7 Ways To Market Your Business Online

If your business budget has no provisions for traditional advertising, online business marketing is your cost-efficient alternative.

Online marketing is the process of using the power of internet marketing to reach a target audience. The real advantage of online marketing is its being able to quickly promote your business/company. Remember that your ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your listings and services, and to develop relationships that mostly result to face-to-face contact. To do this, you would have to use of a number of ways to get your name and brand out to the most number of possible clients. Some of these are:

A WEBSITE
Let's be honest... unless you are living under a rock for the past two decades, not having a website for you business is equivalent to not having telephone - you are not accessible to your market. The website is your online door into your business. It allows interaction also with your audience.

Through a website, your potential clients can discover the personalities behind the monitor. This is when your reputation becomes premium. Somehow, a customer is assured of good service if the business owner has the confidence to let the viewer see the kind of person that runs the company.

Websites can allow the visitor access into your products. You can describe in detail what type of service you offer, indicate if your product or service is appropriate for the requirements or needs of the viewer. If for example, you sell cosmetics, it is possible to state the ingredients of each product so as to avoid incidences of allergies or severe skin reactions, prior to purchase.

In cases where customers want to visit a physical/actual store, the website can also provide details of how to get to the location.

There are a number of things you must remember though when you put up your own company website.

Is it simple, yet creative? Or does your own homepage turn off your initial visitors? Having a clear, clean and user-friendly site is equivalent to having a neat and orderly physical office, with friendly staff to welcome them.

Does it answer all expected questions from visitors. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the viewer. If you were an outsider looking in, are you compelled to stay, or forced to leave? Remember that you only have 10 seconds to convince a "clicker" to linger in your own world. He is your captive...make sure he stays.

Does your homepage have an option to find exactly what the visitor is looking for? Or do you crowd it with all sorts of visual design that your actual message gets lost in translation? Get rid of anything that shouldn't be on it. You wouldn't face your houseguests in a skindiving suit, would you?

Make sure it is easy to navigate. Have a search field present, because there is nothing more irritating than trying so hard to find something but being forced to click on too many buttons to get what you want. Also include a "contact us" button.

Make sure your site ranks high in the search engine pages. Include keywords and terms in the code, enabling it to appear higher in page number on Google (a search engine).

Don't make it too complicated or don't waste your efforts on pimping up your site. Be more concerned about content and its relevance. The best guideline is always to try to look at it as though you were the searcher, and not the site owner..

START A BLOG
A blog enables the writer to relay his thoughts and feelings, including his expert opinion about any topic. It's a chance to sell your business without worrying too much about column-centimeter costs (of newspapers). You are able to write freely, share personal experiences, and impart knowledge without too much judgment.

A blog is generally informal in form - unless it is an informative blog, and you are speaking to a group of middle-aged professionals, where the blog now becomes a source of information and guideline on how to go about interesting topics.

To have an effective blog, you must have good and interesting content. Articles must not only be well-written, they must be well researched, too. An effective business blog imparts solid facts, and not mere opinions. Well, there are other so-called blogs which are just mere online journals/diaries of teenagers and other angst-ridden people, but an effective business blog must:

Use keywords that relate to your business, community and products. They must be auxiliary doorways into your business. Actually, there are a number of websites that have blogs imbedded. It's the site owner's way of relating to the target market using plain and easy to understand and appreciate words and tone.

Include links to your resources, sites and other points of interest, just in case your viewer needs more information. Include a photo to make the blog post more enticing.

Include widgets that allow email sign-up, to encourage viewers to come back. This also allows you the opportunity to send emails into their private accounts, just to remind them to come back for a "visit."

USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS
When media expert said suggested that you use online marketing when your advertising budget is almost inexistent, they must have the Social media networks in mind. There are a number of forms of social media, the more popular of which is
Facebook, and Twitter. These two popular forms are interlinked...meaning, when you post something on Twitter, a truncated version of it appears on Facebook.

Facebook allows a person to post a complete profile - a photo or more of the page owner, general area of residence and employment, civil status, religion, as well as interests and hobbies. Here, you are able to share bits of thought, post pictures and videos with other friends, as well as establish contact with people from the past and present. You are able to meet new people, and share ideas by chatting online. It's as though you are talking face to face despite the constraints of time zones and distance.

Facebook has since expanded from a mere personal social network into a possible business venue - through the development of the Facebook business page. Now, all the conveniences of a personal facebook page is offered to the business owner who is interested in expanding his network.

The Facebook Business page allows the page owner to have a downscaled version of his website, plus the added benefits or searchability. All you need to know is the name of a company, type it into the search box, and voila, you are brought into an easy-to-access world of the business owner. The business facebook page may also contain a blog (with an additional fee), but design and maintenance is kept at a bare minimum.

Probably the best benefit of a Facebook Business page is the ability of the visitor to converse with the actual business owner. This way, the owner can get feedback about his products and services asap, plus he can also address all problems instantly.

All queries are answered in real time. A business owner may also make announcement about his new or discontinued or improved products and services. He can also ask his customers what they really want.

The page owner can focus on his target market, and not have to worry that he is relaying his message to the wrong group. It is possible to also include links t the company website and blog, plus links to yet another type online marketing tool :

YouTube OR ONLINE VIDEO MARKETING
YouTube is a site where both individuals or businesses can market themselves. The main tool is video, which gets rid of the inconvenience of explaining word for word that is used in blogging, Facebooking, or maintaining a website. This is the platform used by most people who want to learn about something in the quickest time possible. While it may take the average visitor 15 minutes to research thru the internet/website, a video can explain in about 2.

Since video is engaging - given that there are both visuals, background music or sound effect and vocals, the message is much easier to relay. The information is also absorbed by the brain easier. Studies show that the marriage of the senses that video brings makes it the most effective form of media.

Marketing your business through YouTube or by posting informational videos in various internet sites is just like watching a television commercial - with the additional benefit or viewing and re-viewing for as long as you want.

ONLINE MARKETING AND AUCTION SITES
There are quite a number of fast-growing websites which solely do what they aim to do - sell. These are sites visitors can enter and purchase anything they want in the convenience of their homes. Nowadays when people are busy with their personal lives and cannot be bothered by traffic and huge crowds of people, buying sites are heaven-sent. You no longer get tires, because you can just sit infront of the computer and click away with anything that catches your fancy. Buyers can pay with their credit cards, and have them shipped directly to their doorstep.

An example of an online marketing site is eBay, where customers bid and clamor to win an item - no matter what condition it is in, or no matter how queer the item may be. Sellers can now get rid of their "junk" - for as long as someone in the virtual world sees some use for it.

GROUP BUYING SITES
Another recent development in the online marketing scene are group-buying sites, which are websites that serve as platforms for retailers to sell their products at a huge discount to the buyer, if and when a certain required number of customers purchase the daily deals. This tactic quickly caught on with the public, since everyone wants a good bargain. Anybody who sees something interesting are forced into thinking that they "need" a product - even if they don't.

There is an element of excitement and urgency, because deals expire within a few hours... and after buying the item, there is also an expiration date as to the claiming of the product. Since you pay in advance, the seller is already assured of multiple sales (since you need to pay as soon as you click on "buy"). So whether the item is picked up of claimed from the retailer - it is already paid.

Group buying is a great online marketing tool. It gets merchandise sold. It may not be for the price the seller was hoping for, but it does gets it sold.

EMAIL CAMPAIGN MARKETING AND GOOGLE TOOLS
Electronic mail or email is a virtual version of the traditional air mail or snail mail. There are a number of business owners who send out business-related emails to random people and email addresses (which they probably bought from a company selling its database of contacts, like a phone company that is folding up, or a bank), promoting their products and services.

Although an email is a great way o inform people of who you are and what you do, sending too much unwanted email to non-contacts would qualify most as spammers - or individuals flooding the internet with impersonal and generic mail. Internet tools can be purchased to distinguish spam from legitimate letters, and thus get rid of the information way before it even reaches its intended audience.

Google tools, on the other hand, are virtual tools a business owner can use to make his company more visible in the virtual scene. Search engine optimization is a key tool that gets your website on top of the search list - therefore increasing your possible number of visitors to your site.

Other Google tools are: Google Profile - which helps get links into all your related sites, blogs and social networks; Google Reader - which can be used by people to stay abreast of company and industry news, innovations and other members of the community; and Google Alert which alerts on yourself, you company, your competition, and your community