Internet Marketing

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” This children’s rhyme does not apply in today’s highly connected world where a few negative words can cost your company a lot of business. Now everything from quality reviews and recommendations, legitimate issues and reputation damaging complaints are there for the entire world to see.

Marketing assets are things that you own and control that help with your marketing initiatives. Your brand identity, website, domain name, email list, customer list, white papers, presentations, pay-per-click advertising, social media, directory sites or any platform that houses your important marketing content, are critical assets to your business.

A successful web presence that attracts your ideal client and makes a great first impression is now much more complex, incorporating not only your website and blog, but also your social media profiles, business directories and review sites. It’s no longer enough to just have a website. Your website is just one component of a complex network of information about your business that projects your brand and expertise to those in search of a product or solution.

Want to increase visitor response on your website? Then give them a reason to do something and connect with you!
If your website is simply a brochure for your company products and services, you are missing an opportunity to encourage your visitors to take some action that benefits them and you.

Any small business that is not developing an expansive Web presence as part of your online marketing activities is missing an opportunity to gain visibility and develop an expert reputation. Think of your online presence as one entity with many customer touch points. Each of those touch points must effectively convey your brand and your message in order to help your target audience continue their effort to get to know you.

Here are my top 10 marketing tips for small businesses that will help you gain more visibility with your target customer.

Create a vision and set realistic goals for your business. What’s that have to do with marketing, you ask? Knowing your vision will help you make decisions on what types of activities you will need to get where you’d like to go.

As I reviewed the information in the Google Webmaster Tools for one of my clients today, I noticed something different in the information being presented in the Top Search Queries report – it has expanded and now contains a lot of great information on how your site appears in the search results for various keywords.

It’s nice to be friendly and welcome your visitors to your website, but unless you are in the hospitality business, using Welcome! as your home page header and title is wasting valuable real estate when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). You can have welcoming content for your visitors without sacrificing the best practices of SEO.

Another week and another client calls me to ask about yet another company claiming they can optimize his website and guarantee first page placement on Google. After doing my usual research, I find a Ripoff Report by an unhappy customer who felt they were taken for a lot of money. One unhappy customer does not make the company bad.

I got a call from a small business owner yesterday that reminds me why I focus on helping small business owners market their businesses. It disheartens me when someone spends a substantial amount of money with a company for pay-per-click or SEO services that do not get them any results. These companies charge $500 – $3000 per month for these services of which only a percentage of it is applied to your actual campaign.