Organizations big and small compete on a level playing field on the Internet.

Calendar April 17, 2010 | Posted by jeannembrown

As an Internet Marketing Consultant working with businesses and nonprofits for several years, I am very enthused about the current Inbound Marketing opportunities that the Internet has created.

Organizations big and small compete on a level playing field on the Internet.

Small, nimble organizations can develop and post content to the Internet in a timely manner, while larger organizations must wait for committee or management approval. When the market shifts, the small business has a better chance of seizing the opportunity.

 The Internet can help small businesses and nonprofits provide brand awareness, boost sales, and improve bottom lines.

  • Organizations should start by strategically determining campaign goals and  objectives.
  • The next step is identifying target markets and finally
  • creating a budget, calendar and deliverables to carry out the campaign.

Search engine optimization SEO, blogging and other social media tools like Twitter and LinkedIn will make your web site appear for your customers when they use a search engine to find the product or service you provide.

 SEO is accomplished by identifying keywords or  search terms and by writing relevant content for blogs, social media and websites that hinges on those keywords for that specific business. This relevant content can also take the forms of advertorials, blogs, media releases, online brochures, newsletters, white papers, and more.

 If you want to improve your organization’s, brand awareness, boost your sales, and improve your bottom line,  follow these three steps.

  • Get found via inbound marketing. 
  • Once you are found, convert those searchers to customers.
  • Finally, analyze your Internet marketing on a regular basis

The best way to get found is to have a presence on the Internet through publishing  news releases through a free service, by publishing articles (they are also free services for this) and by blogging. In just minutes a day your postings with your industry’s key words can get you noticed. You’ll also learn what consumers think about your industry and how to tailor your product to meet the consumer’s expectations.

 While you are building an Internet presence, you should be optimizing your website and creating landing pages, business reply forms and/or online shopping carts if applicable. You want to make customers out of your visitors.

Internet Marketing Consultants also called Search Engine Marketers can assist you these three steps.       Just remember you want to:

  • get found via inbound marketing
  • covert searchers to customers and
  • regularly analyse your results

There has never been a better time or place for small businesses to profit than on the Internet Today!

 jeanne@oakcreekmaketplace.com

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Blogging is Vital to Internet and Inbound Marketing for Small Businesses

Calendar April 15, 2010 | Posted by jeannembrown

The State of Inbound Marketing, a report by http://www.hubspot.com/recently revealed the following about Internet marketing or specifically inbound marketing as it is more commonly being called today:

#1 Utilizing keyword strategy and appearing for customers on the Internet when they search (go inbound) offers much better results than the traditional outbound marketing strategies we all grew up with that seek to interrupt the consumer with commercials and other types of media  sales messages.
#2 Blogs lead all other social media categories as an inbound marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. Blogs are frequently cited as the most useful type of social media marketing, far outpacing advertising, with 75% of those familiar with their business’ blogging efforts saying they are ‘useful,’ ‘important,’ or ‘critical’ to their business.
#3  Inbound marketing delivers a dramatically lower cost-per-sales lead than other kinds of advertising and marketing because it utilizes key word search strategies that buyers already looking for a particular product or service.                                                                             Respondents that spent more than 50% of their marketing budget on inbound marketing consistently reported a lower cost-per-sales lead than those that spent 50% or more on outbound marketing. In fact, Internet or inbound marketing-dominated organizations experience a 61% lower cost-per-lead than outbound or traditional marketing-dominated organizations.
Businesses are responding by allocating a greater portion of their budget to Internet/inbound marketing which include search engine optimization techniques. Currently, 37% of business’ lead-generation budget is dedicated to inbound marketing, whereas 30% is dedicated to outbound marketing efforts. Hubspot expects this gap to widen significantly over time.
#4 Small businesses are most aggressively allocating lead generation budgets to blogging, social media and search engine optimization.
Realizing that inbound marketing techniques ‘level the playing field’ with the bigger budgets of larger competitors, small businesses are spending a 180% greater portion of their budgets on blogging/social media and 36% greater portion of their budgets on search engine optimization than businesses with 50 employees or more.
If you need help setting up a blog or researching blog content that is relevant for your customers as a part of your Internet Marketing strategy,  contact us at Oakcreek Marketplace Web Design and Internet Marketing.

Posted by jeanne@oakcreekmarketplace.com

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