Internet Marketing: A Small Business Guide

by Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily Senior Writer  

One of the easiest, fastest and cheapest ways for businesses to reach consumers today is via the Internet.

Digital marketing, also known as Internet or online marketing, is quickly replacing print, television and radio advertisement as the marketing approach of choice for businesses of all sizes. Recent research revealed that 1 in 4 of every business-advertising dollar is dedicated to Internet marketing.
"Online marketing is ensuring potential customers find your business — your brand and messaging — everywhere online," said Trevor Sumner, co-founder of the local marketing firm LocalVox. "With today’s connected consumer, your business must be found everywhere consumers are looking."

The first step to digital marketing is having an online presence. That requires a well-developed website and an array of social media profiles. The key is then to use various digital marketing strategies and tactics to ensure consumers can find those websites and profiles when searching for the products you sell or the services you offer.

Previously, being in the phone book was the best way to attract customers and ensure they could find you when they came looking. However, that's no longer the case, said Kirthi Kalyanam, the director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University.

"Small business can easily benefit from Internet [marketing], because search engines such as Google have replaced phone directories and the Yellow Pages in a digitally enhanced way," Kalyanam told Business News Daily. "The most basic thing a business can do is a to have a great Web page and make sure this page is easily surfaced by a search engine, such as Google."

Cost is one of the biggest reasons digital marketing is so appealing to small businesses, said Andy Beal, CEO of the social media monitoring tools provider Trackur and founding editor of the marketing news site Marketing Pilgrim.

"Online marketing is a great opportunity for small businesses, as generally you need a much smaller budget than, say, TV or print," Beal said. "The other big benefit is that online marketing is generally very measurable, which means that a small business owner can be much more frugal with their marketing spend."

Pete Kennedy, founder and chief marketing officer of the Internet marketing firm Main Street ROI, said online marketing also appeals to small businesses because it helps them generate a steady flow of leads and customers.

"Many small businesses are attracted to online marketing, and search engine marketing in particular, because they want a steady flow of new business, without lots of manual labor," Kennedy said.

While small business owners and employees can do digital marketing on their own, many often hire Internet marketing services to do it for them. Such services use their expertise to help businesses develop and set goals, determine the marketing strategies that will best help accomplish those goals, and handle the implementation and reporting of each tactic used.
Internet marketing strategies

Small businesses have a wide range of digital marketing options at their disposal. Among the most popular are search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, content marketing and email marketing.

"There are more channels than ever to manage," Sumner said. "The reality is that each of these is critically important to your business' success."

However, it isn't necessary for businesses to spend the same amount on each and every strategy, Beal said.

"The key is to test various channels — SEO, PPC, social — and determine which best allows you to reach your target audience at a price point that fits your budget," Beal said. "You can then scale your spending as you see the return on your investment."

Lenny Verkhoglaz, CEO of New Jersey-based Executive Care, said his franchise system uses a variety of Internet marketing strategies, including SEO, local market landing pages, PPC ad campaigns and content marketing to help sell its franchise opportunity and support the marketing and sales of its home health-care services.

The key to figuring out which tactics are best for you is really understanding who your audience is, Verkhoglaz said.

"Internet marketing is massive, when you consider all of the channels available to us as small business owners" Verkhoglaz said. "However, with a clearly defined target/customer in mind, you can narrow down on where your efforts should be focused."

To know which tactics to use, it is important to know what each one entails.

Search engine optimization

SEO is the process of getting websites to show up in nonadvertising search engine results. The goal of SEO is to get websites as high up in the rankings as possible.

"Search engine optimization is the art of getting to the front page of Google when people search for businesses like yours," Sumner said.

Being high up in the rankings is critical to building an online presence. A recent study from Search Engine Watch discovered that the top listing in Google's organic search results receives 33 percent of the traffic. Additionally, three-quarters of consumers never click past the first page of results. This means that if you aren't rated highly enough, there's a strong likelihood that the vast majority of consumers will never find your website when they search for your business.

Sumner said there is an entire art to getting highly ranked via SEO that includes making sure websites are optimized for the right keywords, putting out a lot of content and getting other outlets to link back to the website.

The main benefit of SEO is that you can attract free traffic and free customers to your business on an ongoing basis, Kennedy said.

"Of course, it will take time — and money if you hire an SEO company — to gain that exposure," Kennedy said. "But, overall, SEO is one of the best investments a small business owner can make in their marketing."

Austin Paley, corporate marketing communications manager for the online marketing firm Blue Fountain Media, said a huge benefit of SEO for small businesses is that it helps them level the playing field with large companies. He said big businesses can't pay Google to place their website higher in organic search results.

"What Google displays when people search for a keyword represents what Google believes to be the most relevant and helpful content available, regardless of business size," Paley said. "If you're a small business, this means you can generate traffic and sales from simply creating great content and making sure the right people see it and link back to it."

Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) is the practice of advertising online and only paying when a customer clicks on the ad, Sumner said.

The most popular PPC option is GoogleAdWords. With Google AdWords, Sumner said, businesses bid on keywords, and if their bid is the highest, their ads will pop up when online users search for those keywords.

Paley said PCC can be an excellent way for small businesses to generate quality customer leads.

"Particularly if a business can identify relevant keywords that have low competition, often a small business may be able to spend very little to generate both traffic and sales," Paley said.

Kennedy said the main benefit of PPC advertising is speed.

"You can get a Google AdWords campaign up and running in a matter of days, or even in a matter of hours, depending on how fast you can implement it," Kennedy said. "And you can start getting clicks on your ads within minutes of [making] your ads live."

Content marketing

Content marketing is an umbrella for a lot of channels, including blogs, business descriptions, announcements or deals that are posted to a website, social media pages or directory sites, Sumner said.

"The general point is that 90 percent of consumers prefer to find out information about your business from custom content rather than ads," Sumner said.

With content marketing, businesses aren't trying to sell anything directly to consumers, but rather trying to frame the businesses as a thought leader. That way, those who initially see the content come back much later when they find themselves in need of the product or service the business offers, Paley said. Additionally, great content marketing also creates new points of entry for customers to get to a business's website.

"If you have tons of great resource pages or a well-written blog with articles that lots of people love to read, you're more likely to attract new users who are looking for a product or service that your business offers," Paley said. "Content marketing allows you to capitalize on these users and build brand loyalty by providing information for free."

Social media marketing

Social media marketing uses social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest, to reach a business's target audience, Paley said.

"With few exceptions, each social media marketing platform covers most target demographics, and using each platform correctly means that businesses can more effectively reach their identified target audience," Paley said. "Given the right amount of time and the correct execution, companies can build up brand loyalty among their target market that can translate directly into bona fide sales."

Unlike other forms of digital marketing, social media marketing allows businesses to communicate back and forth with their customers, Sumner said.

"Facebook is a great example where anyone can follow you, message you, leave a comment, interact with other people on your page, etc.," Sumner said.

The video messaging service Movy is capitalizing on social media by creating relationships with pre-existing and prospective clients, said Jacob Markiewicz, the company's public relations and media specialist.

"From here, we are able to create both brand awareness, and brand loyalty," Markiewicz said. "This leads to grassroots marketing and word-of-mouth advertising offline."

One of the best parts of social media marketing is that it can be done for little to no cost, since it only requires creating profiles pages and then generating content for those pages, Paley said

"Creating an account that engages with users and knows when and what to say to their audience initially might win a substantial amount of followers. But what a lot of businesses don't realize is that they can use these same people to create brand awareness and sales down the road if they are nurtured correctly," Paley said.

Email marketing

Email marketing, an online version of direct mail, is when businesses use email messages to communicate with current and potential customers.

Businesses can use email marketing for a variety of purposes, including to promote new products or services, send customers coupons, keep customers informed of company news, and gather feedback from customers.

Studies have shown that email marketing has a huge return on investment; Sumner said email marketing returns $38 for every $1 spent.

"If your business is not leveraging email marketing, you are leaving a lot of money on the table," Sumner said.

One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is that businesses have much more control over it than over other forms of digital marketing, such as SEO, Kennedy said.

"Your email list is a marketing asset that you fully control, which gives your marketing more stability," Kennedy said.

Additionally, it's one of the easiest tactics to get started.

"You don't have to learn a lot of new concepts, as you do with SEO or Google AdWords," Kennedy said. "Anybody can get up and running with email marketing in minutes, not days or weeks."

Additional Internet marketing tactics

There are a number of other digital marketing strategies that small business might find valuable, including affiliate marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing and online reputation management.

Online reputation management revolves around keeping a constant eye on what is being said, both good and bad, about a brand online. While good reviews help build up a brand's reputation, negative ones can easily tear it down.

Small businesses can use online reputation-management strategies to combat the online negativity about their brands. This is done in a variety of ways, including creating additional positive content that will outperform the negative comments in search engine results.

Online reputation management is one of the most important tactics small business owners should consider, Beal said.

"When you have a great reputation, you effectively let your customers' praise attract other customers to your business," Beal said. "When you have a negative review profile, or tainted Google reputation, you have to spend more — and work harder — to attract customers."

Culled from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com