The Basic Six of Online Marketing

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 youre on the first page you see or the tenth page you see. The two most popular methods for new businesses using SEM are:

a. 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.

b. 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 greatlyfrom 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.

5. Article Marketing: This is a great tool for promoting the credibility of your business information. The idea is that you write articles and post them to article database sites to increase your exposure by having your content reproduced around the Internet. Effici uses two main article databases, but the main one is Ezine Articles. You can visit our authors page on ezinearticles.com by going to: www.ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sherese_Johnson

This is how it works, the article database markets Free content for web sites and electronic newsletters. So those entrepreneurs like yourself who are struggling to keep a regular email newsletter going, reprinting articles (like mine) can be a fantastic way to reduce your workload. You can also use these articles to populate a blog, website or any publication as long as you follow the reproduction rules. As of my last review, my latest article has been re-published on at least ten different publications which is what I want.

The catch with article marketing: You have to write articles to do this form of marketing. On the other hand, you can check out the resource listed and get content-rich articles for your publications.

6. Affiliate Marketing: This is a popular method of promoting your business in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or paying customer that the affiliate brings to your business. The most common affiliate activity is providing a commission of a certain percentage for someone promoting your affiliate program with a link that you provide; once this link is clicked by their visitors and they purchase something from your web site, you pay them (referrer) a designated commission for doing so.

Effici has recently set up our affiliate program which pays between 15 % and 20% for referrals. You can view our program to help you get a grasp on how it works by going here: http://www.efficio.biz/affiliates.htm

Our affiliate program was an added feature of our shopping cart service, which is normally the case. The great thing about affiliate marketing is that it is monetarily beneficial to both parties and the reward is instant. Normally there is no fee to become an affiliate and your shopping cart or web hosting service provides all the tools you need within their service.

Keep in mind that any form of marketing takes time and its important to have many streams of marketing established. The basic six is a good place to start. Your web site traffic will keep coming because you have lots of little streams pouring in from many different sources including your offline activities. Unless you do some major publicity work, or have big budgets, using a combination of the basic six over time is one of the best ways to build the foundation for your online marketing campaigns. You may not reach the cash cow at lightening speed, but it will happen.

2006 Effici, inc.

Sherese Duncan, is the Lady of Profitable Ideas. Get her FREE Award Winning bi-weekly eZine, The Street Perspective. Its for small biz owners who want straight to the point simple strategies to increase profits and increase cash flows. Sign up for your free business strategies at http://www.thestreetperspective.com