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Once you open a web store for customers to see your small but growing line of products or services, you need web marketing. Actually, before that you do, because web marketing attracts customers, engages them, and creates sales for your business.

Really, that’s why web marketing is so powerful for small to mid-sized companies. You attract customers via your site, social media, and online advertising campaigns. You engage them with press releases, new posts on Facebook, and selling services or products they need. Then, when they do decide they want your product, you make the transaction easy and ask for second purchase.

Small business marketing, therefore, works quite well online. There are advantages beyond just monetary benefits too. Let’s go over them.

Response Times for Small Business Clients
Send out a few thousand emails and you’ll immediately see the advantage of email marketing over direct mail marketing. You can get responses in seconds for a fraction of the cost. Post an ad in a major online magazine and do the same in a regular newspaper in your niche. Post a new video on YouTube and then try a late night TV ad.

Quite simply, you get faster response time, you earn more in less time, and there is no more waiting by the phone. Clients can come to you 24/7.

Customer Interaction for Your Small Business Marketing Plan
With social media marketing, you now have the ultimate in customer interaction. You can get them involved, ask opinions, get feedback, offer special sales only for your Facebook readers, or Tweet on how you’re running out of your bestseller which is on sale.

With 350 million potential customers on Facebook, marketing and  customer interaction is going to new levels.

Traditional Marketing and Web Marketing Both Help Small Businesses
All this said, web marketing and traditional marketing go hand in hand. You can do both successfully. While in many ways web marketing is superior for small businesses on tight budgets, you do often find different audiences online. And some products are just natural sellers in traditional marketing. Web and traditional marketing combined can do wonders for small businesses and startups.

Opportunities – The Global Marketplace for Small Businesses
The last big perk of web marketing is how small the world really is. You can say “hi” to a customer across the world on Facebook, network with professionals in your field anywhere with LinkedIn, bid on the top keywords on Google’s AdWords, post press releases about new products across dozens of sites, and much more.

That’s the web marketing advantage. But don’t forget it’s fun too.

It’s likely that you have heard of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and might even possibly be an accredited business.  But what does being an “Accredited Business” of the Better Business Bureau really mean?

#1 Branding- Businesses and consumers trust other businesses that have good ratings with the BBB.  The mere act of showing your BBB Accreditation tells other individuals that your company has high ethical standards and Integrity.

#2 Business Resources- the Minnesota BBB offers several luncheons and seminars throughout the year that businesses can attend for a nominal “BBB Member” fee.  Which are typically hosted by well recognized experts in the field and Minnesota’s business community.

#3 Paper and Electronic Advertising- the BBB of Minnesota now offers a new paper and electronic publication entitled the BBB SmartSource that has circulation to over 700,000 households in the state of Minnesota and North Dakota.  In addition, they offer a free ND & MN Business Directory for consumers and businesses so that they can easily locate other BBB accredited businesses.

For more information about how the Better Business Bureau can help your business, check out the below video (produced by TMA E-Marketing) or visit http://www.thefirstbbb.org.

In the good old days, buying advertising was as simple as calling a media buyer to find out how much inventory was available.  Advertising could be purchased by length and frequency where simple pricing rates could apply.

In the online realm, a creative executive soon finds that the model is not only dissimilar, but it’s nearly non-existent.  This especially becomes apparent when considering the world of search engine optimization and social media.  Do these questions sound familiar?

How much does it cost to get my site ranked #1 on the top of Google?
Can you get my company into facebook, twitter, etc.?

If you have been asked these questions in the past, you likely go into “repeat mode” where a 10,000 ft. education overview is required to explain your consulting rates.  And even if you are lucky to have a prospect that is willing to hear your entire pitch, the whole thought of having to wait for results is not the advertising norm and will typically spawn a negative reaction…even among seasoned executives.  For those that find themselves in this situation, I suggest you may want to view social media and search engine optimization like strength training.

1.    It may look like a big job- no one said that it was going to be easy.  In contrast to purchasing advertising, disciplines like search engine optimization and social marketing take time to grow and harvest.  Everyone would love to have instantaneous results, but this is not realistic

2.    It takes continual practice- to be successful with most online media, you’ll need to continually try new things and perfect others.  No one has a magic formula for success.  If it were an exact science, it wouldn’t be marketing.

3.    Frequency is key- just like building muscles, you need to continually develop your online presence, grow your social footprint, talk to industry professionals, and keep reading.

4.    Think holistically vs. too narrow- too much of anything is typically not a good thing.  Like strength training, focusing globally is better than just doing one thing.  In addition, taking time to rest certain areas will allow you to rejuvenate and worth those areas from a new perspective.

5.    If you let things sit, they lose strength- if you’re serious about managing a certain channel, you can’t “get it to a point” and decide to drop off without incurring some consequences.  This isn’t to say that you can’t pick it back up, but as a general rule of thumb, continual maintenance is needed to keep things at status quo.

The idea that marketing promotion takes time to build strength is not a totally new idea.  The fact of the matter is that most advertising channels do not translate into instant success by merely using them.  Every advertising medium needs time to work their magic, measure results, and tweak.  Social media and search engine optimization should be treated no differently other than it will typically take more initial invested man-hours to build momentum.  Everyone wants to see results overnight, but in many cases is not possible given the medium’s characteristics.  An experienced online consultant should be able to set realistic expectations and milestones that are required to achieve your business objective.  Advice your prospects to be patient and build strength, the results are just around the corner.

I have been searching online since 1999.  The search world is an amazing realm that has capabilities no other media available can compete with and is geared toward both businesses and consumers in the same capacity.

Imagine a world with out internet.  All businesses and consumers would have is the phone book and push ads such as; radio and TV.  We would have to manually find phone numbers when we are hungry for take-out and mail letters through the post office.  Businesses would be throwing more money into direct mail and TV with no track-able ROI.  Although the Internet has been around for only a short time it has been integrated into everyone’s lives and is now a normal daily ritual for almost all of us.  The vast amount of information that we all have at our finger tips has benefited the masses as a whole.

Business and the Internets

Marketing and ad efforts via the Internet have been growing exponentially in the past 5 or so years and there is no sign of stopping.  A business website is the first step in becoming current with the times.  The second step is search engine optimization which will allow Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others to list your site in the engines. The third and final step is creating links to your site.  Link building shows the search engines how relevant you are and therefore will raise your listing higher on the page.

If you implement the three above steps you are on your way to a happy online life!

My professional background is 25 years of broadcast sales and marketing, not IT.  As a recent 3-year-old internet sales/marketing professional, I want to share some observations about selling the internet as a source of revenue or to address public relations challenges versus traditional media.

Traditional Media
The internet or the company website can be included under the umbrella of the traditional media in the context that it shares the same goal of improving revenue and communicating with current and new customers.

Many business and industries owned or managed by human beings are familiar with the technology and terminology associated with television, radio and print campaigns.  We all know what a tv/radio set is, we all know what a newspaper is.  We are familiar :10, :30: or :60 second commercials and can maybe even ballpark their cost.  We know commercials need to be produced.  With print we know about print size, placement, etc.  We are familiar with the importance of “targeting” a demographic.  We don’t understand the technology behind implementing the above media but we use it because we know it “works”.  (After 25 years of selling broadcast media, I still don’t know how it worked. I just know that it did because my customers were happy about the results = $.)

The Internet
Now throw in this thing called the internet, a new technology and new terminology.  On top of this is the challenge of learning how to use it as a source of revenue.  A common response I get when I first walk into the front door of a company and inquiry about internet marketing opportunities is, “Talk to our IT department”.   If I were to walk in to discuss tv or radio advertising I would be directed to the marketing department.  I have run into very few IT persons who have sales or marketing experience.

An analogy – A car dealership

Sales and marketing professionals do not fix or repair cars and the service department (IT department) does not sell or market the cars, but both are needed with one goal: keep and maintain happy, satisfied customers so that each gets paid.

The point of this maybe self evident by now… It is not necessary to totally understand the technology and terminology before a internet campaign can be implemented.  It is however, important to acknowledge it as a powerful sales and marketing tool (just as tv, radio and print are) to talk to new and current customers, to increase revenue or address public relations challenges.  Finding a person in the internet industry that you trust… now that is another topic.