by Francois Muscat | Mar 10, 2010 | Online Marketing
Usually the challenge with local small business websites is obtaining targeted traffic to their online profile. A website is a powerful business tool and if used and optimized correctly, can generate sales and leads.
Why do you want a simple online brochure of your company when your website can do so much more? More and more businesses are realising this and the days are over by just having a simple about us and contact page on your website.
Your website can produce a high ROI (return on investment) but to achieve that goal and if you are a small business, there are ways that you can accomplish that.
Find below a couple of steps you can do to drive local targeted traffic to your website.
Organic SEO
Optimize your website to be search engine friendly. Use primary keywords mixed in with the city, neighborhood, community and local names it falls in. Include your address and phone number with your area code in your contact page. These are all ways users search for local businesses.
Google local search
Google local listings appear along with a map (for some countries this is not activated yet) at the top of the Google’s search results when people search for local businesses or services. You can add your business listing on Google for free by entering your details on the Google Local Business Center.
Facebook
Create a Facebook page for your small business and encourage your customer to join your group. You can then reach your customers via your Facebook page and you can advertise your services, specials, etc on this page. Encourage your customers to leave reviews about you on your Facebook page.
Radio advertisements
Place online radio advertisements with a service like TargetSpot. The nice thing about these online radio stations is that you can add geo-tagging to your advertisements.
Local search
Add your business to local search engines and business directories. Most of these websites allows you to advertise with an advertisement for a reasonable monthly fee.
Blogging
Create a blog that deals with the services or products your business specializes in and reference your location on it regularly. The key here is the create local content that is interesting to your targeted customer and that uses community, local town names in their searches. A blog can also be a powerful business influencer to establish yourself as the expert in your field. This can also help your business becoming more visible online.
Google Adwords
Use Google adwords and insert keywords with city and/or state added to the beginning or end. Use the state or city terms prominently in the ad to get a higher click thru rate.
All these steps falls under the internet marketing umbrella for your website to increase your visibility local and international. If you have any questions regarding the steps explained in this post or if you would like more information to make your website more visible locally, leave a comment below.
by Francois Muscat | Mar 4, 2010 | Online Marketing
Did you know that if you have a website or a blog you can let it generate a stream of income besides the internet marketing of your services and products? The web is full of opportunities for the entrepreneur.
Even though monetizing your blog and website could generate extra income for you or your business, don’t expect overnight success. Once again it comes down to how well your website is ranked, and how many visitors it targets and receives.
You won’t generate an income with your website if no one visits your website. Be sure that your website is search engine optimized – on page and off page. Your website needs to be visible and by that I actually mean reachable.
A great way to get targeted traffic to your website or blog is through social media. With Social Media, you can also build trust and credibility with your brand name and services. Nothing could have a greater impact on your business if thousands of people could market your products and services for you.
Once you are receiving a satisfying number of visitors to your website, you can begin by monetizing it. There are a couple of ways you can go about doing this and find a couple below.
Google Adsense:
Sign up for a Google Adsense account and place Google ads on your website or blog. These are relevant context search engine ads where you are paid every time someone clicks on one of the ads.
Text Links
This is a controversial tactic, selling text links for link popularity, but perfectly acceptable if “no-follow” tags are added. Once your blog has a decent ranking, sell one-way text links to webmasters who have niche-relevant websites.
Video
YouTube has implemented “Google Adsense” onto their videos where if someone clicks on the add-on the video, you will get paid. Another service, Thenewsroom.com allows you to find and embed videos on your website. When video news content with an advertisement is played by your viewers, you’ll earn a flat-rate CPM (cost per thousand plays).
Affiliate Marketing
Be a middle man! Receive a commission every time one of your readers ends up buying products that you advertise. This includes companies like Amazon and other affiliate campaigns.
Blogging
Contract to write postings on your own blog. This can include product reviews and postings with links to sponsored websites. You can get writing assignments from services such as PayperPost, Review Me, and LoudLaunch.
Ghost Writing
Take writing assignments for businesses that don’t have the time or skills to write their own basic blog content. Here you will write for their blog.
These are some of the basic ways how you can generate an income with your website or blog. Contact us if you require more information regarding this process or search engine optimization to increase the traffic to your website or blog.
by Marianna Muscat | Mar 2, 2010 | Online Marketing
The combination of competition and ever-changing marketing capabilities means that many business owners don’t know where to begin when it comes to getting their site marketed online. Finding a provider that can help you generate website traffic through organic and long-lasting marketing tactics such as article marketing, videos, online press releases, a social media strategy and a website content blueprint and more is the first challenge.
Only a few truly understand
You need an active internet ‘partner’ that understands and can provide you with cutting edge advice on what it takes to make a website thrive and survive it’s competition. A great provider not only provides great services, but they also update their services to include the latest website marketing tactics on the web. They are usually ahead of the game and continually develop cutting edge tactics and know of or invent new techniques for marketing long before most other companies even consider it a strategy.
What is creative internet marketing?
There is no such thing as too much or wasted content or wasted money spend on the 3 C’s of internet marketing, content, copy and cleverness. A professional internet marketer is going to provide services that will generate website traffic for months or even years to come. You need to include activities such as pay-per-click campaign, generating permanent back links to your site, such as article marketing, videos, social marketing, press release marketing and more.
Once published online these marketing tactics spread from site to site and are used by other website owners as examples on their websites or blogs. Each time these materials are published to a new site they create another back link.
Do you have an internet marketing service provider that offers these services?
If you don’t chances are you won’t know about the latest online marketing trends. If your competition is using a firm that is up to date and innovative you may find that your page rank decreases while your competition begins to take your market share. If you have the budget to run a pay-per-click campaign while you establish your online marketing tactics, there is no harm in combining the two.
If you do not have the budget to utilize both pay-per-click and permanent marketing strategies it is recommended that you spend your money on marketing that is going to provide consistent traffic rather than one click.
Understanding the tactical use of Pay Per Click
The most professional and cost effective means of promoting your products and services is via your website and “paid listing” advertising on search engines.
A paid listing is when you pay to have your business listed on a search engine. You can do this by bidding for a keyword or phrase and it does not depend on the search engine optimisation of a website.
These listings appear once the search engine has found a certain word or phrase that you have typed in. Only once a user actually clicks on the text box will you be charged for that listing. A click on that listing takes the user to a website or dedicated landing page that you have set up.
You have to bid for a position on the page. The price of the listing depends on how many other people want that position on the page. If you want your listing on the paid listings you should do the following:
- Think about what key phrases you want to use.
- Do keyword research to find out whether your keywords are the right ones to use.
- Decide how much you want to spend per lead.
- Set up a landing page that is right for what you are advertising.
- Write a listing that will stand out from the others and that people will want to find out more about.
- Put proper tracking in place.
- Decide what your daily budget should be.
- Bid for the listing/s according to your budget (do not spend more than this).
by Marianna Muscat | Feb 26, 2010 | Online Marketing
By adopting integrated social media marketing strategies you will generate new consumer insights. Customers will continue to increase their time spent online and they need to be reached where they prefer to be reached at the time they want to be reached.
Here are 3 web marketing trends to consider:
1) Blend Online With Offline Campaigns
There are two parts to this trend. First is the optimization of web sites, specifically efforts in blogs, social media, search engine optimization and email. Second is the strategic usage of those web properties within an overall campaign that may or may not include offline media (i.e. direct mail, catalogs, print ads, TV, radio etc.). Benefits to consider:
- Both online and offline campaigns have similar concepts in reaching target audience with different processes so define your desired outcome first.
- More touch points (frequency) to reach target audience throughout the buying/researching process
- Lowers marketing costs by shifting campaigns online from offline
- Faster time-to-benefit
- Find out more about your customers via two way conversation online
- More strategic options with online campaigns (i.e. brand awareness campaign, call-to-action campaign, lead-generation campaign)
- Target new customer base across multiple demographic, wider reach.
Ideas for action:
Consumer brands
Build and drive traffic to your own communities, identify and communicate directly with your fans to help close the sales with promotions or rewards. This is a popular approach to get opt-ins and many consumers actually look for these value-added deals. Own the relationship with your network of customers, focus on supporting the needs of the community as a priority before promoting your offerings.
B2B brands
Leverage content marketing strategy to drive sales leads from search engine ads, email campaigns, social media communities, affiliate blogs or offline media to a highly targeted micro-site for prospects to opt-in for free resources (i.e. whitepaper, reports and presentations). The goal is to pre-qualify leads that can filter through the sales cycle to improve the probability to convert the sales efficiently.
2. New Measuring Matrix: Hybrid Measurement
Unlike traditional forms of gathering consumer insight, online tools are often cheaper, based on much larger sample sizes, and are quicker to deliver results. For the past few years the value of search engine marketing (SEM) are measured largely by ad impressions, page views and click through rates.
However, as internet users are more willing to input additional data online, companies are now looking to measure key metrics of engagement on a one to one level. It will continue to be challenging for marketers to abstract reliable data as social media adds another pile of data to the media measurement mix.
Benefits to consider:
- Provides more realistic feedback that extends the meaning of web analytics
- Rich information aggregation from online surveys provide personal data and demographics to better understand your audience
- Keep track of page(s) users frequent and the duration can help you benchmark it against server data
- Can be utilized across multiple platforms.
Ideas for action:
Create a web survey on your site, put them on different pages then compare them with your web analytics. Work with your provider to develop your own dashboard for hybrid measurement Reward the visitors that take the survey with coupons, discounts or gifts. Switch out the questions, put them on different pages and try different styles of asking from stealth at the corner feedback button to in-your-face pop ups.
3) Marketing Platform Extends to Mobile, Social, and Local in Real-Time
There is no question with 13 hours of YouTube videos uploaded every minute and over 900,000 blog posts every 24 hour, you can definitely count on the continuation of information overload over the social web. This means content has to be tailored to fit the lifestyle of today’s digerati on smart phones that can access the web via faster with more available network.
Accordingly to The Nielsen Company, “ Social networking drove the growth train for mobile Internet, with a 187% increase in audience for the year ending July 2009. The distribution of 18.3 million unique social network users by the top three sites is Facebook (26% reach), MySpace (13% reach) and Twitter (7% reach).”
What does this mean?
It’s means that the growth in social networking will accelerate as mobile technology advances to embrace emerging trends. Brands should leverage mobile marketing strategy to drive sales and cultivate customer engagement. There are a number of ways to do this but ultimately consumer brands will have an easier time in adopting the usage of the mobile platform than B2B companies.
The opportunities for B2B companies remain the same – to generate leads and shorten the sales cycle.Marketers will need to rethink content marketing strategy that aligns with the business objectives to deliver a dynamic mobile consumer experience.
Benefits to consider:
- More opportunities to engage with customers (new or existing) means brand building and top-of-mind awareness
- Smartphone owners tend to be affluent with expendable income, making it a prime target for product and service marketing
- Aggregate rich user information (ie. user profile, ratings, recommendations, tags etc.) from location based mobile apps
- There are numerous mobile apps that can push out information across all social networks by authenticating with your Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube account, making it mobile and real-time viral
- Deliver superior experience with augmented reality
Ideas for action:
Leverage the mobile platform to provide unique location based experiences (services, games, ads, commerce) for your audience via instant customer support (ie. assist in the buying process like check inventories or availabilities), real-time product information (ie. price check), or event promotional notifications (ie. or buy-it-now via SMS or mobile web app/browser).
Another idea is to create downloadable coupons to promote offline activities to drive traffic to local events. Offer coupons based on location also helps your customer to discover new retail locations, making marketing as a service via alerts.
The take away:
These Web marketing trends will reshape your marketing efforts as more conversations, engagements and experiences are delivered via the internet. In order to stay relevant, brands must transition to become more social on the web and use mobile platforms to gain competitive advantage or risk losing opportunities to your more savvy competitors.
About the Author: Jamie MacLeod works as an Internet Marketing Consultant for WSI offering a range of online strategic marketing services. For more information go to www.wsioms.co.za or read our blog on www.blog.wsioms.co.za
by Francois Muscat | Feb 26, 2010 | Online Marketing
Internet Marketing is an essential component to increase the visibility of a website, blog or any other online profile. As with a traditional marketing campaign, a strategic Internet Marketing plan needs to exist in order to gain the best results from your website. A website is a powerful business tool and without a marketing plan, it could be a drain on your finances.
While it is perfectly okay to have a website that simply contains contact information, why settle for that when your website can do so much more? Even the smallest local business can utilize the power of the Internet to be more efficient and to build revenue with a solid Internet Marketing plan in place.
Internet Marketing is all about driving targeted traffic to your website and it can usually be split up in the following categories:
Creating a solid Website Marketing plan isn’t scary or difficult. You don’t need a marketing degree to create one, only time and dedication. Most people think that by incorporating website marketing onto their existing marketing campaigns will instantly generate more business. Usually they are wrong. If you don’t have a plan, it won’t work!
Find below a couple of tips to help you create and understand a Website Marketing Plan.
Analyze all your information
Find and analyze all the information regarding your company on the internet. This will also give you an indication on how well your company’s business profile is setup online. Also identify who your targeted customers are.
Identify your challenges
The internet is full of challenges, especially in the Website Marketing industry. Write down all of your internet related challenges that you would like to overcome. Refer to this list often as it will help you stay focused while developing your Website Marketing plan.
What is your objectives?
What do you want to accomplish with your Website Marketing plan? Do you want to increase the rate of targeted unique visitors to your website? Increase your sales and business leads? Build conversation and start relationships? Every website including your Website Marketing plan needs to have a set of objectives. If it doesn’t, why bother having a website at all?
Create strategies for you objectives
Create strategies that will support your objectives. These will usually define the approach to meet your objectives. They go hand in hand. If for example you would like to create more brand awareness via social media platforms – which social media tools and networks will you be using?
Tactics for your strategies
Define your tactics for the strategies you will be using. To take the above example if you would like to create brand awareness via social media – will you be creating targeted focused groups or join existing groups regarding your niche? Will you be helping others by contributing to the conversation? Start a conversation?
A Internet Marketing plan is absolutely vital for any business wanting to create more brand awareness and sales via their website. Treat your Website Marketing plan as a work in progress. Often you could tweak and adjust the plan to meet certain requirements.
If you are a shop owner or part of a large scale company, by having a solid Website Marketing plan and following it through will extend your visiblity online and can produce you with good results.
We have been creating Internet Marketing plans for a couple of businesses over the last few years and if you require any additional information regarding this, comment below.
by Marianna Muscat | Feb 23, 2010 | Online Marketing
Business owners oftentimes feel like they are a chicken running around without a head. They spend 24+ hours a day trying to make their business a success. In today’s tough economic climate and with the “new” consumer prototype, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to keep ahead of the game.
What can the business owner do?
First and foremost, stop and breathe or you will just be chasing your tail. There are so many options available on the Internet, too many social networking sites, forums, blog sites, groups, etc. – that as you try to stay on-top of your competition and current with your industry, you might end up forgetting what your original plan is – if you have one.
Understanding exactly who and what you are (your brand) and exactly who your potential customer is (your target market) is crucial if you want to be successful.
There are many business owners who have difficulty clearly identifying their brand and target market, but who rush onto the Internet scrambling to get involved in as much as they can in as short a time as they can. This is a big mistake.
How can you select your keywords and optimize your website if you are not clear in what you are trying to sell and who you are trying to sell to?
Businesses that sell services have even a more difficult time honing in on their exact offerings than product-oriented companies. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done – it just means it will require a little more effort. Once you have clearly identified your brand identity and your customer base, you will be heading in the right direction and will be on the right path.
Do you have a Digital Marketing plan? If you don’t, you need one. But you also have to realize that your plan is dynamic and will constantly be changing as technology changes and as you access and evaluate the effectiveness of each step.
Do you have trouble identifying your target market?
Try writing down a description of your ideal customer. Once you have created this profile, you can tailor your marketing message to this specific niche. Pretend you are your own potential customer. What would make you stop and listen to what you have to say? What would make you think you “need” your own product or service? Put yourself in their shoes and market to yourself.
A very good way to help you identify your target market is to look at your existing client base.
Analyze them to get a better idea of who they are and what they like. Do a survey with probing questions to find out more about what they like about your brand, what they don’t like about your brand and even why they chose your brand. There is no better way to characterize your potential customer than by analyzing your current customer.
A word of caution – the response rate on surveys is quite low. People don’t want to be bothered so it might be helpful to give away something small or perhaps a discount on future business – something to use as incentive for them to answer your survey.
Don’t skimp on your marketing initiatives. The Internet offers you access to a huge pool of potential customers at negligible costs. Make use of these resources but remember to stop, breathe and plan.
