23 Ways to Market Your Business Online

By Felicity Walker

Published by Felicity Walker at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Felicity Walker

This book is available in print at most online retailers

Smashword Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

To my two amazing children, Bjorn and Miranda. Life just wouldn’t be the same without them!

Thanks also to all the internet “gurus” who share their knowledge in all sorts of ways – I’ve learnt so much from all of you.

Introduction

As a business owner, particularly as the owner of a smaller, local business, it’s very easy to think that all that online nonsense really has nothing to do with you.

But the reality is that in the last 10 years or so, the internet has gone from being something of a techie fad to an indispensable part of most people’s lives. Do you want to know something? Search online. Do you want to find a local business? Search online.

Add the explosive growth of Smartphones like the iPhone and Androids, and now people don’t even need to be in front of their computer to search for information – they can be anywhere. The trend of searching online for information is only going to grow more rapidly.

What all of this means for local business is that if you’re not visible to both your existing and potential customers in the places they’re searching for information about you, you’re in big trouble. They’re going to find your competition online instead. And you’ll get left behind.

In this book, we're going to look at some important things you need to be aware of when marketing on the web. As well, we’ll check out some of the ways to reach new customers, as well as get your existing customers to spend more money with you - and do it more often!

Chapter 1 - Why Internet Marketing?

Recent Google statistics show that 20 percent of all searches are related to location. In April 2011, comScore shows that Google served up 10.7 billion searches. It’s easy enough to work out that around 2.14 billion searches were related to location. In other words, people searching for local information.

The trend to searching online is growing steadily. Going back two years, to April 2008, Google served up 6.5 billion searches. So that means around 1.3 billion local searches.

It’s easy to see that each year, more and more people are searching online to find local information and businesses. And that includes local businesses like yours.

This move to online searching has inevitably sparked a rapid demise in the popularity of the Yellow Pages. In the past, the Yellow Pages was always the first place people looked when they wanted to find a local business. So if you weren’t in the Yellow Pages, your potential customers couldn’t find you.

Nowadays, it’s more likely that a potential customer’s Yellow Pages is in pristine condition, never having been touched. Unless it’s being used to prop open a door…

One of the big reasons for this transition is that customers can find more on the internet than just a business name, address and phone number. They can also find reviews from previous customers, information about other competing businesses and a whole lot more.

In some ways, though, the Yellow Pages scenario of the past still holds true today. Except now, it’s not a case of being in the Yellow Pages or your potential customers won’t find you, but that you need to be highly visible online.

The Yellow Pages Dilemma

Of course the companies providing resources like the Yellow Pages saw the trends, and took steps to ensure their continued survival. They established online versions of their directories.

While it sounds like a good idea in theory, the reality is that the directories may be online, but they’re still basically a replica of the printed version. Your ad gets placed in the appropriate business category, and the assumption is that people will go to that category and search for local businesses.

The problem is, the online directories don’t get a lot of traffic. People are a lot more likely to search Google, Bing or Yahoo than go to the trouble of finding a directory site and entering their local business search terms.

At first that might seem like a bad thing, but it’s actually a good thing for local businesses, for 3 reasons.

Instead of being stuck with the old style restrictions of the Yellow Pages, you now have the flexibility to present your business information in whatever way you choose. You can make it as appealing as possible to potential customers.

You don’t have to pay to be in the Yellow Pages any more, so you save money. This is particularly important for businesses that took out larger, graphic ads in order to stand out.

You have control over the appearance of your online material, and so can change it whenever you want to. You don’t have to wait for the next annual edition of the Yellow Pages to alter something.

As if those three reasons weren’t enough, the internet allows you to reach a much wider audience. So if you do it right, you can potentially reach people who might never have found you before. The Yellow Pages is only distributed to households with a landline phone, and then people have to actually pull it out and use it.

Statistics suggest that in 2010, in the USA, almost a quarter of all adults (24.9%) live in households that only have a wireless phone. They haven’t bothered getting a landline. Which means all those people don’t even get a Yellow Pages directory. Instead they search online.

This trend is likely to grow, as around 29% of children live in households without a landline phone. So as far as they’re concerned, who needs one? When they grow up and move out of home, chances are they won’t bother connecting a landline either.

Connecting With Your Customers

One of the reasons many local businesses still don’t have an online presence is because they don’t know where to start. That’s hardly surprising, as there are plenty of ways to connect with your customers effectively online, and the landscape changes regularly.

Initially it may be best to start with one method, and gradually build up your online presence over time. If you’re doing it yourself, that’s probably your only option!

However it’s true to say that the more options you take advantage of, the better your results will be. You can’t sit back and hope that somehow your customers will find you – you need to actively build a presence and be found when they’re searching for you. You also need to be found more easily than your competitors!

I’ve already talked a lot about online searching, so it’s obvious that the most important place to establish your online presence is in the search engines. Specifically, in Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Google is definitely the largest (roughly 65% of searches in April 2011, according to comScore), so it makes sense to focus your efforts on securing a high position in their search results. Chances are, if you’re doing everything right to perform well in Google, you’ll also perform well in the other search engines too.

Google’s search engine is definitely not carved in stone – they regularly tinker with the search results in their efforts to provide the best search experience for their users. So one week it might be having a strong presence in Google Places that will lift you to the top, another it might be having a video that matches the search results.

At present, these are the main aspects to having a strong Google presence: