The Basic Six of Online Marketing

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Sherese Duncan
Sherese Duncan
As small business owners, we have many options for communicating with our prospective customers. The Internet has become the primary medium for reaching potential clients anywhere across the globe. Online marketing is the use of the Internet to advertise and sell goods and services. Below are Six Basic areas of Online Marketing to start with. As you become more familiar with your business and the Internet your options will grow:

  1. Search engine marketing (SEM), is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of your web site in a search engine results pages. For instance, if you go to google.com and do a search, based on key words used in your business, SEM will determine whether you’re on the first page you see or the tenth page you see. The two most popular methods for new businesses using SEM are:

    Search Engine Optimization: Creating a web site that makes use of relevant keywords according to what your target market would search on; as a result your web site can be easily read and understood by search engines.

    Search Engine Advertising (Pay Per Click): In order to get a higher ranking as someone searches for your key words, you can pay the search engine company for a guaranteed high ranking or an ad displayed aside the results. This is called pay per click.

    All businesses should get their site optimized with key words. The pay per click option will be based on your budget.

  2. Banner, Thumbnail, or Text Advertising: This form of online advertising involves putting a graphic (banner/thumbnail) or a text ad on other targeted web sites. It is intended to drive traffic to your web site by making the graphic or a portion of the text ad a link back to your web site or a specific page. You can do this type of advertising in two ways:

    a. Ad swap - this is a way of acquiring free advertising by finding a business colleague that targets the same market as you do but your solution is completely different.

    b. Purchase an Ad - there are many sites where you can pay to place your online ad on their web site. For example, if your target market subscribes to the online version of a particular publication, then that publication has online ad rates to place your advertisement on their site.

  3. E-mail marketing: This form of online marketing uses email as a means of communicating marketing messages to your target market. Some options of Email marketing may include:

    a. Sending an email blast (sending emails to a group of targeted prospects or customers) to promote a new product.

    b. Sending an email blast on a monthly basis to prospects letting them know about new services or products.

    c. Sending an email blast to the attendees of your last speaking engagement encouraging them to go to your web site, purchase a product you promoted at the event, or just thanking them for attending.

    Email marketing can be used in multiple ways but you never want to send unsolicited email. Make sure that those on your distribution list want to be there; this list may be different than those that signed up for your electronic newsletter.

  4. Blog Marketing: Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is an online journal that is a web page made up of short, frequently updated comments that are arranged chronologically. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly - from links and commentary about your web sites, to news about your company/business views/ideas, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, etc.

    Some entrepreneurs use blogs to give their business personality and character by commenting on how they view business and in turn providing links back to their products and services. Others use it to personalize their business so that their clients get a feel for who they are and in turn will comment on their comments and the relationship begins.