Internet Marketing Facts to Help Jumpstart Your Business
New to Internet marketing? Ready to grow your business’ online empire? Before you start, you will want to go over some important Internet marketing facts that can save you time, money, and help you begin creating your marketing plan for the web.
Ask Yourself – What is the Internet for?
Easy answer… the Internet is for porn. Don’t believe me, check out this YouTube video. But in all seriousness, most people online use the medium for entertainment and free information. At the time of this blog post, Alexa and Quantcast listed the following websites as the top visited by users (excluding search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing)
- Facebook (social networking)
- YouTube (free videos)
- Wikipedia (online reference source)
- Blogger (free blogging application)
- Baidu (music search)
- MySpace (social networking)
- Twitter (social networking)
- Amazon (online retailer)
- WordPress (free blogging application)
- eBay (online auction side and retailer)
- Walmart (online and brick and mortar retailer)
Delving further down the list, one will find…
- The Huffington Post (news source)
- IGN (video game and entertainment hub)
- Examiner (news source)
- CNN (mews source)
The picture should be starting to clear – people spend most of their time looking for and sharing information, videos, and music. The rest of the time they spend buying stuff. Not a huge surprise in our free speaking consumerist society that hosts the entertainment hub of the world. You should also note that outside the retailers, people get to access all of these venues absolutely free! People love free stuff!
How Does Knowing The Dominance of Entertainment and Information Online Help My Business?
Well, unless your market fits into the free publication or entertainment sectors or you already sell your products through one of the major online retailers, it helps you very little, directly. But it does allow you to see how you might need to begin rethinking your marketing strategy to fit into these venues and indirectly get the Internet to work for you.
Your Macro Internet Marketing Plan Should Target…
Search Engines
Search engines serve as the gateway to all other websites. Getting anything significant you write or offer online into Google, Yahoo!, and Bing should be your number one priority. To do this, you will need to optimize your pages for search engine listings, find the best targeted keywords for your market, and weed out any initial competition. Fortunately, you can start your journey by reading “How to Find Your Best Keywords”.
Social Networks
A majority of people now spend their time online interacting on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and to an extent, YouTube. All of these sites offer ways for you to connect with potential clients and customers by participating or creating groups in your market, creating specific business pages for the interested to follow, and sending out informative and entertaining updates to your social connections. Before you jump into the social networking scene, please read some friendly advice on growing your connections and followers.
Free Information through Online Publications
Not everyone considers themselves to be a great writer, but you need some skills in this area. You plan to do business on the Internet after all, the INFORMATION super highway (allegedly invented by Al Gore), and most people use the medium to find tips, guides, advice, etc. Share some of your expertise, your skills, your knowledge, and later on hope that people will consider you reliable enough to someday give you a little money as well.
Do not forget, most people still use email to communicate with each other and it serves as an intermediary between social networks as well. Consider starting about a free newsletter or ezine people can subscribe to from your website or social network to receive ongoing updates and information from you. The ones that join and stay on the list will be more likely to pay for your services and products.
Think FREE!
Let freedom ring! Land of the free and home of the brave! You need to start realizing that once online, people want free stuff, otherwise they know where to go to pay for something (Amazon for instance!). Your job should be to gain credibility for your business, expand your visibility, and earn people’s trust. Once they know they can rely on you, they will be more willing to pay for your services and products. You need to soft sell, be indirect, and steer clear from spamming and marketing people’s eyeballs out. Online, people choose what to look at, what to read, what to listen to, and what to pay for. If you scare people, insult people, or market to them too hard, they will leave you in their cyber dust, or forever block you from the many online venues available.
Before you click away from my perceived insanity, remember that most of this journey will be free on your side too! Learn how to best setup your pages and keywords, to interact with people on social networks, and write a few informative pieces here and there, and internet marketing will not cost you more than time. If you do not possess the desire or hours to do it on your own, you can always find a trustworthy marketer out there to help you.
The Fork in the Road – Local or ?
Getting back to your business… you need to evaluate the online environment in your market before you really decide to gear up for internet marketing. The big question you need to ask yourself – where is your target audience? Do you offer your services and sell your products locally, say only in the Miami area? If so, your keywords and your groups need to reflect your geographic location. You need to seek out people living in your area and not waste time and money on everyone in the world.
However, if you can offer your services/products statewide, nationally, or even globally – if you can offer them to anyone who speaks English or any other language you can successfully communicate in – then you need to target a much broader audience. Before you write a single piece of copy or start doing any significant research, you must figure out whether your target audience lies on a local or bigger scale.
Does Your Business Have an Online Market?
If you use Google’s Keyword Tool with Adwords and my Keyword Guide mentioned above, you should be able to determine if people even search for your products or services. Based on the Monthly Search Volume, you may determine that you should not spend much effort on Internet marketing because a profitable online market does not exist, at least from a cost benefit standpoint. Be sure to completely exhaust your research efforts here though before you close the curtain. Remember that the future may be able to reap new rewards, so revisit your potential at another date. With an almost non-existent market, you may want to only focus on social networking to gain more visibility and at least give current customers and clients a place to go so you can upkeep your retention.
You might also discover that hundreds or thousands of other businesses already compete to gain the attention of your potential clients. You being the newcomer must fight your way closer to the top to be successful. This could signal creating a multiple year strategy to really build up your social networks, your inbound links, and your online presence before you can expect to gain any serious online sales.
Even if your online market appears ripe for the picking, you will need a solid one-year plan before you can realistically expect positive results.
No matter what, do not hesitate to establish some business presence online, even if that just means submitting your information to online Yellow Pages, Yahoo! Local, or City Search. Even if you just create a Facebook page or setup a single webpage with some basic information about your business and services. 74% of people search for businesses online and you want to be sure they can find yours.
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