Possibly one of the biggest mistakes Website owners make is to invest the majority of their budget into the development of their Website while leaving only a small percentage of the budget to actually market the site. Does this make any sense When developing your e-commerce business plan remember to include reasonable marketing costs within your budget. The scale and type of marketing required to market your site is relative to your type of business. For example, if your business is seasonal then your marketing requirements might be different than if you operate a year-round business. And if your product is orientated towards teens your marketing requirements will certainly be different than if you are selling pharmaceutical or medical products.
Considerations for Your Website Marketing Plan
Reasonable Internet marketing costs for small businesses could range from $2000 to $10,000. Medium sized businesses are easily investing $25,000 or more per year into their online marketing. While there is no magic formula to calculate exactly how much you should spend on Internet marketing it is important to realize that some forms of marketing are more effective than others. But no matter what type of marketing you do, if you do not plan and manage it well then it may result in a lower return on your investment.
Below are several factors to consider when developing your marketing plan and budget.
1. Who is your target customerAre you targeting teens, doctors, parents, wives or husbands This will help you determine which type of Websites or portals to direct your advertising.
2. What are your goalsDo you want to increase sales, increase brand awareness, or sign members to your newsletter Knowing your goals could help you with the development of your keyword phrases, ad copy, and landing pages. And may also help to decide what specific type of marketing would be the most cost effective.
3. Is your business seasonal or year-round If your business is seasonal then you may want to focus more of your budget on pay-per-click and behavioral targeted advertising. If your business is year-round then focusing your budget on search engine optimization might be a priority.
Below are several effective Website marketing methods. When developing a marketing campaign one or many of these methods could be considered.
A. Pay-Per-Click Programs (PPC) - this form of direct marketing displays your ad in the sponsored section of the search engines and in the search engine network. This is an alternative solution if you are not ranked on the first page of the organic search listings. Pay-per-click is easy to implement allowing Internet savvy website owners to instantly create their own campaigns. Depending on the competitiveness of your keyword phrases you could launch an experimental pay-per-click campaign for as low as 100.00$ per month. Pay-per-click is an excellent marketing solution if you only want to market during specific seasons or holidays.
B. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - search engine optimization is a long-term strategy taking up to eight months before producing any measurable results. Implementing best practice SEO requires unique skills and plenty of patience. A professional SEO campaign could produce great returns on your investment, so expect to pay no less than 1000.00$ for the services of a competent search engine optimizer. And always ask for references.
C. Behavioral Targeting provides data that allows you to investigate Internet user behaviors and patterns over periods of time. Behavioral targeting allows you to manipulate the consumers behavior by providing advertisements based on past behavior patterns.
D. Shopping Engines - shopping engines are just like search engines but show products in the search results. Most shopping engines charge on a pay-per-click or a monthly fee basis. Froogle.com, Shopping.com and Shopzilla.com are popular shopping engines.
Darren is located in eastern Pennsylvania and provides Professional SEO and pay-per-click management services to small businesses throughout Philadelphia and New Jersey.
Although there are over 100 ways to market your business on the internet, some methods will get you a lot more traffic than others.
Unlike the offline world, where advertising is very effective, content rules the internet. Youll develop a more effective marketing campaign when you focus on strategies centered around developing content for your site.
Below are some of my most effective ways to market online, and I do it all for free.
1. Search Engines
Before you even develop your website, the first thing you should do is focus on the search engines. Organic, i.e. free search engine listings that are highly ranked, will get you far more traffic than using any kind of advertising.
The most important thing you should do here is find the right keywords. You can do this by using any of the pay per click search tools. You can also download a free tool like Good Keywords, http://www.goodkeywords.com
2. Articles
Writing articles not only allows you to brand yourself as an expert, it helps you to create original content for your website. The more quality content pages you have in your site, the higher it will rank in the search engines, and you will also create a viral marketing strategy for your business.
3. Press Releases
Press releases are news. Just like the offline world, where press releases are more effective than advertising, so too are they more effective online.
You should remember to focus on news about your business. Dont make your release a glorified sales letter. It will get rejected.
A simple search for press release writing will help you find resources to help you write an effective press release.
Press releases, like articles, are spider, or search engine food. The search engines love them, and a good release can be very viral.
4. Blogs/RSS
Blogging is the latest craze online. Its a very effective way to promote your business not only because of RSS, but because you can quickly and easily create content without knowing HTML, and with trackback, it has its own built in link building strategy.
RSS is nothing more than a very search engine friendly code that allows you to syndicate your content to other websites, or to be read in RSS readers.
With trackbacks, you can link back to other sites and build your links. This raises your search engine rankings.
5. Free reports
Free reports, like blogs, articles, and press releases, not only allow you to build a content strategy for your website, but you will also create a viral marketing strategy for your site.
A viral marketing strategy is very important because its mainly passive. If you create good content, your content will be recommended by others. One person reads your content and recommends it to someone else, and before you know it, your content is all over the internet. The more entries you have in the search engines, the more likely you are to be found by your potential customers.
The point is, if you develop an effective content and search engine strategy for your business, you will get your message out a lot faster. Potential customers will find you, and theyll be eager for what you sell because they were already looking for you.
Jinger Jarrett is a certified Web CEO Search Engine Optimization professional living in Alpharetta, GA. You can get her best free search engine resources, software, and ebooks when you download her free toolbar from her special offers page at