Online Marketing for Local Businesses

Author: Jeff Meland

Local Businesses are certainly familiar with traditional marketing options like radio, billboards, newspaper and other print, TV, etc… But how much do they know about marketing their business online? I think not too much but then again online marketing is relatively new. What does online marketing mean to a local business? How would your business define online marketing? What does online marketing mean? I suspect most would say that it simply means advertising on the Internet. But where on the Internet? The local newspaper website? Ebay? Craigslist? The local chamber of commerce website? Google? Facebook? Advertise on Facebook? Isn't Facebook for non business purposes? There are many questions but also many opportunities.
Over the past several months I have been researching and testing various methods of online marketing. I suggest that you think of online marketing as the general category that includes 2 sub categories. The first is paid online marketing and the second is free online marketing.
Paid online marketing consists mainly of having a banner advertisment displayed on another website and pay per click advertising campaigns through google, yahoo, msn, facebook, etc… Placing Ads in online newspapers and other paid sites are among the options for paid online marketing as well.
Free online marketing can be achieved by having your website or business listing show up in search results when someone is searching for your company, product, or service. It can also be achieved by using free classifieds sites like craigslist and oodle. You can post your business information on many free listing sites like google places, yahoo local, and MSN local sites. See this post for for more places to add your business-> How to get your business on search engines on www.onlinemarketblog.com. You don't need a website to do some online marketing but a website is highly recommended.
Social networking sites like facebook, linkedin, twitter, youtube, flickr, etc… can all be used to market your business locally. Marketing on many of these sites can consist of both paid and free marketing. Whether you are using their paid advertising options or just posting your business information, there is a huge point to make about marketing on these social networking sites. Do not try to sell your product or service on social networking sites. This is not the place to do a hard sell or really any kind of selling. People are not on social networks looking to buy things. So how can a business benefit by having a presence on these social networking sites? Here's what you can do. Work on networking and building relationships. This will help your business build it's brand and trust among the people who see your business on the network thereby making it more well known and trusted. Samir Kabani has recently written a book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, that explains this all important point very well. Is it worth it to go through the work of having a presence on these social networking sites? It depends on your business. Some businesses are better suited for some social networking sites better than others. But I believe that if you are selling most any product or service there is a social networking site that can definitely benefit you. One more extremely important point about placing your business on a social networking site is that you cannot just enter your business information and forget it. To get the benefit of having your business on a social networking site you must engage with people on that network. Look for groups that are related to your line of business. Look for discussions and people who may have questions or problems that you can help them with. You may be thinking that you do not have time to sit and help people for free. But this is the value that you will be providing that will build relationships, your reputation, and potential customers your business. Is doing a good job and helping people a waste of time for your business? Not if doing so gives your business a good reputation and helps spread the word about it. That's social online marketing at it's best!
There are many more details that fall under this summary about how to go about online marketing. There are right things to do and wrong things to do. In the coming days I will be writing more about some of those details.

Thanks for your time and if you want to read more of my articles see my Online Marketing blog.
Jeff Meland
www.onlinemarketblog.com
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/online-marketing-for-local-businesses-2933624.html




About the Author
Web Developer, Internet Marketer, Certified as Google AdWords Individual Qualification with specialization in Search Advertising

Internet Marketing - What Should Your Strategy Be?

By Robert S Miller

Internet marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or whatever you want to call it, is generally a means of promoting products or services over the Internet. It's not just about marketing online, though. It also includes marketing via email and wireless media. It also ties together the creative and technical aspects of the online world, including design, development, advertising and sales. It refers to the placement of media along the different stages of customer engagement through search engine marketing, search engine optimization, banner ads, email marketing, mobile advertising and other strategies.

Why did I find the need to give you a short lesson on Internet marketing? To make it clear that marketing online is not as simple as putting up a website. To make sure your Internet marketing is a success and to maximize your business, you need a plan.

How much of your strategy is marketing online? Which Internet marketing elements do you use? How much importance should you give to your website? These questions can all be answered, but those answers depend on the nature of your business and your budget, and to some extent, your personal traits.

Unless you transact business strictly online, like eBay sellers, you may want to include offline marketing elements in your overall marketing plan. Even those who conduct business only online may consider placing traditional ads in newspapers and magazines or buying local TV spots to attract prospective customers to their website.

Most people dislike spam emails, but there's a way to make email marketing work for you. If you include a visitor/client registration to your website, you have the vehicles to collect email addresses of interested prospects. You can then send them newsletters as part of your marketing strategy.

Your budget plays a part in your Internet marketing strategy. You have to pay for a domain name, web hosting and, unless you make them on your own, website design and content. If you pay for the content, it should be optimized for search engines when it's written. Likewise, your website designer should know something about SEO because how your site is designed can enhance or limit traffic.

There are other marketing strategies to consider, such as advertising on other websites, pay-per-click advertising on your website and social media optimization.

All these components of marketing are important to consider as you map out your strategy so you know if you're actually making any progress with your business. So, how do you measure the success of your marketing work? It's all about the conversion rate. If your site is generating plenty of traffic and customers are buying your products or services - and you can see profit after spending money on your marketing efforts - then your Internet marketing strategy was a success.

With an Internet presence, you have the power to do business while you sleep. Your business is open 24 hours a day. Without a website, you are missing out on a lot of exposure. Affordable Web Design and Internet Marketing for Small Business http://www.springboarddesigns.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_S_Miller

Tools and Tips for Internet Marketing

By Sunny Kr

If you own a website which isn't generating enough sales, it's probably you aren't doing any 
internet marketing. Effective internet marketing is vital behind a working website. 
Following are some tips to improve your website's result.

Measurement

If you don't know the number of visitors arriving at your website, then you aren't effectively marketing your site. Install website analytics software on your website. This is a vital internet marketing tool. The software will reveal the whereabouts of your visitors and measure their activity.

Keyword research

For attracting visitors to your website you have to understand how internet surfers scour for a product. The Google keyword tool can give you a fair idea about it. Just enter your desired keyword (often termed as a seed keyword) in the search box of Google and you'll get related keywords. Try incorporating these keywords in your text.

Marketing tips and strategies

There are several strategies for generating traffic to your site. The most widely used strategy is called search engine optimization. The goal of search engine optimization is to make your website feature high on the search engine result page. To employ search engine optimization, you have to write articles that contain your keywords and then place the articles on your website and also in other directories for articles. You can generate traffic to your website from the people who read the articles and click on the link on your site. Put some links on your website from other websites. You can pay for the advertisements of Google AdWords so that your advertisements appear on the first page of Google when the advertisement is related to the keywords of the articles. You can make and then place videos in a free YouTube account also and link the videos in your website. You can also place your web address at the end of the video.

Help

If you have scarcity of time or knowledge to execute internet marketing yourself, you can hire a search engine optimization (SEO) expert. You can also outsource the strategies that you have outlined to others. However, hiring an SEO expert is the best option.

Remember, internet marketing is critical to the success of your business on the web. You have to accomplish it with due diligence. Any lack in the strategies that you have taken could make your website less visible across the internet. This could lead to less traffic and less revenues.

SEO Traffic Search is a leading service provider of SEO Company India for businesses interested in SEO services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sunny_Kr

Your Social Media Marketing Is Overkill

By Sterling Jackson

Social media marketing is an evolution. It's a different way to sell things and there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind...

1. Don't overdo it.

2. Be respectful of your network.

3. Share valuable content occasionally.

There you go. These 3 guidelines will give you a pretty solid social media strategy. Read them again because I see far too many businesses who don't "get it".

Ignore these guidelines at your own risk; your efforts will probably backfire.

Don't Overdo It

If you're posting more than once a day you're overdoing it.

I've seen a lot of small business owners start to develop a following, get some responses and engagement from them and then get really excited about it. That's natural, when building up a business every bit of positive feedback is exciting!

But in social media, less is often more. The goal is to keep in touch with your contacts and earn their trust over time. You want them to remember you and be receptive to what you have to share or say so you can develop the relationship with them and eventually earn their business or get referrals from them once they trust you.

Guess what happens when you flood their feed with several updates every day?

They block you or remove you. You're spamming them.

Provide Value to Your Network

Remember that I've chosen to connect with you. I'm looking for things that benefit me, so if all you're doing is wasting my time then I will get rid of you. You should never be posting more than once a day in the first case and even that's probably overkill.

Remember that old saying about having two ears and one mouth? There's some truth in it and if you don't have something with value to share then you probably shouldn't post it.

Remember, social marketing is not the same as sharing cute pictures with your friends on Facebook. You're a professional who is trying to sell a product or service and you need to work to build trust and be taken seriously.

Why are you undoing all of your hard work?

Let's look at it another way. You've worked (or even paid) to build up your network so why are you driving them away? I see the same thing happen with businesses and customer service or problem resolution.

Stop and think about what you're doing for before you hit that button.

Affinity Informatics is a platform designed for small businesses. If you're looking for an effective way to manage your customers, sales, documents and reports, be sure to check us out.

www.affinityinformatics.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sterling_Jackson

Do NOT Decrease Your Marketing Right Now

By Mitchell A Zucker

This is exactly the time that you should be ramping UP your marketing efforts... create your superior access vehicles, deliver your attraction marketing devices, purchase appealing promotional products, network more, and everything else you can think of to enhance your image and credibility and make your competition irrelevant.

While working for two major marketing and management consultants, Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes, I would speak with business owner's day in and day out. As I interviewed them to try and understand them and their challenges better; a common theme came to light. The overwhelming majority of them told me that their phones have just stopped ringing. That they were seeing cutbacks from their top customers and new business had come to a virtual halt. A very complex and disheartening situation indeed.

As I dug a bit deeper with them, a very interesting conundrum was common with most of them. They told me that they had cut, if not totally ceased their marketing efforts. They pulled out of yellow pages; cut back, or totally cut altogether, their sales force; stopped direct mail efforts; quit associations they had previously been members of; etc. And didn't even replace these efforts with other free ways to advertise themselves such as Manta.com or claim their business on Google Maps.

Somehow they believe that them doing everything from estimates, to managing people and work teams, to creating brochures or other marketing tools, to being the accounts receivable person, and the HR manager is saving them money. It's NOT... it's costing them money, and a lot of it. They have fallen into the trap of working IN their business, rather than ON it.

They blame the need for retrenching on the administration, the economy, their marketplace, their competitors, their employees, the cyclical nature of their business, the alignment of the planets; frankly, just about anything they could think of, rather than placing the blame squarely where it belongs: On their shoulders!!

The scary thing is that they don't even recognize the correlation between their cutbacks to their marketing efforts and the corresponding negative trends of their business. They feel that they just couldn't afford to do marketing anymore and had these other reasons which they could pass the blame on to.

I propose to you that just the opposite is required in this market. The smart businesses are indeed increasing their marketing efforts and gaining in market share in their marketplace.

This is exactly the time to INCREASE YOUR MARKETING!! Businesses are going out of business in record numbers and you have a choice to join that trend and go out of business, or to see this time in our history as one of the most incredible opportunities to expand and grow.

An extremely interesting statistic I ran into while working for Tony and Chet was that a 2009 study found more than half of the companies on the 2009 Fortune 500 list were launched during a recession or bear market. This study was sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation.

If you are in Real Estate, or Mortgages, or a Lawyer, or a Contractor, and the list goes on and on, be like the Borg from Star Trek and "assimilate" your competition. Consider buying them out, merging with them, or just waiting for them to go under and grab their key employees.

But at the same time you should be increasing your own marketing efforts to become the top player in your field and gain Top of Mind Awareness.

Stop the blame game and get creative. Partner with other local businesses to do events; expand your geographic footprint; get better at holding on to your valued business and expanding your existing clients; hire sales people or even outsource your sales team efforts; create events and get them paid for by others; blog regularly; network actively online and offline; and in every way you can think of, increase your marketing efforts.

Although many of these techniques are actually FREE, you should also spend money now to take as much market share as possible. When the economy does take a turn for the better you will be well positioned to see your business absolutely take off.

Put a pen in every business persons hand in your area; a magnet on every refrigerator; a calendar on every desk or wall. Give away shirts or hats with your name on it. Sponsor meetings or better yet, get others to sponsor your meetings...

Follow these strategies and I'll watch for YOU on the Fortune 500!!!!

I'm an author, firewalker, and education based attraction marketing specialist. I help small business owners learn how to dominate their marketplace, crush their competition, get others to pay for their marketing and become THE authority in their field.

http://teammaz.wordpress.com/about/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mitchell_A_Zucker

Link Building Basics

Link building is the process of creating inbound links to ones own website. It is probably one of the quickest and best ways to increase your website's popularity. Inbound links also known as backlinks are incoming links to your site. Search engines look at the number of these links to judge how popular a site is. The amount of inbound links to your site is important but there are many other factors that are also looked at such as the quality and relevance of that incoming link.

Link popularity is one of the largest factors that search engines look at to rank sites accordingly. In the case of link building quality is better than quantity. The bottom line is that you need a lot of links from quality sites to rank well. These quality sites are also known as "authority" sites. An authority site is measured by its combination of size, importance, relevance and is one that is highly ranked in the search engines. Every industry has a handful of these influential authority sites. These sites usually contain all or most of the following characteristics: 

- Lots of relevant and dynamic content
- Tons of WebPages, they can easily number in the thousands
- Most of them have high Google page ranks
- Professional appearance to their website
- Many links from similarly themed websites
Getting a link from an authority site within your industry will help tremendously boost your rankings.

Link building can be a time consuming and long term process, you do have the option of hiring an SEO company that includes link building as a part of their SEO services. If you are a do it your-selfer it is possible and at a lower or no cost. Some of the following techniques I will discuss are proven methods and can be very effective if done correctly.

Social media sites are a great resource when it comes to link building. The key here is to write dynamic content that will capture the reader's attention and will help you gain a lot of targeted traffic to your site. As far as social bookmarking goes you should avoid using automated software, because Google may see it as automated content and will just ignore it. The best way is simply manually with the use of good titles and descriptions.

Writing and submitting a press release is a great way to announce a new product or service or any other company news you would like to send out to the public. There are a great number of press release sites out there, which will assist you in gaining backlinks in a short period of time. Writing and submitting original articles to article directories is another way to gain powerful inbound links.

Another quick link building technique is to submit to directories. There are many free directories on the web to quickly submit a link to. Paying directories to include a link is another method for link building that is debated. Some directories are worth it such as Yahoo while others are not as valued.

Following these techniques will get your link building campaign off and running. Remember link building is not a one time practice and to devote some time each day towards your link building strategy.

======= MarketRaise Corp. A SEO Company from NY, USA Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Krimitsos

7 Tips to Get Viral Traffic

Businesses live and breathe through traffic. Having sufficient website traffic is essential to keeping your online business running.. Viral marketing techniques are extremely powerful in getting traffic from people who are interested in your business and your products.

The benefits of viral marketing are that your message gets spread around very quickly.

Here are 7 tips to get viral traffic.

1) Blogging: using a blog to create news worthy content that is fresh and up to date can create a buzz. The blogging community is big and becoming more and more popular. Contributing to this community regularly is a way of spreading your message across the Internet. Set up a Google alert for your niche and make valuable blog comments on other blogs in your niche or ask questions.

2) Freebie Giveaways: Everyone likes receiving free stuff. This techniques is a method of attracting people who are interested in your product or service. Whatever you're selling, giveaway a free evaluation version and allow give away rights to anyone. This will spread your links across the Internet really fast.

3) Video Marketing: Have you ever received a link to a video that is inspirational or funny? This is a great method for getting viral traffic so long as you embed your link inside the video. Just give your customers something to talk about, be entertaining, informative or funny.

4) Games: Interaction is another great marketing strategy. Let your customers enjoy their experience through games that are related to your content.

5) E-books: Publishing e-books with promotional links inside that are distributed freely is a powerful method of viral marketing. Just go to e-book directories and submit your e-book for free and watch the traffic grow exponentially.

6) Forum Marketing: Create a forum on your site and give your visitors a place to talk about your product or service. Interaction in the forums are the key..Make sure you have your signature include a free giveaway and people will visit your site to download the freebie and because you have good content, it will go viral.

7) Widget Marketing: The new wave in marketing. Widgets that are placed on multiple sites can drive an unlimited amount of traffic to your offer. Just think of the last time you've seen the weather widget displayed on sites or colorful banners, you clicked on the widget that took you to another site. Great concept, all from a simple piece of code that was placed on the site, the potential is unlimited.

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These 7 tips to get viral traffic are just a few of the most powerful strategies used to get consistent traffic and you can find more tips and strategies on viral marketing at http://www.squidoo.com/amazingwidget Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rhonda_K_Smith