Internet Marketing Strategies
Internet marketing has become a complex business operation which requires a unique marketing plan and internet expertise. Gone are the days of build-it and they will come; now, companies must post news and advertising snippets in a multitude of locations. No longer can you trust your internet marketing campaign to the computer geek who knows HTML. Advanced marketing, writing and programming skills are needed to build and keep traffic.
The good news is once gained, your web traffic can also generate advertising revenue and your web properties can become revenue generating activities. But, we are jumping a head of ourselves. First we need to develop the plan.
Driving traffic to your business blog
What is Social Marketing and how does it work?
Social marketing is an over simplified version of word-of-mouth advertising. The concept is you build a network of on-line friends, then deliver small bits of useful information with a goal of stimulating commerce. By itself, social marketing is a poor advertising vehicle. Online relationships don’t transcend the trust boundaries associated with giving personal referrals. It is not until a personal relationship (online or otherwise) is established that quality word-of-mouth marketing takes place.
Exhibiting on limited budgets
How do you exhibit your business on a limited budget without looking unprofessional?
Does this sound familiar?
About a year ago you, rented space at an upcoming tradeshow, but now economic times have slowed business to a crawl. You can’t backup without losing your booth space rent, so what do you do?
Here are a few ideas for over coming the budget challenge when exhibiting your company.
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Does business take a SNOW day?
The Eastside of Portland is pretty icy today. It is days like today, when the roads are too hazardous to drive on that are perfect for working on your internet marketing plan.
I’ve been up for several hours already, enjoying the beautiful sunrise; even took a brave dip in the hot tub. Now I’m settling in for a great day of internet marketing.
The holiday season in general is a great time to review your internet marketing strategy. Are you getting enough visitors to your company website? Is your SEO company charging an arm and a leg? All the commercials on TV should help remind you of the MOST important aspect of marketing–remaining TOP OF MIND.
Social Networking versus Personality Based Marketing
News of recession panicked spending cuts, massive government bailouts, and job losses have our nations economy in a tail spin. Small business owners are forced to find new inexpensive ways to market their business. Marketing and business consultants at Chamber of Commerce meetings everywhere are touting “Twitter”, “Facebook”, and “Myspace” as saviors. While it is true, millions of people use these social networking sites every day, the long term business value of the social networking medium is unproven and uncertain? It may very well turn out that a online social networking paradox exists and much of the online behavior is already irrational.
Recession! It is official
Just in case you needed a government official to confirm the obvious… Yesterday they announced we are (and have been) in a recession. Every small business owner in America could have told you business was down, but the officials never seem to interview small business people during times is national crisis: why do you suppose that is? Joe the Plumber got interviewed, why can’t we get noticed?
Marketing budgets in small businesses are small. We don’t buy TV air time, most don’t advertise on the radio or even buy massive trade show displays. No we attend local chamber events, eMail all our friends and relatives, and pass out business cards. There is also FaceBook, MySpace and all the social networking site, but which one should you use? None of them talk to one another and most of the results is a flurry of SPAM.
A picture is worth a thousand words…
When doing our small business planning and building our business advertising program, our natural tendency is to fall back on the old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. We hire graphic designers to create business logos, pretty brochures, and beautiful websites (with lots of animation and cool looking stuff). Certainly graphics help, but more often than not they become our crutch.
Almost all forms of marketing is devoted to an active audience and on the internet carry very little long term recognition. Static small business advertising on the internet loses search engine value and falls further down the list and away from the consumer. A new online marketing method must be adopted to help draw consumers in from other interest channels and maintain high search engine visibility.
Simple versus inexpensive
I was teaching a class at the Small Business Development Center today and one of my students approached me during the break to ask about trade show displays. She exhibits as gift type fairs and wanted a display that was easy to transport and use at indoors and outdoor events. While I would love to produce a list of a dozen different options, reality is no such display actually exists.
Building a display for both indoor and outdoor events are a liability situation. Making something that is heavy enough to NOT blow over in the wind yet light enough to easily move creates a potential for people getting hurt. Pop-up displays have 78 square feet of surface area and are VERY susceptible to gentle winds knocking them over. While popups are light weight and not very likely to hurt someone, they are very likely to damage adjacent exhibits and thus become a liability.
This leaves exhibitors who also show products at their events to their own devices. More often than not the exhibitors get a hold of grid wire panels (typically used in retail establishments). While these are very effective for showcasing product, they are very heavy and awkward to setup.
Popup display frames can sometimes be used to hang and showcase product, but they are only good for a dozen or fewer display items. If you have a large number of items to showcase, grid wall panels are your best option, especially since they usualy can be purchased for about $30 per grid panel (typically 24″ x 84″).
If your display products are long and bulky, you might consider PVC piping. PVC pipe can use built to act as a free standing display stand and even painted or graphically wrapped. With slip on PVC fittings, your full height display column can be broken down to fit in to the trunk of a small car. By drilling holes in the PVC pipe, you can use wire hangers to display your product. You can connect a larger diameter pipe section to the base and fill with sand to help keep the display unit standing in moderate winds. The best part is PVC piping is very inexpensive, easy to service and replacement parts are available everywhere. No getting stranded because one part breaks!
My point is trade show displays need not cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. By being creative and using common hardware store items, you can create an attractive trade show display that can be used in any venue. While I would love to sell you an expensive display, in many cases the best solution is more affordable from your local hardware store.
Ed Bejarana
BusinessBlogging.net
a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.
Life Happens?
As business owners or managers of departments, we will always face higher priorities when deciding to market our business. The reasons for not taking time today will be great reasons. Obviously anyone in your shoes would have made the same decision to hold off on marketing right now and instead deal with the fires. “Life happens” is almost a curse when it comes to marketing. Believing this means you’ve won half the battle.
On my story blog site, Bashful Bill struggles with life, take a look at the lesson he learned:
“I’m letting all the distractions of work creep into my life because I don’t really want to write in the first place. I would rather dig up a broken sprinkler pipe than market and build my business. Maybe that is why I had to let Paul and Jose go.”
Internet Activities and Blogging
Search engine visibility is based on time and content relevancy to the search phrase. Search engines, like Google, Yahoo and MSN, make money from advertisers buying time with searchers. The more searchers, the higher the value for the ad space. Internet users value speed and accuracy from their search engine. Not speed as in how long it takes to produce a search result, but how long it takes to find what is desired. When business blogging correctly, the search engines value the content higher than traditional webpages. The question of why requires some statistical analysis for complete understanding.
Pew Internet & American Life Project reports 70% of American adults use the internet on a daily basis. Pew also reports 49% of all daily American adult internet users turn to the search engines for information. With more than 110 million search site users everyday, capturing those eyes have become big business. Teams of programmers have created complicated algorithms to evaluate your internet content against what internet users are searching for. Blog technology has a leg up with the computer generated content review programs because they are time and content rich.
