google is giving high listing to them and people really enjoy reading them. To set up a blog you can go to Blogger and with a few clicks you will have it created. You can post in blogs your articles and optimize for specific keyword to get better listing. There are many blog directories and web directories where you can easily and for free get a lot of quality backlinks.

As you see there are many free marketing strategies to promote My Internet Business. You don’t need to spend a dime to make sales. Using each of these strategies and implementing in your business will give you massive exposure online and flow of fresh and targeted leads. I recommend to anyone who is beginner in internet marketing to start from free advertising to really understand marketing online.

Why Does My Business Need to Be On the Internet?

I hope you don’t have to ask the question, “Why does my business need to be on the internet?” If you sincerely don’t know why it is important to have an internet presence, I’ll ask you to do an easy experiment. Ask ten to twenty people, from different age groups, how often they use the yellow pages to find a business versus how often they use the internet. For those that say they use the internet, ask where do they look. I think you will find that the majority use the internet much more and nearly all of those use Google to try to find the information they are seeking. Yet if you look in the yellow pages you will still find many, many businesses that are spending hundreds a month, if not thousands to try to attract new customers.

So, hopefully, now you know why you need to have your business on the internet. But how do you go about getting your business there. Most likely if you are not on the internet, you don’t know how to do it yourself. Before you try to hire someone to build a web site and get you on the internet, you need to ask them a few questions. Of course you will want to see some examples of their work. A warning here, a pretty web site is not always the best one. More importantly than what their web sites look like, ask them to show you where they are on the internet. I don’t mean just type in the URL (your internet address). Ask how does the web site rank for their main keyword. If they don’t know what you mean, you don’t want to hire them. This is getting into SEO, search engine optimization. This is more important than what the web site looks like.

You need your site to rank on the first page of Google for your main keywords. Your main keywords will be a group of words that you think a prospective customer would type into Google to find a business like yours. If you were a painting contractor in Memphis, it might be something like “painting contractor Memphis” or “Memphis painting contractor.” Yes, these are different keyword phrases and you might want to try to rank for both. Before I go any further, a person can’t guarantee that you will rank on first page of Google. The more competitive your keyword phrase is the harder it is to rank. For example, “LA injury lawyer” is nearly impossible to rank on the first page of Google. On the other hand I was able to get my antique mall in Dallas to have four listings on page one of Google for my main keyword phrase. So you want to make sure whoever is doing your site knows SEO and can get your web site seen by the people looking for a business or service like yours.

How to Get a Domain Name for an Internet Business Newbie?

Getting a domain name is an important criterion to start an online business. In this article, I’m going to teach you: what is a domain name, how to get one and why do we need it.

First of all,

What is a domain name?

Whenever we visit a website like Google, the address “Google.com” is actually their domain name.

Can we get it for free?

Apparently not, if you are lucky, you might only need around $9 to $12 to register your own domain name for one year. You just have to find out where to get it. There are some websites which sell domain name. You can try to search for it on Google or Yahoo.

Why do we need it?

Your will need it to publish your own website, sales page or blog to sell your own product or affiliates product. NEVER use free sources for example, Blogspot.com or WordPress.com as your business website. The owner of these websites might close down your website anytime without any notice. All your effort will be wash down the drain.

How do I name it?

You can name your domain name anyway you want, but it is better that you name it relevant to the field you are going into and it is better that your domain ends with a .com . For example, if you want to start an online business about losing weight, your keyword should be “lose weight”. Therefore, you can name your domain name like howtoloseweight.com or loseweight.com or any other names which are similar.

Someone had bought the domain name that I have in mind, what to do now?

If you want the domain name that someone else had bought, you can actually buy from them, but at a more expensive price. Most people are not willing to pay for the price. So, you can change the keyword sequence or to some other related keywords like “slim down” or “burn fat”. If you cannot think of any words, you can check the thesaurus for more alternative words.

Now, I got my domain name, what to do now?

Now, you will have to find a web hosting to host your website. The cost can be quite high depending on the package you take. But what is web hosting? Web hosting is similar to a shop lot rental in real life. For example, when you are opening a McDonald franchise, you will need to buy a shop lot to open your McDonald. Same to opening a website, you need a web host to put your domain name on.

Now you got your domain name and web hosting now, the last step will be putting up HTML on your website. Finally, you can start your online business.

How I Stumbled and Then Learned to Make Real Money on the Internet

I own a small business and when the Recession came on, we got hit pretty hard. And I thought I was prepared. I had a year’s worth of money saved in the bank, just like everyone told me to do. Well, nobody expected this recession to be so deep and to last so long. Around six months ago, I realized that my savings were at risk and I might not make it through to the other side of the downturn. I had to find a way to bring in more money, but I couldn’t get out of my business.

I started looking online, running Google searches on how to make money online. I read words like Affiliate Marketing, SEO, ClickBank, MicroSite, Niche Markets, etc. I was overwhelmed and I wanted to make money quickly. I did not know where to begin.

I also considered writing an eBook. I got about 15 pages into a topic that I thought I might be able to sell, but I was disappointed with the content. In addition, I did not know how to build a site and even if I did, I did not know how to drive traffic to the site to sell the eBook. I never published it.

My next step was going to every site I could find that claimed to have the path to overnight riches online. I put my name into pages to gain access without realizing I was building people’s mailing list. Soon, my Gmail account was getting flooded with so many enticing messages that I didn’t know where to turn. I must have joined 3 or 4 different sites and bought half a dozen eBooks. You know what? The get rich quick sites were usually the worst. Now I was in for a few hundred dollars and I was suffering from information overload. I almost quit again.

At this point, I was behind on time and I was actually in worse financial shape than when i started. I had to wipe the slate clean and start over.

Step one: I realized that I did not have to have my own product or eBook to sell. I now understood that I could make money selling other people’s products. I opened a ClickBank account for free, giving me access to other peoples’ products. These people are willing to pay a commission of up to 75% of their product’s cost if you can get someone to buy it.

Step two: I learned how to register my own domain names and forward them to my new partners. There are a lot of low cost sites, but I chose GoDaddy because of its user friendly interface. I also learned that if I registered a domain name that I did not want to buy all of the add ons. GoDaddy is very good at trying to upsell additional products. You usually don’t need any of them.

OK, now I was stuck again. For days. Then I learned step three: I needed to find a program, just one program that taught internet marketing, and stick to it. I recommend that you run some queries about online marketing, make a list of half a dozen sites that look and feel legit, and write down their names without joining. Then research the sites using their names and words like “feedback” in Google, Bing, whatever search engine you like.

Then, join only one group or program. It will cost you a little money, but it’s worth it. The time you will save by following someone else’s blueprint will make you money much faster than you can on your own.

You should be able to get some sample training materials before you join. Don’t join anyone who gives you no information before you join. Stick with the group you join for at least one month, maybe two. Most quality programs have a 60 day, money back guarantee. You will know in less than two months if you joined a quality site or not.

Lastly, realize that you won’t get rich quickly. However, if you invest a little bit of time each day with a quality program (you can find mine at the end of this article), you CAN and WILL make money online. And the earnings will compound themselves and grow over time. Be patient and have fun. The money will come fastest if you learn from others and don’t try to reinvent the wheel on your own.

Internet Marketing 101: Online Marketing for Small Business

Introduction

You own a small business. Do you need a website? An Internet presence can be a necessity or a resource-draining boondoggle, depending on your business and your target audience. You shouldn’t build or maintain a website simply because “everyone else has one.” However, even if you own a one-person services company and get all the business you can handle through word of mouth, you can still create an online presence with a minimum of time and expense.

If and when you do develop a business website, you’ll need to make some kind of investment in Internet-based marketing. Consumers increasingly and overwhelmingly use the Internet to research and buy goods and services. This means the competition is robust, and if your site doesn’t announce its presence it will simply sit and gather (virtual) dust in some computer’s memory.

If you’ve convinced yourself that you need to enter the web marketing arena, the following report provides a fundamental primer on the most widely used tactics for both paid and free Internet advertising. Just remember that each of the topics introduced here is complex enough that there are entire books written about them, so if something appeals to you do some additional research before jumping in.

Before You Start

There are two main questions you must ask yourself before starting any marketing efforts, whether on- or offline: “Who is my audience?” and “What are my objectives?”

Audience

The audience for most business marketing activities is obviously past, present, and future customers. However, as in traditional advertising and marketing, it helps to narrow down who you are trying to reach, segmenting your market by age, geography, gender, interests, occupation. Certain methods of Internet marketing, such as pay-per-click ads, allow you to target your customers based on this type of segmentation.

Objectives

We can assume that the overall objective of most marketing is to sell products and/or services, but you may have additional objectives for online marketing. These related objectives will hopefully end up driving increased sales, but they can be more subtle than simply asking customers to buy right now. For example, your online marketing plan might include goals such as these:

Support and increase visibility of your company’s brand.
Improve search engine rankings.
Offer reference information related to your business sector.
Increase number of registered users or newsletter subscribers.
Drive traffic to your company website.

After defining your audience and marketing goals, you can begin to formulate an Internet marketing strategy and tactics. When getting into online marketing, it is important that you maintain brand consistency. Build on the reputation that you have already established. Your on-line presence should mirror that of your “brick and mortar” presence. Use the same logo and tagline so that people will understand that you are the same company. Having an online presence is a way to build on what you have already accomplished.

In the remainder of this report we’ll look at the most common ways you can use the Internet to deliver your message and start increasing your sales.

Table of Contents

websites

E-Mail

Newsletters

Other Announcements

Search Engine Marketing and Display Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Display Advertising

Social Media and Networking

Decide: Who, What, Where, When, and Why?

YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Etc.

Twitter

Blogs

Forums & Discussion Groups

Article Placement / E-Zines

Other Internet Marketing Outlets

Wikipedia

Directories

websites

We won’t get into the vast topic of how to build and manage a website, but if you aim to use the techniques described below, it is nearly essential to have one. Most of your marketing efforts will have a “call to action” that involves your audience visiting your website to research products or services, find contact information, sign up for a newsletter, or place an online order. Whatever you are asking people to do in your online promotions, make sure the website allows them to easily complete that task. One other vital component of any business website is an analytics program (Google offers a fairly robust application free of charge), so you can track how well your marketing efforts are working and calculate the return on your advertising investment (ROI).

How can you develop an online presence at little or no cost? There are several companies that offer free site building tools and hosting services. If you go this route, select a company that has a proven track record, so your hard work isn’t wasted when the company goes out of business or suspends the service. A couple of reliable options are Google Sites and Yola. If you have any money in your budget at all, you should probably just spend the less than $100 per year it takes to buy a personalized domain name (for example, “mybusiness.com”) and a Web hosting service. Another potential option, depending on your business and marketing goals, is to create a free blog (see below for more details). The most popular free blogging services as of this writing are WordPress and Blogger.

E-Mail Newsletters

E-mail newsletters provide one of the most highly performing avenues for marketing. You can collect customer e-mail addresses by asking visitors that come to your website to subscribe, by requesting e-mail addresses from anyone who visits your physical location, or by purchasing an e-mail list. To generate a higher rate of readership, make sure the audience is narrowly targeted and has some vested interest in your product. By sending out your newsletter on a regular schedule (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) you can counteract the transient and temporary nature of Internet users by continually reminding them of your company’s existence. Affordable services like Constant Contact can be used to manage mailing lists, statistics, and opt-in/out functions.

Caveat: Sending commercial e-mail messages to people who have not agreed to receive your mailings can result in severe fines and penalties from the federal government per terms of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Newsletter content should appeal to your defined audiences, with industry- or product-related news and events, company-specific news and events, practical reference information, and interesting statistical and demographic information. The newsletter copy should publicize links to appropriate pages within your website.

You will need to maintain one or more separate lists for the purpose of sending targeted messages to particular audiences (see Other Announcements below). You might combine all your lists to send a monthly newsletter, and send other bulletins to past or potential customers as appropriate.

Other Announcements

Other announcements are e-mailings that can consist of press releases, coupons, special notices, or anything you want to communicate specifically to members of one or more e-mail lists.

Search Engine Marketing, Pay-per-Click and Display Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization means constructing a website that is easily crawled by search engine spiders, and it encompasses a variety of techniques designed to improve your site’s (or page’s) ranking in the search engine results page. The goal is for your site to be found by searchers who are looking for sites related to a certain keyword or phrase, for example “little red wagon” if you are in the business of selling toy wagons. SEO can be divided into on-page activities (e.g., amount of content, metadata, links, programming methods and structural issues) and off-page activities (most importantly, obtaining links from other websites to your site).

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click advertising refers to text ads displayed on search engine results pages (versus “organic” results achieved by SEO) and other sites, usually in the margins. In the case of Google AdWords and Microsoft’s adCenter, you can open an account and specify the keyword(s) that, when searched for, will generate an ad that links to your website. You pay only when a searcher clicks an ad and is directed to your site. In the example below, the key phrase is “little red wagon,” and pay-per-click ads are located at top (in yellow) and in the right-hand column (subtitled “Sponsored Links”). The first organic listing is “Little Red Wagon Foundation.”

A few of the benefits of PPC advertising are that you know exactly how many people view your ads, how many of those viewers click through to your website, and (if you are using a site analytics tool) what they do once they reach your site. You can also start and stop running ads at a moment’s notice, experiment with any number of ads you like, and fund your campaign with as little as $10 to start.

Display Advertising

Display advertising, also called banner advertising, means purchasing ad space on another website and placing a text and/or graphic ad with a link to your site. This technique is generally more complex and expensive than pay-per-click, but can be very powerful if the right message is shown to a tightly focused audience. To achieve optimal click-through rate (CTR), advertise on websites where you assume your target audience is visiting, rather than a general interest website. Most marketers don’t purchase ad space directly from another website, but use a banner ad network to automatically place ads on appropriate websites. A couple of the biggest names in display ad serving are DoubleClick and BurstMedia.

Social Media and Networking

Social networking is the latest buzz in the modern marketing arsenal. If you have any doubt about its impact, especially on the under-40 population, read this list. Small businesses with limited resources should weigh their time spent and the potential benefits carefully, however. It can also be difficult to measure the return on your investment for some of these tactics.

The general principle of “marketing” on social networking outlets is that people who have similar interests will virtually congregate around Web content that discusses that interest. They may be interested in product information in the form of reviews or personal opinion, but hard sale approaches are mostly discouraged and unproductive. Your goal is to become a trusted advisor-which usually means revealing your identity and at least some part of your personality. If that premise makes you uncomfortable, you might still find social networking sites valuable for market research purposes. Find out what people are buying and why, then use that information to help shape your other marketing activities.

The following section describes the more popular social media outlets and sites, but keep your eyes open for new virtual spaces where you might get more attention by getting in on the ground floor.

YouTube, Facebook, Etc.

YouTube allows you to post videos on your own “channel,” a distinct Web page that can be customized and allows for posting links back to your own website. A major positive aspect of this venue is that the number of views is posted and viewers can submit comments, so you know whether your videos are popular and why.

Facebook is considered the model for modern social networking sites. Facebook allows you (individual, corporate, non-profit, etc.) to create a page, attract “likes” and reviews, communicate with followers by posting status updates, photos and videos, and so on.

Although the previously named sites are the most popular in terms of visitors, there are a couple of business-oriented networking sites that may be more useful for making business connections. LinkedIn helps you develop a network of clients, service providers, and subject experts; find business opportunities and partners; post job openings; and more. More detailed advice on best practices for using LinkedIn can be found in many online articles and blogs.

Twitter

Think of Twitter as a mini-blog (see below) that allows you to broadcast messages of 140 characters or less. The messages appear to your “followers” on their phones or computers, as well as on Twitter.com. The biggest challenges are to gain a useful number of followers and to think of something engaging to write to them. If you are a speaker, writer, or performer Twitter can be used to let your fans know what you’re doing and when. If you have a retail store you might let your followers know that you’re offering a discounted item or running a special sale. You should post a Twitter sign-up link on your website, and within your signature line in outgoing e-mail messages. You can also gain followers by following people who work in or comment on your industry, as some Twitter users will follow those who follow them.

Blogs

The word blog originally came from the term “Web log.” There’s no real standard for what a blog is, but most commonly authors use them to comment on (and link to) other online news items, websites, or other Internet content. For the most part, direct selling on a blog is frowned upon and is probably a recipe for driving away potential readers. What do you write about, then? Well, if you run an Internet marketing firm you write about trends in Web marketing, what the search engines are up to, tips for do-it-yourselfers, or what you thought of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Seriously, read some blogs and you will find all sorts of personal opinion mixed in with professional advice and commentary. The goal of your blog, however, should most likely be to establish yourself as an expert and trusted advisor in your chosen field.

You might also pursue getting your products, services, or website mentioned in related blogs by other industry experts. When a high-visibility blogger mentions a website on his or her blog, the site is exposed to a potential audience of new viewers. Often, blog postings are simply press releases that are picked up by sites that discuss topics related to a particular product or industry. More opportunities (and traffic) in this arena can be realized by developing relationships with individual bloggers.

Additional Tips:

Post an article that was written by someone else, just be sure to provide a link to the original article and give credit to the person wrote it. You can then give your commentary on the topic of the article or find a way to relate the information to local trends or challenges.

Ask colleagues to be “guest bloggers” by writing articles for you to post, again giving them credit and adding their byline and a link to their website. Using links is a good way to drive additional traffic to their sites so it’s a good trade-off for both parties.

Nick Francesco of AskNick.com said, “A blog gets people’s attention and Twitter keeps it.” Consider using these two outlets together.

Forums & Discussion Groups

A forum (also known as discussion group, message board or bulletin board) is a component of a website where users can ask questions, offer advice, or share experiences with others about a certain topic or topics. Nearly every hobby on earth has a number of popular forums wherein members offer their thoughts and feelings on all aspects of their favorite pastime. Contributing a comment (with a link to your website) in discussion groups related to your products or services can create a small surge or spike in traffic, but usually has little long-lasting effect. To maximize effectiveness, target forums on high-traffic sites that have 1,000+ users, and reply to topics with larger numbers of views (relative to other posted topics).

You can easily build your own bulletin board/forum component on your site with free or low-cost software. User forums have the potential to greatly increase the “stickiness” of a site, given a critical mass of traffic required to generate new discussions and keep participants interested in returning. You can start by “seeding” topics on your own, but there won’t be any results until traffic is directed to the forums. The conundrum for small businesses may be the time required to moderate a forum once it becomes successful. One solution is to seek out a volunteer moderator who exhibits a keen interest in your field. A sample of a baseball trading card forum is shown in the screen shot below.

Article Placement / E-Zines

Another avenue for generating incoming links and traffic to your site is the free article market. Article submission (or e-zine) websites allow you to publish articles on a variety of topics. Examples include EzineArticles and ArticleCity.com.

Depending on terms of use, these articles may be used as content on other websites, or collected on the site where submitted. The main objective of most article contributors is to increase their search engine rankings with the placement of backlinks on other reputable sites. Providing reliable and accurate reference information is secondary, and the traffic potential from article readers is questionable.

Obtaining links from article submission sites isn’t likely to improve your site’s search engine rankings much. However, existing content from a print newsletter or other written material can be re-purposed with a relatively small time investment. Be aware that creating articles from your website’s content verbatim may cause search engines to penalize your site, as the search engines take a dim view of text that is republished multiple times (“duplicate content” in search engine optimization terms). Submitting articles to sites with the most traffic will give your site the best chance to be discovered by new readers.

Caveat: Once an article is submitted, you have little or no control over who uses your content and for what purpose, depending on the copyright policies of the site on which the article is posted.

Other Internet Marketing Outlets

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is, essentially, an online encyclopedia. The unique aspect of Wikipedia is that users generate the content, though content must be approved by volunteer editors. Traffic will grow if and when others link to the entry. If you add content, your time commitment will be relatively minor, and the benefits might include improved search engine ranking and a slight increase in traffic to your site. As with other forms of Internet communication, a Wikipedia entry that is essentially a commercial for a product, service, or company will not be viewed positively and is unlikely to be approved by editors.

Directories

Online directories allow Internet users to browse through categories of topics to find websites related to a certain subject. There are directories for businesses, blogs, websites in general, and more. Many directories are free, and some only list you if you pay. The mother of free directories is the Open Directory Project, and by all accounts the best paid directory for business is the Yahoo! Directory ($299 annually). Be aware that you might wait a long time for some of the free directories to list your site, as they may rely on volunteer screeners. Directories not only allow consumers to find you in their listings, they also help get your site indexed in the major search engines. If you submit your site to a directory, make sure to read the submission guidelines and follow them exactly.