Online Marketing Blog for Small Businesses

A free/cheap way to get leads from search engines

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:41:59 +0000

We’ve discovered a site that offers and free and super-cheap ways to get your services to show up in search engines such as Google. You can create a profile on their site with your small business services and it’ll likely come up in the search engines when someone searches for that service in your city. They do a really good job at what’s called “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) of your profile.

They also have cheap service where they “Feature” your services and actually have their SEO team write your profile for you and they guarantee more exposure and customers from the program.

Check out their services page here: http://www.skillwho.com/services.aspx.

Small businesses in a digital world

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:36:23 +0000

Online marketing on the Web for Your Business

Online marketing and advertising online today can be a valuable tool in promoting and providing new opportunities to your small business. Today small businesses in a digital world can benefit several ways from the current shift in technology.

One of the best ways to utilize today’s digital world is by setting-up a company website, which allows access to potential customers through the medium of the Internet. Built with a solid outline and force of direction your business website not only allows you to market and advertise your company to a whole new audience, but typically requires little maintenance allowing you to continue with core business while having an “electronic presence” always available on the Internet.

There are other ways to market and advertise small businesses in a digital world besides having a company website. Many other websites and companies already on the Internet can provide links or information to and about your company that can be found when someone searches for a specific product or information on a topic. For example, when someone searches the Internet for a particular item using keywords they type into a search engine, an existing advertiser on the Internet (many provide basic free advertising) that you’ve provided your business profile too will provide a map of your location with some basic company information. This exposure to your company via cyberspace may provide you with the opportunity to gain a new customer.

Many advertising websites allow you to create this basic profile for your small business for little or no cost. These advertising websites such as phone book websites are a great way to promote your local business with little or no cost. For a small annual fee, many of these advertising websites provide subscriptions that allow you to provide comprehensive information and will even “host” or build a website for your company. There are also companies that specialize in website development and promotion especially for local businesses. Most of these companies charge a one-time fee for creation and development of your website and offer different levels of membership with various tools to promote your website for an annual fee. Some of these hosting companies can even provide merchandise transactions, customer relations along with data tracking for your small business website. As you can see small businesses in a digital world can benefit and take advantage of the world of cyberspace to promote their company and get new business in a whole new fashion today.

Online Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:34:12 +0000

For small business owners, finding that much needed cash to promote the business can often be frustrating. With budgets strained and cash flow a constant concern, small businesses need to find new, innovative and inexpensive ways to attract clients online. Seems impossible? Well, it isn’t. In fact a number of businesses succeed through online advertising at almost no expense whatsoever. For these businesses, it actually becomes the preferred method of reaching out to both local and international customers. How is it done?

• Marketing online articles: Looking for ways to stand out in a crowd and make yourself and your business appear as the experts in the field? Article writing online offers small businesses an immediate opportunity to get published and reach millions of potential readers. Online services like ezinearticles.com allow writers and content providers to publish articles and provide links to both web-pages and blogs.

• Blog carnivals: When it comes to reaching a broader audience, blogs often submit content to blog carnivals. These are blog forums that allow content providers to post a favorite post from their blog. A hosting site will provide an immediate link to both the blog itself and provide information on its author.

• Forums and Social Media: Social media services like Twitter and Facebook are used by millions of members every day. Social forums allow visitors to post questions and receive immediate answers. They are ideally suited to online networking. They can promote content, blogs, websites and those previously mentioned articles. People who need answers and need them quickly, make it a point to visit these forums daily.

• Links with local websites: If it’s locating local businesses that’s required, nothing compares to getting a link on a local business website or chamber of commerce website. Every town, city or borough has some kind of online presence, and companies are best served becoming members and making it a habit of posting information on their business as much as possible.

• Title specific articles: When individuals look for information online, a specific and identifiable title is what is guaranteed to attract their attention. Search engines love unique content and nothing is more unique than a specific title mentioning the town and service offering. Online searches are today’s yellow pages and offer immediate information.

Finding ways to localize your content will not only help in reaching a broader audience, but will also improve on your company’s ability to be front and center in the eyes of your customers. Today’s businesses don’t need to spend lavishly in order to become an online presence. It simply takes time and effort and the ability to provide unique content to a captivated audience.

Free and Inexpensive Online Marketing Ideas

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:19:43 +0000

Online marketing is one of the most important and hardest parts of your business. You can build all of the websites you want but if no one comes, nothing is sold and you wind up with zero profit for all of your hard work. Internet marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. There are many ways to advertise your business under a strict budget.
Here are a few ideas for free and inexpensive marketing ideas.

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are becoming the key to internet marketing. Most consumers flock to sites like Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis. Because there are millions of Facebook users, even the largest companies are hustling to find social marketers to post ads and update Facebook Fan pages. Facebook fan pages are free. As a small business owner, you will probably want to update your pages yourself. You could also outsource this job to work at home moms or virtual assistants for a reasonable price.

Another free way to market your business online is through writing articles. You can write them yourself for free or outsource that task for a small fee. Submitting your article to sites like eZineArticles.com and Constant-Content.com along with a byline telling about yourself and your business can bring many back links to your site. You post the articles on these directories for others to post on their site and you could have numerous websites advertising your site for free.

Your site can advertise itself, believe it or not. Using the right keywords in your meta tags and throughout your sites’ content will assure that the search engines pick up your site and give it a high ranking. When most people search for “Orlando, FL plumbers”, they aren’t going much farther than the first page of results before choosing a company to hire.

Online marketing is a little more difficult for local businesses but it can certainly be done and bring more customers to you. The first thing you can do is look for forums that discuss topics in your city or town. Contribute to these forums by posting your thoughts and ideas on the discussion at hand. Be sure it’s relevant and not spammy. Forums allow users to place signatures in their profile. These signatures are posted on the forums every time you comment about something. You can use this space to advertise your business. A simple link to your site or the name, address and phone number of your physical workplace is all that is needed to advertise to many locals that could use your product or services. Another great place to advertise for free or inexpensively are directories like Craigslist.org. At Craigslist you can advertise your service by placing a free ad in the section that is local to you. Be sure to write something professional about your business and check your spelling and grammar.