How to Promote Your Small Business Online

There have been quite a few posts across the web on the benefits of choosing to use Internet marketing instead of traditional, non-digital media, but how can small businesses actually promote their company online? This post is part of the Internet Marketing for Rookies series.

Internet marketing has grown in the past 10 years from simple display advertising and can be divided in 4 sub-groups: search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing (SMM) , display advertising and email marketing (or direct e-marketing).

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is taking over the Internet. With the wide array of websites available today, organizations need to ensure their potential customers can easily find the company’s website. This can be done through “free” techniques (search engine optimization) and paid tools (pay-per-click advertising).

Search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on improving your website following a set of guidelines set by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. These guidelines will help you improve your website’s content, discover and use a set of keywords that identify your business, and build your inbound and outbound links. The goal is to help search engines’ bots to first find your website, and then easily categorize it so, when a user runs a search for one of your keywords (for instance, “new and old books online”), your website will come up on the search engine’s results (following the example above, Amazon).

I say these techniques are “free” because, although they are not paid, you will need to invest considerable time in tweaking your website and checking its performance. For more in-depth information on search engine optimization, read our article on 5 tips to build a SEO-friendly Website.

Search engine marketing (SEM) covers SEO practices and pay-per-click advertising. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a business model invented by Google and was soon adopted by other search engines. It allows advertisers to bid on relevant keywords for their business, so your website has more chances of showing up on the search engine’s result pages (PPC ads usually show up on the right hand side of the page). PPC advertising is used by companies who face strong competition on their keywords. By using PPC, you don’t need to heavily rely on SEO techniques – which are time consuming – to direct your prospects to your website. Because you’re paying for each click on your ad, you can set up a maximum budget so, when it’s reached, your ad is automatically taken down until the following month.

If you’re considering PPC advertising, you should invest some time developing a specific landing page per each set of keywords. This will ensure your webpage is relevant for readers of that specific ad, and it will increase your conversion rate. For more information on PPC advertising, read our Pay-Per-Click For Rookies article.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing (SMM) is one of the best tools available today for marketers. It allows you to tap into the latest trends and understand what customers are saying about your company. The idea behind social media is for businesses to open up and carry an honest conversation with their customers and potential buyers.

Very different from advertising, social media marketing requires a significant time investment on the company’s side. If you’re interested in social media marketing, the first step is to identify where your customers are spending their time online and create a profile on those social networks. Facebook and twitter are very popular with business to consumer (B2C) organizations, while Linkedin is one of the best platform for business to business (B2B) companies. But there are more social networks out there, each with their specific audience. Identify your niche and look for a social media website on the web – I’m sure you’ll find one for even the most specialized industry.

What can you share in social networks? Well, anything really! Some companies give their social media followers the inside scoop of a new product or service coming up. Others record meetings, social gatherings, events or even campaigns and ads, and upload them to video-sharing communities such as YouTube. There are even organizations that provide customer support in twitter! Companies can also expand their influence and actively participate in forums and discussions. What you need to keep in mind is that social media marketing is an ongoing, honest conversation.

Display Advertising

Display advertising has been around since the early stages of the world wide web. It refers to banners or videos strategically placed on websites your customers browse (i.e., online newspapers, community websites, etc), or e-newsletters that fit your target audience. Display advertising can take various forms, such as a banner, a short video or a text ad with or without your company’s logo. Similar to pay-per-click advertising, you can link your ad to a dedicated landing page where you extend the original offer, provide more information about your company, or supply a “basket” or contact form for users that are ready to do business with you.

When properly executed, display advertising is a powerful online marketing tool. Very successful between business-to-business organizations, display advertising reaches your customers where they are. By using specific landing pages, you are able to tweak your message to better relate to your audience. While B2C companies tend to use display advertising to immediately sell a product (for instance, Amazon), B2B companies usually use this online marketing technique to generate leads while increasing brand awareness. If you run a B2B organization, consider offering something of value to your online public: case studies, white papers and special offers go a long way to increase the generated number of leads per ad.

Email Marketing

Email marketing, or direct e-marketing, is equally used by B2B and B2C organizations. Businesses that use this tool gather their customers’ email addresses, and insert them on an email marketing system (which can directly feed into your CRM system).

Email marketing can be used for different types of campaigns. B2B organizations tend to use email marketing to increase brand awareness and maintain a regular contact with their customers. To this end, companies share the latest company news, relevant information on their services and resources their customers might find interesting, such as case studies or white papers. B2C organizations, on the other hand, use email marketing to up-sell or cross-sell their products, provide discounts and inform customers about special offers. If you’re looking into starting an email marketing campaign, do make sure you have your customer’s permission to use their email address for that purpose. Doing so will ensure you don’t land on an unexpected lawsuit.

One thing you probably noticed throughout this article is the importance of your website in Internet marketing. Most online marketing programs redirect users to the company’s website, where they provide more information on the business, make the selling argument and provide a contact form (for B2B organizations) or a “basket” (for B2C companies). Independently of what online marketing programs you decide to invest in, it is a good idea to implement SEO practices in your website. There’s little point in having great Internet marketing campaigns if your company’s website is not able to properly convey your message and entice potential customers to do business with you.