Internet Marketing

In the last issue we talked about separating your personal life from

your business. In this issue we are going to talk about jump

starting your online marketing campaign for greater

success.

In the internet age, having an online marketing campaign should

be one of your top priorities. That's a broad, sweeping statement,

but it's a broad sweeping truth. I don't care if you're a Fortune 500

company or the owner of auto shop in Podunk, Wisconsin, you

need to be online, and you need to have an online marketing

campaign.

The days when you could get by without having an internet

presence might not be dead, but they're definitely circling the

drain. Virtually everyone has a cell phone these days, what we still

refer to as a cell phone is really a mobile connection to the

internet. People are constantly connected, and people are

constantly using this connection to find the place and things they

want to find.

If you don't have an online marketing campaign in place, you are

not going to be there to find. If you aren't there to find, you are

going to watch your business eventually dry and blow away. You

need to be online, and you need be online with a strategy in place.

I'm going to show you how to create a simple, effective and

inexpensive online marketing campaign.

The very first step is to make sure that you have a nice,

professional looking website. You'd be shocked at how many

businesses pay good money to put cheap looking websites on

line. Good, attractive design is important, and it won't cost you

extra. It should also be consistent with the look of your business in

general, including stationery and business cards.

The next step is to make sure that your website is search engine

optimized. This is a big subject, but the basic idea is make sure

that your site makes it as easy as possible for the search engines

to put you at the beginning of their results for the keywords that

your customers will be using. You can have a beautiful website

and an excellent business, but without search engine optimization,

you won't get anywhere.

The next step in a good online marketing campaign is to make

sure your website is capturing potential customer's email

addresses. You'll need to set up an autoresponder service to

make use of this, but they're cheap and easy to use. Just make

sure you offer your customers some reason to give their email

addresses. It may not be using money, but it is still a transaction,

and you need to give good value.

This allows you to interact with customers and give them multiple

chances to buy from you, in addition to keeping your business in

their minds. The next time they want what you offer, you're going to

be the first person they think.

Once you have all that in place, you can experiment with using

online advertising. There are lots of ways to this, from banner

advertising, which is generally ineffective, to sponsoring a blog or

website, which can be expensive, to pay per click, which is usually

the best place to start. Pay per click puts a small ad related to

whatever a person searching for next to their search engine

results. You see this every time you use Google. You can use this

to get visitors to your site, and if you have followed the above

steps, turning them into customers.

There you go; you should be well on your way to you first online

marketing campaign. These techniques are simple, but they can

explode your business and put money in your pocket. Don't wait to

get started, because your competition might already be working

on it.

Make sure you look for your next issue soon. We will be talking

about finding an internet marketing expert that you can trust to

teach you.