How to Market Your Business Online by Cody Landefeld

 

How to Market Your Business Online

Marketing is essential.  But marketing without a clear purpose and goals is blind and ineffective marketing.  Targeting your market and effectively marketing is not easy to the untrained entrepreneur.  So it pays to educate yourself in things you should know, from successful and honest companies and people.  Strap in and put on your thinking cap as we embark on a rundown of some effective online marketing tips that will bring your marketing IQ up just a few notches.

 

1. Get a Professional Website for Your Business

You may already be an expert or think you are an expert at websites, or know enough or know someone who says they know enough.  You might have no website, spent too little on a website, or too much.  Whatever the case may be it pays to hire a true expert if you can truly admit you yourself are not an expert.

So go into this process with an open mind, and be completely honest with yourself for the sake of your own success!

One of the biggest things to realize is that the game has changed with marketing overall.  Most cannot simply rely on the same old approach that they have taken in decades, or even years past.  It all revolves around the internet and online search engines.  And it doesn’t mean just putting pictures and text into cyberspace, but going about it with a methodical and calculated method.

A. The 10 Second Rule

Does your Web site describe your product or service in a succinct, compelling and visual fashion? Does it answer potential customers’ needs in, say, less than 10 seconds?

“Once they click to your Web site, you have between 5 and 8 seconds to convince them you can help,” says Larry Bailin, CEO of SingleThrow Internet Marketing in Wall, N.J., and author of Mommy, Where Do Customers Come From? (Larstan Publishing).

Your home page should include the bare essentials, Bailin says. “People are looking for exactly what they typed in, with calls to action,” he says. “It’s critical that you address their issues on your home page. Get to the point and get rid of anything that doesn’t need to be there.” (Susan G. Hauser for CNN)

That being said, it is important to communicate as clearly as possible and tell people why they should choose you over your competitors.

B. Branding

Branding by definition is, the entire process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product (good or service) in the consumers’ mind, through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

A brand is also synonymous with a unique and custom logo to represent your business and that goes on all printed materials and all of your online presence.  Branding your business online is a major part of marketing your business online.

You want to create something memorable and something unique to remember your business by and stay consistent wherever your business is listed or featured.

C. Content

I briefly touched on this in the 10-Second Rule, but content is king when it comes to your website.  Presenting information as clearly as possible and creating a clear and targeted strategy to know what type of customers you want to attract is absolutely essential.  Not every website company is an expert at content arrangement and marketing, so it might be a good idea to hire a copywriter to put together the content for your website and marketing materials.

 

2. Blogging or Podcasting

Yeah I know you might not be a writer, but it might pay to put those things you learned in English class to use to get your message across to the market you are trying to reach.  Establishing yourself as a blogger for your area of expertise establishes you as a true expert to your prospective customer!

Entrepreneurs who blog can reach a new audience by writing in a conversational way and showing the human and personal side of their business, according to William Beutler, senior online analyst for New Media Strategies, a Web 2.0 marketing firm in Arlington, Va.

“Make your industry interesting to people by writing in a conversational manner,” he says. “Give people a glimpse into a world they don’t know.” (Susan G. Hauser for CNN)

Something worth noting is that usually blogs and podcasts are search engine juggernauts.  They are out of the box search-engine friendly.  You don’t need rocket science to bring some new traffic to your website.

 

3. Social Media

This is an important part of your marketing.  But don’t do something just for the sake of doing it.

A. Be Intentional

Someone said you should be on Twitter, or Facebook, or Linked-In.  Well, yeah they all can help your business, but don’t get on the bus just because someone said you need to if you don’t know where the bus is going or where it can truly take you.  Make a plan, make sure you (or someone in your company) can commit to learning how to efficiently and correctly use social media to aid your business.  Otherwise you are just spinning your wheels and not adding anything to your business’ bottom line and success.

B. Correct Order – Social Media Sources are Branches

Let’s keep in mind social media is akin to carrying around a megaphone on the internet and bringing people to a hub where you can allow your customer commit to using you or your service.  Picture if you will, your website is the tree (or the hub) and social media is the branches that lead out from the tree and bring in the life source or customers.

Build an effective website first, then use social media as the platform to bring people to that hub (or tree) to find everything they need to know about what you do and how it can be of interest to people.

 

4. E-Mail List or Newsletter

Email newsletters can prove to be effective communication tools for existing customers, prospective customers, and other key audiences.

Here are 5 hallmarks of effective email newsletter programs:

• Keep it reasonably short. Nobody wants to read lengthy e-mails.

• Make it well designed and visually interesting. Include photos and graphics. Provide multiple links back to your Web site.

• Be professional; avoid typos, a sloppy look, and broken links.

• Include an easy way for the viewer to contact you and to unsubscribe from your e-mail list.

• Constantly test and track the progress and effectiveness of your newsletters.

(Richard D. Harroch for Allbusiness.com)

 

5. Search Engine Optimization

Hundreds of millions of searches a day are performed on the Web through Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. The search engines “spider” billions of Web pages. There is a fast-growing tool called “search engine optimization” that refers to efforts to raise your Web site’s ranking in search results.  This is also something tricky to do without consulting a true expert as social media companies can charge thousands of dollars monthly to keep their website aggressively clicked-through and atop the search engines.

Some things that are FACT when it comes to SEO are:

• If you want to be atop of the search engines, you HAVE to pay to play.  No one gets at the top of the line for a favor, a nice smile, or anything else.  That said, you can effectively use key words integrated in your website to bring some organic search engine results to your site, which might be enough for your business.

• People search a certain way on the internet.  When people search for products and services in their local area, their search will most often look something like this:

[industry name] + [location]

e.g.

Plumber Phoenix or

Financial planner Phoenix

 

So in conclusion, when it comes to marketing your business online it simply comes back down to the order of how most things go in business.  Make a plan, explore how to execute that plan, and follow it through to success.  The biggest take-away from this education would be to hire an honest company who is interested in making your company successful and can advise you on how to accomplish what you set out to do, and are not looking to quickly move you off of the assembly line of website production quantities.

 

-Cody Landefeld

codyl@codyl.com