Internet Marketing for Small Businesses and Online Promotion for Local Businesses

Small Business Internet Marketing Local Online Business Promotion How to start small business internet marketing and online local business promotion is a question many small and medium sized businesses are concerned about as more and more consumers turn to Yellow Pages and other forms of traditional print media are disregarding and moving online to find what they are looking for.

The internet is dramatically changing the way we do business and all big companies are dominating online advertising, so small and medium sized businesses are in dire need of an internet advertising solution to connect and interact with local consumers, going online in record numbers.

Many businesses that have created an online presence for themselves quickly realize that a nice-looking website doesn’t equate to being found among the millions of websites on the web. Add to this the cost of dealing with designers and developers, and many companies have no hope of competing in today’s internet-savvy communities.

An effective way is to use some of the many article and press release directories available online to announce your arrival in the online community. Concise informative information is key here. It’s not about flogging your store products, it’s about providing solutions to consumer problems.

Think about what solution your product or service can provide and write an article about it, not about your product but about the solution it can provide. Store the product details for the author’s resource field.

Another way that small and medium-sized businesses want to compete is through pay-per-click (PPC) programs like Google Adwords. Unfortunately, most of the targeted keywords and search terms are highly competitive and are generally cornered by large companies with large advertising budgets. And to add fuel to the fire, there are now real concerns about click fraud.

Is Click Fraud and PPC Ads a Problem?

According to Click Forensics, the industry average click fraud rate was 17.1% in Q4 2008, up from 16.0% in Q3 2008. The problem, which is not new, is that companies are paid based on frequency Users click online ads. Scammers develop computer programs that simulate user clicks to increase traffic and artificially inflate revenue. -Source: Peak Solutions/SEO Since 1999

That means if you and I are real estate agents and I find out that you are advertising on a pay per click search engine, I’ll get up at 6am and click on your ad until I’ve used up your daily budget for that ad for the Stop appearing in the search engine for the rest of the day to improve the promotion of my ad in the same search engine.

What about organic search optimization?

The most effective form of search engine marketing is organic search engine optimization, or better known as SEO. Studies of keyword searches across the web confirm that keyword searchers prefer organic search listings 6 to 1 over sponsored pay-per-click ads found at the top of pages at the top or alongside organic search. But SEO is a whole different story.

What about geo-targeted advertising?

However, new internet marketing technologies and strategies for small and medium sized businesses are opening the way for small and medium sized businesses to succeed with their online promotion and compete in this lucrative online marketplace. One of these strategies is geo-targeted advertising, which drives online shoppers to go back to local stores and use local business services.

It works by identifying the IP address of the online shopper, gamer or surfer and places advertisements for local businesses on those websites. These ads can appear anywhere from major search engine sites and gaming sites to the ever popular social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and other high traffic sites like eBay.

It’s no wonder, then, that “local” has become one of the hottest words in advertising. Attracted by the tremendous growth opportunities, everyone, including the world’s largest technology, search and media companies, is gravitating to local business promotion.

Smart business people target their advertising campaigns by choosing zip codes that match their business needs. This means that their ads will only appear on websites when and where potential customers from their designated areas are online.

In many cases, when the consumer clicks on an ad, they are taken to a mini-website with text links, images, videos, discount coupons, and even interactive driving instructions. Never before have small and medium business owners had such real-time control over their online branding capabilities combined with a strong local advertising presence.

To top it off, many websites offer these small business internet marketing ads with no hosting, design or setup fees and no contract terms. Is this the online solution that small to medium sized businesses have been looking for to speed up their online promotion?

Combine this with effective lead generator and business opportunity prospecting systems and video response marketing solutions and you have the complete internet marketing package for small businesses.

Thanks to Paul Holcroft | #Internet #Marketing #Small #Businesses #Online #Promotion #Local #Businesses