19 February 2011 33 Comments

7 best small business marketing internet tips

Want to do two things at once? Listen to this article as a podcast. Here are my tips for a small business.

1. GET A WEBSITE

Your Business is Open to Your Marketplace 24/7,  and can be changed at anytime and it presents a professional image. Don’t you search on the web first when you are interested in a product or service?

You can do this by going to a web designer or use one of the content management tools that I use like citymax.citymax Just google web content management systems and you fill find lots of options.  The alternative to this is to use a blogsite like wordpress, blogger or typepad and direct it over to your website address. Register your domain. Find if you can get your company name. You can check out who is or godaddy to check if it is available.

2. MAKE SURE YOU CAN BE FOUND It should be optimised for keyword searches. You want people to find your site, so make sure it shows up in Google searches. Easy way to do this is to create pages. Home page needs to be attention grabbing and should solve the prospect’s problem. It’s not about you. It’s about them. However to optimise the home page make sure you have 400-500 words with key phases and words in the title, intro and end section of your website page. Do this on every page. You can use a  wordtracker or  keyworddiscovery tools in my list of resources on this blog. Ask for links with associations you work or are involved with. You get points from google and increase your visibility. Then add your website url on everything from your email, signage, advertisements, invitations, everything in your offline presence.

3. Create a relationship with your  customers.

Most people don’t buy when they visit your website. They need to be convinced that what you provide will solve their problems.  Create a unique reason to come back to your website. It might be to download a resource like a checklist on my site or a newsletter or a calculator.  We then ask for a small piece of information, their email address and name. You can use several powerful strategies to build a list of customers and keep communicating with them automatically. How many times have you made an enquiry, or done some research online Gone to a blog or tweeted? You need to provide value. Information. Useful stuff they can use right away.  Remember to connect with your customers, create great content and engage and be of value. To do this regular communication with your customers once you have their names is a email follow on or auto-responder campaign and example is aweber software. The average customer will not respond until they have seen the message for at least 7 times. If you are going to do an email, follow-on, make sure it is still adding value, and that they have opted in.

4. Promote Your Area of Expertise

Create an article about your area of expertise on your website and then send it out on a PRwire service to get it picked up by press on line. This will give you more links back to your site (but only if you put the article on your site first). Your website is the perfect place to feature stories and testimonials but be creative, maybe record a testimonial and stream it live or get some footage. Create a project sheet for download. All of this add to promoting you in your area as an expert. Add a question forum or discussion board to your web (much easier if it is set up as a blog) or link your blog to your home page of your web and start a discussion about things your customers want to know. You should create a blog  separate to your website and link them together( if they are not one and the same). This is where you can link to other interesting relevant sources. You then can build some credibility as a expert. Why not start a podcast, which is another way to do the same thing. This should also live on your web and blog.

5. Understand your customers. Online surveys are a fantastic way to find out what your customers want. Use one of the survey free tools listed on my blog . By finding out what your clients want first, you can tailor your service or event to suit them. When you do launch, you’ll have a far better chance of success. You can also do an adwords campaign with google to create a lead generation program. This is easy to do and you can use the keyword tools above to help you as well as googles tools. You want to ensure that you use google analytics tools as this will help when you come to measure your website .

6. Purpose of your website

Is your website just a digital brochure? Well, it could be so much more. Your site should be a lead generator at the very least and ideally it should be a way to close sales either online or after an enquiry. The value of your business is in your list.  You need to measure conversion on your website. If you had a newsletter for download, measure that. Put the code form google into your website page and measure the downloads with google analytics.  Try  this app for google at youcal How many people are downloading, bouncing, how long are they staying and what are they looking at.google metrics

7. Listen, watch and inspire If you are going to invest in a website or blog then you have to invest the time to track it and improve it.  It might be a good idea to get a number of people to contribute content and have one owner. Expect to spend 2 hours per week updating your web or blog if you want it to have some traction. Look at the google analytics of your competitors, invent, create and inspire. There has never been a better time to get an online presence. People are searching on line more and more before they buy a product or service. They are having conversations with their friends online. They are making a short-list and then looking for some interaction before they make a decision. Give them a reason to have a conversation with you or you might be overlooked in this growing marketplace.

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33 Responses to “7 best small business marketing internet tips”

  1. MJK06 20 June 2009 at 7:58 am #

    thanks for posting these tips…i have just started my own business and have a website but wasn’t sure where to go from there.

  2. Danielle MacInnis 20 June 2009 at 4:02 pm #

    Great, glad to help. You can now view all the hubspot series of webinars at http://www.slideshare.net/hubspot. You need to set up an account but from then on it is free and the information and resources are awesome.

  3. Dave Jackson 20 June 2009 at 5:31 pm #

    Doing a podcast is a great way to get the message out about your website

  4. Sharon Madunicky 23 June 2009 at 1:36 pm #

    In particular #3 Create a relationship with your customers. It is absolutely crucial to keep your face and name on their minds and the best tool to use for this is SendOutCards.

  5. Danielle MacInnis 23 June 2009 at 8:18 pm #

    Hi Sharon,

    Thanks for your insights!

  6. rocky 25 June 2009 at 4:16 pm #

    this is a nice post

  7. Danielle MacInnis 25 June 2009 at 10:34 pm #

    Thanks Rocky!

  8. Mark 28 June 2009 at 5:20 am #

    Great Post. Everyone Must have an autoresponder. You may be interested in an autoresponder that you can use and earn money with at the same time. Currently in Pre-Launch so secure your spot in the 3X9 forced matrix today. http://gensplans.com/autoresponder.php

  9. Danielle MacInnis 28 June 2009 at 2:55 pm #

    Thanks Mark, good to have more resources.

  10. Fredericksburg Affordable IT 30 June 2009 at 7:11 am #

    Those are great tips. Its very important to have a website and market in properly in today’s business world. Everything is reliant on technology and can make or break a business so to speak. There are companies that can professionally handle all of your IT services so you can get an edge on the competition.

  11. Patrick @ CityMax 9 July 2009 at 8:14 am #

    Nice post – and thanks for the mention! Here at CityMax.com we believe that any business, large or small needs a website.

  12. Carroll B. Merriman 20 February 2011 at 7:57 am #

    Great food for thought I needed this information, I shall look forward to the next comment.

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