10 Small Business Internet Marketing Tips

Looking for some basic Internet marketing tips for your small business? While there are hundreds of suggestions we can make, here’s a list of 10 that we think might be the most useful for 90% of small business owners.
1. In the words of Ron Simon, “What the hell are you trying to do?” What is the goal of your website? Ultimately, it should be to drive more business, but how exactly will it do that? Start with one goal – such as increasing the number of phone calls – and branch out from there. It’s important to set goals, but it’s just as important to come up with a system for measuring those goals.

2. Evaluate your website’s content – Content is King. What does your website say? Is the content unique and useful? Will people learn anything when they visit your site? When was the last time you added new content? Does your website have content worth reading? Does your content match your business goals?
3. The <title> tag. Visit your website. Look at the very top of your browser window. What do you see? Does it describe the page you’re looking at? Is it a unique description? Does it contain the keywords you want people to associate with that page of your website? If you’re a local business, does it contain your key local search keywords? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to all these questions, check out this article all about title tags.
4. Call tracking and analytics. You can’t improve upon what you can’t measure. Analytics provide a tremendous amount of incredibly useful data, such as where your website visitors come from, how long they stay, and what they do on your site. Google analytics is free and pretty darn good, and we recommend it. We also recommend you make sure you can track every lead that’s generated by your website.
If you don’t have a dedicated phone number for the website that you can track calls on, visit Mongoose Metrics. They’ll issue you a unique tracking phone number and then forward every call you get to your main number while tracking the number of calls you receive, who called, how long the call lasted…etc. It’s surprisingly inexpensive.
5. Take advantage of free local business directories. There are a few great local business directories that are completely free. Get your business listed in each of the directories below and you’ll see a boost in website visitors and hopefully a boost in business too. (By the way, we don’t advocate paying for any directory listings anywhere unless you’ve got a very good reason.)

6. Check out your competition. Visit your competitors’ websites. Do searches for keywords related to your business. Find out what others in your vertical are doing and saying. This is a great way to get ideas and take stock of your own company’s online marketing efforts.

Does this dog look ugly to you?

7. Repeat after me – “I have an ugly baby.” A lot of business owners love their websites, but the first step to improving your website is to admit that it has some deficiencies. No website is perfect, and every website can use improvement. If you have a website, you have an ugly baby [sorry]. Just how ugly your website is, however, is open to discussion.
8. Start blogging. Every business, and we mean every business, has something to gain by blogging and absolutely nothing to loose. The list of benefits is long, but here’s a short list of reasons small businesses should blog.
9. Post online video. Video is still a little cutting-edge for some, but the benefits can’t be understated. Online video is the wave of the future, and every business needs to have something on YouTube, Metacafe, etc. If you’re concerned about expense here, keep in mind there are some low-budget options that won’t damage your brand while still providing concrete benefits.
10. Contact us. We can help your small business rise above the rest. Contact us so we can discuss your business and your basic goals – our initial consultation is free of charge.

Amazing Auctions Let You Buy iPads and Other Electronics for Under $40

Few things match the thrill of getting an incredible deal on an item we really crave. It’s a basic human response that we all can relate to.

That’s why auctions are so much fun – they present the titillating chance of scoring something for a lot less than we would expect. And that leaves us feeling great, because we now have the object of our desire and we have money left in our pocket.
Marketers know this and exploit it all the time –hence the profusion of sales, discounts, coupons, and the like… so much so, in fact, that we become numb to the tactic. People just don’t believe they’re really getting a bargain.
But now there’s a new online company that has actually figured out a way to sell new must-have consumer products for jaw-dropping prices.
It’s called Quibids – and it turns out that they are selling everything from the latest new Apple iPads and iPods, to MAC and PC notebooks, to HDTV’s and gift cards from the top retailers at prices as low as 5% of regular retail prices.
Now, of course, anyone in their right mind would be skeptical of such a claim – so we looked into it to learn just how they do it.
It turns out that both the prices and the products are real. Quibids runs a unique version of the traditional auction - when you bid on an item you actually get charged a small fee of about 60 cents. Collectively, the amount collected for all of the bids on an item allows the company to sell the item at a price far below actual retail and even below the wholesale price they paid the manufacturer for it.
Figuring out how many bids to place and when to place them involves a little strategy but on QuiBids it’s actually a lot of fun. Each auction has a strict time limit and when you place your bid, the system adds a little time to the auction to see if any other bids come in. If you have the winning bid when the clock runs out – you win the item for that price. According to QuiBids CEO Matt Beckham, “Thousands of people are trying QuiBids every day – and then coming back again and again - so we must be doing something right.”
For the auction winner, the true cost of the item is slightly higher than their winning bid price because they have also spent a little for their bids, but this amount is usually modest, and the savings still work out to be spectacular in most cases.
And then there’s the “Buy Now” feature. This allows bidders who did not win an auction to still buy the product they want and apply the cost of the bids they placed as a discount on the regular product price. So, you still get the item and the bids you placed previously in the auction don’t cost you anything.
So, if you want real deals - like a new iPad for under $34, a new Nikon Digital SLR Camera for less than $24 or a new 46” LED HDTV for under $25 – check out the action at QuiBids.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of online advertising where advertisers place campaigns with a potentially large number of small (and large) publishers, who are only paid media fees when traffic to the advertiser is garnered, and usually upon a specific measurable campaign result (a form, a sale, a sign-up, etc.). Today, this is usually accomplished through contracting with an affiliate network.
Affiliate marketing was an invention by CDNow.com in 1994 and was excelled by Amazon.com when it launched its Affiliate Program, called Associate Program in 1996. The online retailer used its program to generate low cost brand exposure and provided at the same time small websites a way to earn some supplemental income.

Display advertising

Display advertising appears on web pages in many forms, including web banners. These banners can consist of static or animated images, as well as interactive media that may include audio and video elements. Display advertising on the Internet is widely used for branding. This is why metrics like interaction time are becoming more relevant. This may change in the future as display advertising is becoming much more targeted to users, much like how search engine ads can be extremely relevant to users based on what they are searching for. Display advertisers use cookie and browser history to determine demographics and interests of users and target appropriate ads to those browsers. Banner ad standards have changed over the years to larger sizes, in part due to increased resolution of standard monitors and browsers, in part to provide advertisers with more impact for their investment. The standards continue to evolve. Banner ads can be targeted to internet users in many different ways in order to reach the advertiser's most relevant audience. Behavioral retargeting, demographic targeting, geographic targeting, and site based targeting are all common ways in which advertisers choose to target their banner ads.

E-mail advertising

Legitimate Email advertising or E-mail marketing is often known as "opt-in e-mail advertising" or permission marketing to distinguish it from spam.

Approaches

One-to-one approaches

In a one-to-one approach, marketers target a user browsing the Internet alone and so that the marketers' messages reach the user personally. This approach is used in search marketing, for which the advertisements are based on search engine keywords entered by the users. This approach usually works under the pay per click (PPC) method.^{[citation needed]}

Appeal to specific interests

When appealing to specific interests, marketers place an emphasis on appealing to a specific behavior or interest, rather than reaching out to a broadly defined demographic.^{[citation needed]} These marketers typically segment their markets according to age group, gender, geography, and other general factors.^{[citation needed]}
Appealing to specific users can be achieved through behavioral targeting which refers to the use of behavioral patterns and putting up the relevant content suitable to the viewer's interest obtained from the user through cookies and other tools and contextual advertising which refers to the publishing of advertisements and ads based on the context the user in. For example if the user is searching for coffee, the search engine publishes ads related to coffee.

Niche marketing

In conventional niche marketing, clusters of consumers (the niche) are identified in order to more economically and efficiently target them.^[20] Similarly, niche internet marketing attempts to create a more direct advertising message for those who are seen as most likely to buy the product being advertised (see Target audience and Conversion rate).^{[citation needed]}
Niche internet marketing focuses on marketing products and services which are, or can appear, tailor-made for a specific subset of consumers who are expected to buy the product or service with a specific motivation. The online advertising message (or product web site) can then be similarly tailor-made to target that assumed motivation.^{[citation needed]} In combination with search engine optimization, the niche internet marketer can attempt to increase the likelihood that their product's advertisement (or site) will be seen by customers in the relevant niche.^{[citation needed]}

Geo-targeting

In Internet marketing, geotargeting is the methods of determining the geolocation of a website visitor with geolocation software, and delivering different content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as latitude and longitude, country, region or state, city, metro code or zip code, organization, Internet Protocol (IP) address, ISP, and other criteria.^{[citation needed]}

Types

Though, as seen above, the large majority of online advertising has a cost that is brought about by usage or interaction of an ad, there are a few other methods of advertising online that only require a one time payment. The Million Dollar Homepage is a very successful example of this. Visitors were able to pay $1 per pixel of advertising space and their advert would remain on the homepage for as long as the website exists with no extra costs.

Floating ad: An ad which moves across the user's screen or floats above the content.
Expanding ad: An ad which changes size and which may alter the contents of the webpage.
Polite ad: A method by which a large ad will be downloaded in smaller pieces to minimize the disruption of the content being viewed
Wallpaper ad: An ad which changes the background of the page being viewed.
Trick banner: A banner ad that looks like a dialog box with buttons. It simulates an error message or an alert.
Pop-up: A new window which opens in front of the current one, displaying an advertisement, or entire webpage.
Pop-under: Similar to a Pop-Up except that the window is loaded or sent behind the current window so that the user does not see it until they close one or more active windows.
Video ad: similar to a banner ad, except that instead of a static or animated image, actual moving video clips are displayed. This is the kind of advertising most prominent in television, and many advertisers will use the same clips for both television and online advertising.
Map ad: text or graphics linked from, and appearing in or over, a location on an electronic map such as on Google Maps.
Mobile ad: an SMS text or multi-media message sent to a cell phone.
Superstitial: An animated ad on a Web page from Enliven Marketing Technologies. It uses video, 3D content or Flash to provide a TV-like advertisement. Used to be known as Unicast Transitional ads as they were originally made by Unicast Communications but the company was acquired by Viewpoint Corporation in 2004, which then changed its name to Enliven in 2008.
Interstitial ad: a full-page ad that appears before a user reaches their original destination.
Frame ad: an ad that appeared within an HTML frame, usually at the top with the site logo. As the user browsed the site, the frame would not change.

In addition, ads containing streaming video or streaming audio are becoming very popular with advertisers.

Online Markating

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