5 Internet Marketing Musts for Small Businesses

You?ve done it. You have realised that the web is now another piece of your business puzzle and something you need to make a start on. Great!

But all of this can seem a little daunting with a lot of technical jargon and constant updates on ideas. However, this can be a little guide to get your started.

1. First up, ?Stay Savvy? and get learning. SEO is your friend, as it?s a basic knowledge of HTML. Unfortunately, this area has become a playground of good cops and bad cops and I?ve heard of small businesses paying up to 865,000 rupee for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services which I totally over prices! There is no such thing as a free lunch and with internet marketing this is very true! By learning the basic elements of this yourself, you can begin some elementary optimisation yourself and understand what your consultant tells you. Follow your gut and seek some independent opinion on any quotes and strategies you might get. Google offer some great resources for beginners to find out about SEO and what makes great optimisation and On the whole, there are some amazing SEO?s out there but just be careful!
2. Get Creative. Internet marketing has changed the link between businesses and customers and modern consumers are much more aware of the power they have. With this comes a change in your plans. If you spend 5 hours a week planning traditional, outbound marketing change that and dedicate your time to inbound marketing, where customers come to your website for a whole range of reasons! (see the great graphic above courtesy of Jennifer Sable Lopez at SEOmoz) This is also your time to get thinking. A great way of getting more traffic to your website is by creating quality, interesting and unique content. Infographics, videos, twitter trends, images, anything! This is your time to shine and make yourself better than your competition.
3. As this might be something new for your business, find out what works for you and your customers early on. Try surveys and analytics and test your internet marketing. If ?x? doesn?t create and leads but ?y? does then test that. I suppose the best thing to do is not be caught up in any trends and make an internet marketing strategy that works for you and your customers; smiling faces all round.
4. Remember your centre point is your website and your brand. Everything you do needs to lead to your website so ensure that the more you expand your online marketing make sure it ultimately leads back to your main site. The same goes for social media. If your Twitter followers are getting bigger then gently push them to your site. Inbound/Internet marketing works in a funnel style (see above) so the aim is to keep users retained from start to finish.
5. Measure. Set up Google Analytics, record your social subscribers and email subscribers and make regular records of their numbers to understand your audience. Google tells you everything and there are measurement tools for Twitter too to understand your audience like Social Bro. Keep an eye on what works and adapt your strategy around that to keep your users following through the entire website.

So there you go. A basic introduction to internet marketing. Make a start and watch your website grow! Get your team together and decide what you are going to do and make some performance indicators. There is a lot of help online with blogs like HubSpot, SearchEngineLand and SEOmoz (to name a few) but the key is to attract users to your site, to convert them to customers and then create leads into your business. All of your internet marketing should focus on this 3 step funnel approach.

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