| In the internet age, having an online marketing campaign should be one of your top priorities. That?s a broad, sweeping statement, but it?s a broad sweeping truth. I don?t care if you?re a Fortune 500 company or the owner of auto shop in Podunk, Wisconsin, you need to be online, and you need to have an online marketing campaign.
The days when you could get by without having an internet presence might not be dead, but they?re definitely circling the drain. Virtually everyone has a cell phone these days, what we still refer to as a cell phone is really a mobile connection to the internet. People are constantly connected, and people are constantly using this connection to find the place and things they want to find.
If you don?t have an online marketing campaign in place, you are not going to be there to find. If you aren?t there to find, you are going to watch your business eventually dry and blow away. You need to be online, and you need be online with a strategy in place. I?m going to show you how to create a simple, effective and inexpensive online marketing campaign.
The very first step is to make sure that you have a nice, professional looking website. You?d be shocked at how many businesses pay good money to put cheap looking websites on line. Good, attractive design is important, and it won?t cost you extra. It should also be consistent with the look of your business in general, including stationery and business cards.
The next step is to make sure that your website is search engine optimized. This is a big subject, but the basic idea is make sure that your site makes it as easy as possible for the search engines to put you at the beginning of their results for the keywords that your customers will be using. You can have a beautiful website and an excellent business, but without search engine optimization, you won?t get anywhere.
The next step in a good online marketing campaign is to make sure your website is capturing potential customer?s email addresses. You?ll need to set up an autoresponder service to make use of this, but they?re cheap and easy to use. Just make sure you offer your customers some reason to give their email addresses. It may not be using money, but it is still a transaction, and you need to give good value.
This allows you to interact with customers and give them multiple chances to buy from you, in addition to keeping your business in their minds. The next time they want what you offer, you?re going to be the first person they think.
Once you have all that in place, you can experiment with using online advertising. There are lots of ways to this, from banner advertising, which is generally ineffective, to sponsoring a blog or website, which can be expensive, to pay per click, which is usually the best place to start. Pay per click puts a small ad related to whatever a person searching for next to their search engine results. You see this every time you use Google. You can use this to get visitors to your site, and if you have followed the above steps, turning them into customers.
There you go; you should be well on your way to you first online marketing campaign. These techniques are simple, but they can explode your business and put money in your pocket. Don?t wait to get started, because your competition might already be working on it. |