Internet Marketing Strategy

Home » Internet Marketing Strategy

Internet Marketing Strategy for Small Business

Given the wide-scale accessibility of the Internet, small businesses can quickly and cost effectively reach out to targeted prospects like never before. Internet marketing solutions abound for small business; the key is developing a successful small business internet marketing strategy.

Internet Marketing Strategy Elements

Follow these steps to develop and execute your small business internet marketing strategy:

Determine your Target Market

First determine your target. Very specifically, and write it down. Once you start to really define your target, you may find it’s narrower than you originally thought. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Once your target market is defined, it’s is time to move on to the next phase of small business internet marketing strategy – keyword selection and assessment.

Identify the Keywords your Prospects are Searching

This is an important stage of developing your small business internet marketing strategy. At Marketing Practicality, we prefer to go through a keyword discovery process, researching and identifying a large pool of potential keywords. Then we refine this list and analyze the potential keywords based on relevance, competition and search volume.

Determine your Internet Marketing Budget

Whether you use outside resources or not, your budget will determine the extent and time frame for the implementation of your small business internet marketing strategy. Once your budget is determined you’ll want to consider how much will be dedicated to various elements of your internet strategy implementation, such as website design and development, online marketing such as Google AdWords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Internet Marketing Strategy Tactics

The following are tactics you should consider in developing your small business internet marketing strategy :

Website Design and Development

An effective small business internet marketing strategy is designed to do several things, but it all starts with generating qualified traffic to your website. Before you begin generating traffic, give some consideration to your website. Ideally, you will incorporate search engine optimization into the design of your website. Primarily, your website should be designed for the user. Make it easy to navigate and give it a personality that conveys your company’s brand and image. Think about what you want visitors to do once they get to your site and hire a good designer to implement your vision.

Generating Website Traffic – Google AdWords

At this point you’ve defined your target market and keywords; your website is user-friendly, highly functional and conveys your brand image; your budget is defined; now you need traffic. An effective small business internet marketing strategy can do this in a number of ways but here are some proven methods.

Google AdWords and other pay-per-click marketing channels can be profitable players in your small business internet marketing strategy. Google AdWords offers the added bonus of instant traffic – which comes at a price. However, if your Google AdWords campaign is properly managed, highly targeted and uses some advanced techniques, it can yield a very positive marketing ROI – especially if you are in a niche or less competitive field.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO

While Google AdWords provides instant gratification; Search Engine Optimization typically does not. While SEO is a more involved part of your small business internet marketing strategy, it is a crucial one. If done well, it provides long term marketing presence, residual revenue and a very high marketing ROI.

I recommend you incorporate Search Engine Optimization as part of your small business internet marketing strategy, but keep in mind, it can be a long process, it involves many factors (there are on page SEO and off page SEO elements), but the long term rewards present the highest upside.

Track, Test, Evaluate and Refine your Internet Marketing Strategy

Once you have implemented your small business internet marketing strategy your work is not done. It’s important to track your results, test different elements and evaluate your performance. Most importantly, don’t give up just because you didn’t hit a home run on the first swing. Evaluate what’s working, eliminate what isn’t and refine your internet marketing strategy. There are many internet marketing solutions out there for small business. Identify which ones work for your small business, take advantage of them and stay on top of it – because this is a dynamic, not static medium. Be prepared to change and adapt your small business internet marketing strategy.

Contact Marketing Practicality to develop and implement your successful small business internet marketing strategy.