Small Business Internet Marketing Strategies…
Internet Marketing is a now a must do marketing activity for any small business wanting to prosper in the so called Information age. However, with this being said, marketing your small business on the Internet does not need to be expensive, nor does it need to be complicated.
And, just like in the real world, there are many small business marketing options available to you.
For small businesses Internet marketing can be a surprisingly low-cost way of promoting your local small business. This promotion can be targeted locally, regionally or across the globe.
So, these Internet marketing strategies are? How are they applied?
In broad terms there are THREE main types of marketing strategies, which apply to small business Internet marketing, being…
1. Paid search marketing (Pay per click marketing, and its numerous variations), and… 2. In-context link marketing (being commercial links within content on a specific topic), and… 3. Natural search marketing (SEO, content marketing, blogs and its numerous variations).
So, with these different approaches, what are the pros and cons?
1. PAY PER CLICK SEARCH MARKETING:
Paid search marketing works a little like the marketing you (as a bricks and mortar business owner) already know. It’s paid advertising. You pay for placement of your ad, and it’s placed before potential prospects who then find your PPC advertisement while searching the Internet for solutions to a problem. Who sees your PPC advertisement is determined by the keywords and keyphrases YOU chose for your individual PPC campaigns, and the effectiveness of your PPC ad.
The PROS: If correctly targeted, you get prospects looking at what you want to sell and/ or promote quickly.
The CONS: A) Specialist skills required. And, you can lose a lot of money, fast! B) PPC specialists are not cheap. C) You continually need to run your ads. D) Can be very costly (especially for commercial keyterms). You only get to play as long as you continue to pay.
2. HYPERLINK within CONTEXT LINK MARKETING:
By utilizing other people’s keyword focused and existing content you’re able to promote your local business (say you’re an accountant) via other people’s focused content. This is a commercial pay per click arrangement between the content creator, yourself (the advertiser) and the in-context web system that matches the two parties in the arrangement.
The PROS: Embedded hyperlinks that are within topic-focused content are not (generally) regarded by the reader as commercial links. They are viewed as links to additional information on the topic. Thus, if you hyperlink from topic-focused content to more topic focused content that gently moves the prospect into your marketing funnel these links can be an extremely effective way to advertise your small business.
The CONS: A) Best results are achieved by utilizing specific landing pages, different landing pages for different ads. To be effective one needs to use a search path specialist. B) Competition for the profitable commercial keyterms is fierce which drives costs for these keyterms up. And, you only get to play as long as you continue to pay. C) You have little control over where the in-context links are placed within the web pages. The system places the ads for you.
3. MIMICKING NATURAL SEARCH MARKETING:
When a small business interfaces with the fundamental way people use the Internet THEY win. This approach is called natural search (or search marketing). This approach can be especially powerful for small businesses wanting to market themselves locally, regionally (or even across the world). Search marketing strategies require a different approach to the other methods already discussed.
Note: It’s important to understand that search marketing is different from SEO. SEO is a term used to describe the optimization of a web site and its pages for the search engines to be able to spider pages correctly.
The PROS: With natural search marketing, if your business is the creator of the keyword-focused content, you have a distinct marketing advantage on the web. Long term, these advantages will far out weight both the PPC and In-context marketing strategies, because you are building a web business or traffic portal which belongs to you. Your results with natural search marketing are in direct relationship to your own efforts. And, here’s an interesting twist, small businesses wanting to primarily market themselves locally or regionally have a distinct advantage using this natural search marketing methodology.
The CONS: A) Search marketing strategies require more effort than the potential throwing money at the wall techniques of the other strategies. B) It can be a slower approach than the other methods discussed. However it has been proven time and again that search marketing is an ideal and cost effective method for small businesses to use on the net.
And so, to summarize… There is great divide between those business who understand the web and how to market on it and those who don’t. However, your opportunity to market your own small business on the web is now, while this confusion still exists in the marketplace.
