Any small business that now thinks that the Internet is a passing fad is blind to the facts. There is still much confusion among small business owners about how to utilize the web to the marketing of their own small business. Marketing your small business on the Internet does not need to be expensive, nor does it need to be complicated.
There are many small business marketing opportunities available, just like in the real world.
As a small business owner you just need to choose from the variety of Internet marketing options available to you, and then consistently apply these systems and strategies to get measurable results. In fact, small business Internet marketing can be a very cost-effective way of promoting your bricks and mortar business locally and/ or to the world.
So, these Internet marketing strategies are? How are they applied?
There are numerous approaches, and this is where most people get confused. In essence there are THREE main approaches to small business Internet marketing, being…
1. PPC marketing (Pay per click marketing, e.g. Google Adwords), and… 2. Information link marketing (linked via content on a specific topic), and… 3. Educational search marketing (all involving original content that educates).
So, what are the PROS and CONS of these different approaches?
1. PAID SEARCH MARKETING:
Paid search marketing is paid advertising. You pay for your ad to be placed before people searching on specific keyterms. The effectiveness of your PPC campaign is directly related to the keyterms you chose to use, as well as the sales path you set up on your landing page (where people land when they click on your PPC link).
The benefits to you (the pros). Well, when correctly targeted, you’ll reach prospects, fast.
The CONS: A) Specialist skills required. And, you can lose a lot of money, fast! B) PPC specialists are not cheap. C) You continually need to run your ads. D) Can be very costly (especially for commercial keyterms). You only get to play as long as you continue to pay.
2. CONTEXT within CONTEXT LINK MARKETING:
This model utilizes other people’s existing web content (for your advertising benefit). The text links are placed within their keyword focused web pages. So, let’s say you’re selling financial services. Your keyword-related hyperlinks are run within the content about (guess what) financial services. People click on that hyperlink and end up at your offering about financial services.
The PROS: This is a better approach for small businesses marketing on the Internet, because these embedded hyperlinks are not perceived by the reader as an advertisement. This reduces the visitors resistance to clicking through on these in context hyperlinks (ads) as the links are viewed by the reader as links to more information.
The CONS: A) Competition for commercial keyterms is fierce. This continually drives your costs up. And, you only get to play as long as you continue to pay. B) You have limited control over where these hyperlinks are placed, because it’s the In-Context advertising system that places these links in the participating publisher’s content for you. C) To get best results here one needs to utilize specific landing pages for the clickthroughs from your different ads. This is called the search path, and again it’s a specialist skill that’s needed to set up good search path landing pages.
3. NATURAL SEARCH MARKETING:
Think about this. How do YOU use the web? I’ll guarantee you that if you’re looking for a solution to a problem that you do what millions of other people do everyday. You go to your favorite search engine (usually Google) and type in your problem (a.k.a. keyphrase). Then, your search engine presents you will likely answers. When a small business interfaces with the fundamental reality of the way people use the Internet THEY win.
Note: SEO is a term used to describe the optimization of web pages. Search marketing is different (though related). Search marketing integrates SEO and information search paths to better interface with the web user searching for specific information.
The PROS: With natural search marketing, if your business is the creator of the keyword-focused content, you have a distinct marketing advantage on the web. Long term, these advantages will far out weight both the PPC and In-context marketing strategies, because you are building a web business or traffic portal which belongs to you. Your results with natural search marketing are in direct relationship to your own efforts. And, here’s an interesting twist, small businesses wanting to primarily market themselves locally or regionally have a distinct advantage using this natural search marketing methodology.
The CONS: A) Content is King on the Internet, The continual adding of content to your natural search system is of paramount importance to its success. However, this content creation can be very easily outsourced. B) This is a slower approach than the PPC and In-context marketing systems. However, the (long term) ROI from natural search marketing for small business far exceeds the hit and miss results of using the other two approaches (and their ongoing costs).
To summarize… Marketing on the Internet for small businesses no longer needs to be seen as a mysterious event. There is still be a great divide between those businesses who are using the web properly, and those who don’t. However, armed with this information, you now have a choice.
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