Small businesses have tight budgets and the marketing section of the business plan often gets shelved due to a lack of business finance. However the internet offers the business owner a fast and cheap way to connect with millions of potential customers. Here are a few ideas to get started …
PR services
If executed correctly, a public relations campaign can equal free marketing. Most small businesses think PR is just about sending press releases to newspapers and magazines but really it is about building relationships with the press and media with the view that they will quote you in their articles, publish your news stories or feature your products.
The internet presents a new way for businesses to action PR campaigns. There are many sites which offer information and advice on putting together a plan and writing effective press releases, and many services are springing up which will shoot your press releases directly into the mailboxes of researchers and journalists who are looking for news from your industry. These services are chargeable but are still generally cheaper than advertising, as long as your news release is good enough quality to make an impact.
Try a website such as www.responsesource.com to get started.
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Create a Website
In this day and age every business should have a website, regardless of size or industry. It is very quick to get a website up and running, and there are a plethora of companies that offer website solutions for a reasonable price. Companies such as www.moonfruit.com or www.homestead.com give you the simple tools to build and maintain a website for a small monthly fee.
When creating your site remember that even if it will not be used for e-commerce, its purpose should still be to generate sales for your business. Some businesses set up a website and then forget to give their address and contact details!
Getting found on the web
Once you have a website you need to put constant work into promoting it on the internet so that your customers can find you. Search engines are the single most important source of traffic for your site, therefore you need to try and get your website listed in the search results.
Search Engine Optimisation: Optimising your website to rank highly in search engine listings can be complicated but do not immediately turn to an expensive agency to do it for you as there are certain rules you can follow that will get you started. For example, when you build your website, ensure that the links between pages are text rather than images, so that they can be followed easily by the search engine’s indexing programs.
There are free SEO tips to be found all over the internet at sites such as www.stonetemple.com. You should also aim to generate links to your site from other quality websites, for example your clients or suppliers’ sites, as this is the most effective way of giving you credibility with the search engines.
Content: the more relevant content put up on your website, the more likely it is that those pages will be picked up in search engines. Content can be anything which is relevant to your business such as product guides, articles, reviews, directories etc. Updating your content regularly will also benefit your customers and encourage them to make return visits.
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Directories: as well as search engines, internet users also look for businesses in directories. The most well known example is Yell.com, however there are now more industry specific and community-based ones springing up such as beerintheevening.com for pubs or squaremeal.co.uk for restaurants. Some of these sites will list your business for free and charge only for an enhanced listing. Local councils also run tourist and information websites where you can list your business for a minimal fee – these sites are ideal if your sales come mainly from customers living in or visiting your area.
Social networking: piggybacking off the success of facebook and myspace, there are now social networking sites for businesses springing up all over the internet. Recent offerings include linkedin.com, unltdworld.com, bview.co.uk, and a1businessforums.co.uk.
Paid search: despite the much stronger competition and resulting higher prices, paying for ads on search engines is still the fastest and most cost-effective way to get your business seen on the web and to start generating traffic for your site.
Google Adwords will get your advertisement up on its search results pages the same day, however it is constantly evolving the ranking criteria so close monitoring is vital. In addition to the price you bid at, your ranking is also currently determined by the relevancy of the ad wording to your landing page content and the relevancy of the ad wording to your keywords. Similar paid search advertisements are also available on msn, miva and Yahoo.
Easy e-commerce
Setting up a good online shop can be expensive, but if you want to extend your business to offering online sales there are other options. Ebay for example, allows you to set up your own branded retail space on their site for a reasonable fee.
Email
Compared with advertising online, email marketing is a low-cost option. The first step is to build a database of contacts through your website and other marketing activity, perhaps by offering a monthly newsletter or special offers by email. An email service such as cheetahmail.com or jangomail.com will give you the software and support you need to send out bulk emails in html and text formats from as little as £15 per thousand depending on the level of service and volume of emails.
Analytics
Analysis of your web traffic is perhaps the most important part of managing your website. With a good web analysis software you can track not only how much traffic is visiting your site but also which pages they look at, which links they click on, which pages they leave the site from, where they have come in from (ie. search engine or link from another site) and how many positive actions have been taken (such as a sale or enquiry). All this information helps you to improve and hone your site to suit the needs of your customers and to get the most sales.
There are some free website analysis packages available. Google Analytics is the most comprehensive free software – to get started it simply requires placing some code in your web pages. ewebcounter.com is another company that offers free web stats to small businesses and not-for-profit organisations.
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This article was first published on Simply Business