The internet marketing landscape has changed quite a bit in the past 3 years and has further defined itself further in the past 12 months. With Google raising $4 Billion from new stock offerings in 2005 we will see more changes underway over the next 3 years. Unfortunately, I fear the small business is going to be left out in the cold in this process. Perhaps a better statement would be that the small business has already been left out in the cold.
This writing is certainly not designed to provide a solution to the growing problem. More so, it has been written to raise the awareness and acknowledge the difficulty small business has on the web. Certainly the small business does not receive any sympathy from the major search engines in their quest to provide quality information for those that are searching the web.
Lets review how the situation has been created. We have to make the assumption a small business does not have the financial resources for a proper advertising campaign on the web (even though it is less costly than offline advertising) and they do not have the man-power to devote time for the non-costly methods of marketing. Yes, I have distinguished between advertising and marketing.
Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service. Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.
Can the small business market at no cost Yes, absolutely, however, the issue at hand is not expenditure but time. Time they are already spending on their business and do not have more time to spend on non-costly marketing methods on the web. What are these non-costly but time-consuming marketing methods This would include but not limited to writing articles, maintaining newsletters, maintaining email addresses with auto-responders, submitting their articles through a variety of methods and resources over the web. Lets not forget standard search engine optimization issues and HTML coding. Oh, the best one of all is natural link exchanging as defined by Google. If you have not already been there, manual link exchanging is a time consuming process even if you do decide to spend money on lost cost services that can assist. You cannot use link farms as that is against search engine policies and will cause your listing to be down graded.
In order to reach top ranking on the search engines it all boils down to links (or link exchanges, link popularity) and content. Inbound only links better than reciprocal inks. Writing content for your site, articles, news, newsletter is time consuming to properly write a 500 word article and the submission process is not easy either. Some services and software exists to help you in your submission of articles, but just like link exchange services they can only do so much. Could you create a blog and place your articles, certainly. However, you can see the things to do list only keeps growing for the small business owner.
Could they engage in pay-per-click campaigns Sure, however, you now are entering in a financial issue and one that does not necessarily provide a great return on investment. Pay-Per-Click campaigns are good as an overall marketing strategy and if you use it in combination with a variety of other internet and search engine marketing methods. On its own it cannot provide the returns the small business is seeking. Searching the key phrases (no longer key words) and understanding which ones to select is equally not an easy task. It requires due diligence, research and analysis to understand the information and make an informed decision. Assuming they can get past this part of the pay-per-click process, the next phase is writing the pay-per-click ad headline and content. Unfortunately we see many small businesses flocking to pay-per-click advertising in hopes of a quick return. They might as well go to a casino!
There is indeed another problem associated with Pay-Per-Click campaigns. The ratio of exposures to hits is equally a problem when you are supposed to keep a certain percentage ratio between the two. When search engines like Google are allowing your ad to be placed on other websites with their Google Adsense, your exposures are indeed going up, however, how many people actually click on the links From Googles perspective probably a lot, but from the individual advertisers perspective this is not necessarily a good situation. Google is now dictating what key phrases you should bid on and ultimately consolidating the bidding war into small key phrase groups and larger number of advertisers.
Lastly, at least for this writing, but not necessarily on the subject, is time to see revenues. There is no doubt that it takes months for a website to propagate through the Internet. This is by no means a short-term situation and expectations need to be set accordingly. Just because you have a website does not mean that you will see rewards anytime soon. Once again we get into the dilemma of time resources to do the necessary internet marketing work in order to see benefits 6 9 months later.
Requirements set by the search engines as they seek to provide quality responses to those that are searching are making it increasingly difficult for small businesses to compete on the web. So, who will end up on the first page or in the top position of searches for key phrases Unless something changes and the small business is given a chance, it will be the larger corporations that have the man power time and the money.
Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. SmartFinds Internet Marketing provides a variety of business internet marketing services including research, analysis and planning.
While there are many marketing strategies that you can use and implement to make money, Im going to have to say that if I had to choose ONE strategy, it would be to build a list. Some marketers will disagree and say that testing and tracking is the best strategy. In my opinion this is not a marketing strategy per se, but its without a doubt a darn good business practice. You should put this practice to work, but be careful cause you can overdue it.
Building a list is one thing, how you build a relationship with that list is key, and there is an art and a science to it. How often have I read posts on marketing forums where someone says I have a list of 10 or 20 thousand and Im barely making anything. Thats an easy onequite a bit!
Then there are people that know how to build very high quality lists and earn huge profits from relatively small lists. Youll be surprised that some marketers make gobs of cash from a list of less than 1,000 highly-targeted customers. And I know a few marketers who arent worried about building a list of 50,000 subscribers. You know why Because they know how to treat the subscribers that theyve got.
The Golden Rule goes a long way even with Internet marketing. Treat others the same way you would want to be treated. I dont know about you, but I definitely dont like to be sold to. I want to read good, quality information. And if the author recommends something here and there, Ill usually check out their suggestion but whats most important is that you treat your subscribers the way you would want to be treated.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is they dont treat their customer list as a LIST! Some studies indicate that roughly 30% of your customers will buy from you again and again, yet many people are afraid to market to their customer list. There are some niches that have never ever seen this kind of multi-media and you can literally blow them away with your valuable content. Valuable doesnt necessarily mean a lot of content.
Ive realized that taking a customer-for-life approach and making them raving fans will pay off HUGE dividends.
Now, you might be asking, how in the heck do I build my list.
Well, Ive had great success using Pay Per Click Search Engines, writing articles, press releases, setting up joint ventures with e-zine editors/owners, search engine optimization, and using viral tools such as giving away free reports, free ebooks, and free audios. I wasnt lying to you in the earlier lessons when I gave you the top ways to build your list from scratch.
One of the keys here is to step outside of yourself and try and think like your potential customer. Also survey your visitors. Ask them what their biggest problems and challenges are and what kind of solution they are looking for. Then GIVE it to them. I know that sounds like an oversimlification, but youll be amazed at how many people dont ask their visitors what they want. They assume they know better and tend to create a product before ever asking people what they want.
Build a list, build a relationship with that list by providing mind-blowing, over-the-top content, give them a free report or product and show them that youre a genuine human being that really cares about them, and youll have them fighting at your virtual door wanting to buy your products or services.
So thats my 2 cents for the day.
In a later lesson, Ill fill you in on the important things to focus your time and effort on when dealing with your list relationships. Youll be surprised by some of the tips Im going to recommend
The author, Matt Callen, has been working online as an Email Marketing Expert and Internet Marketer. He has experience consulting small online business owners by using advanced tactics he had taught himself and learned from the great marketers of our time. From this knowledge and expertise in email marketing concepts, Matt has recently developed a powerful marketing software that creates attention-grabbing, unblockable popover ads at InstantPopOVER.com
Learn more about building your email list and tapping into an undiscovered gold mine of profit. You can start with a few dollars and a good idea to make lots of money online! I did and Ill show you how. To find out more and receive a 30% OFF DISCOUNT on my new popup creating software for reading my article, please visit