Internet Marketing For Small Business - How To

To say that internet marketing for small business must start with your strategy is probably on the side of 'obvious' to most of my readers. But what I mean when I discuss marketing strategy often leads to questions. Sometimes lots of them.

One recent writer asked me if I would disclose my own internet marketing for small business strategy, explain each piece and tell you why I use it. So Dave, I'm going to attempt to give a fair answer to your question today.

First, I should mention that I've done extensive market research, which includes keywords, domain names, blogs forums and even articles on topics related to small business marketing. I think its safe to say if you want to successfully market your small business on the Internet, you MUST start here.

Fortunately its not hard to do, I even posted a video on market research, which you can still watch on my YouTube Channel. Just know that there are obvious keywords that people looking for what you do/sell would be using to find the things they plan to buy. If they search those terms and your site is not up to speed (or optimized) for those keywords, they won't find you.

It won't matter a bit if you are best at, cheaper than or any of those things; If I can't find you in my search, you must not exist.

To do your own keyword research, just use the free Google keyword tool, which you'll find here.

With research in hand, I chose as my strategy, inbound marketing, built on expert positioning/status. I've got years of experience in working with small business owners, but when the market place is as loud as the Casbah in Morocco, with everyone shouting for your attention, even proven results sometimes are not enough to get through the noise.

Expert positioning is built on providing value to your market, usually in the form of free information, and almost always for free. So on a week-in-and-week-out basis, I will add to this blog as my core marketing strategy. Then on a regular, but not as frequent basis I also:

* Write articles (or use professional writers), which are distributed through a service I use that makes it very easy and fast. This gets me lots of links to my website which improves my search engine results.

* Create videos and audio podcasts for distribution to a variety of places where people watch and click through to my site for more information

* Write and publish press releases. This is so easy to do, but most don't, even though it can gain you loads of links, traffic and even the occasional interview by the media.

Finally, I keep a basic level of activity on 3 social media sites; Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Now that's not to say I don't have other accounts, because I do - lots of them, but I'm only able to invest so many hours a week on social media, and like you, I have to chose well or I won't do any of it effectively.

If you are wondering if I also do SEO (search engine optimization), the answer is 'yes' but I'll qualify that by saying that I focus on the basics. Proper page title, meta description tags, etc. In fact if you use WordPress as your platform, as I do there is now an amazing plug in that is very affordable and makes SEO a snap. If someone approaches you with SEO services and tells you that it'll cost you $1000 or more per month, just laugh and walk away.

It's not difficult to do all of these things and do them well. When I implement this internet marketing for small business strategy for clients, we often get on the first page of Google for the chosen keyword. Doing them for myself brings in a steady amount of new leads from potential clients; people who want these kinds of results but just don't have the time or desire to do it themselves.

If you'd like to explore the idea of working with me yourself, let me know. If you simply have a question, drop me a note and I'll do my best to answer it for you. Also, if you think this was helpful, leave a comment.