Posts from "March, 2015"

The Benefits of Internet Marketing for Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Unlike large corporations, small and medium sized businesses do no have the funds for elaborate advertising and marketing campaigns such as television commercials or celebrity endorsements. The budget has to be spent wisely to ensure that the right audience is targeted, in the most effective manner.

While taking out local newspapers ads, handing out flyers, and other traditional marketing techniques still have their place, internet marketing has quickly become a key method for small and medium sized businesses to reach new customers.

If you own such a business, there are a number of reasons why you should consider hiring an internet marketing company to promote your brand online, today:

Cost Effective

Internet marketing – which may consist of search engine optimization for your website, building a social media presence, and direct online advertising – is much more cost effective than its offline equivalents. You can reach thousands of extra people at a fraction of the price it would cost for a commercial on the radio or an ad in a well circulated publication.

Better Targeted

Not only is internet marketing cheaper than traditional marketing, but online campaigns are Digital Marketingoften much more targeted than offline campaigns. Take for example online advertising platforms like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.

AdWords allows you to choose the keywords a user will have to search on Google, in order for your ad to be displayed. So if you sell “Heavy Duty Men’s Trousers”, you can reach only the people that search for that phrase or related keywords.

Taking out an ad in a big newspaper is going to cost a lot of money, but you will reach thousands of people who do not care about “Heavy Duty Men’s Trousers.” That’s not a good return on investment.

Facebook Ads even allow you to define the interests, ages and other demographics of your audience.

Hiring an internet marketing company to handle such campaigns will ensure you only reach people who are genuinely interested in your business, targeting them with pinpoint precision.

Builds an Audience

Developing a social media presence on Twitter, Facebook and others, creates an ongoing relationship with your customers, which can result in trust and loyalty to your brand.

These platforms are ideal for interacting with customers, running promotions and announcing key business information like product launches or offers, as well as sharing interesting stories relating to your industry.

Keeping track of your online audience, both on social media and other marketing channels, provides invaluable data that is simply not available with traditional marketing methods.

Therefore a professionally managed social media presence is an important element of success in the modern world. Over time you will learn about your audience, they will learn about you, and your business will grow.

Increases Sales

The ultimate benefit that combines all of the above, is an increase in sales or interest in your service. This is the primary goal of every business.

Whether your customers are driven directly through online advertising, organically through search engines to your website, or from a relationship on social media – a well crafted internet marketing strategy will improve your bottom line.

Outsourcing this to an expert internet marketing company will ensure you reap all of the benefits, while not sacrificing the time you need to spend on the day to day activities of your business.

Advantages of Outsourcing Your Internet Marketing

Whether your website is a venture itself, or an outgrowth of a traditional bricks and mortar business, internet marketing is a key factor in your success in 2015. Simply buying a domain name and putting up a few pages is not going to cut it. People need to know you exist and learn to trust your online brand.

While there are always things that can be done yourself to build awareness for a website, such as opening social media accounts or starting a blog, outsourcing your internet marketing strategy to a professional company has a number of key benefits.

Time Saving

Internet marketing will quickly become a time consuming process if you do it right. You’ll need to manage and update blogs and social media accounts with engaging posts, carry out effective advertising campaigns, build relationships with other websites, and optimize your site for search engines. All of this work is on top of your daily responsibilities, so you can easily end up doing a poor job because you don’t have the time, or worse, end up neglecting other important areas.

Outsourcing all of this to an internet marketing company allows you the time to focus on the core aspects of the business and expand in to other areas.

It will also reduce stress and increase productivity.

Specialized Services

Everybody with a business knows some basics about advertising and promotion, but the internet can be a highly technical place. Perhaps you can come up with an eye catching ad or engaging Tweet, but do you know how to target keywords that convert and rank high in search engines, or navigate Google AdWords and maintain a high Quality Score?

Outsourcing your internet marketing opens you up to a wide range of specialized services that would usually be out of your reach.

Real Results

It’s one thing to have a hobby site that you share with friends, but if your site is part of a business venture you can’t afford to do an amateur job at marketing it. Outsourcing this responsibility to a professional company ensures that you will get real measurable results.

While your business may be selling shoes, their business is promoting websites. If you want your online project to be successful, investing in professionals will pay off in the long run.

Not only will you get results but you’ll also be taught how to interpret such results.

Streamlined

Outsourcing to one company that will handle your entire internet marketing needs is an Internet Marketingefficient strategy to take. Trying to use one freelancer here for one purpose, and another over there for something else, will quickly become a hassle and will not bring the same kind of unified results.

Furthermore leading internet marketing companies have more resources than individuals and are able to make use of cutting edge research tools and marketing related software. This is not only more accurate and efficient at the planning stages of the marketing strategy, but will ultimately lead to better results.

Fresh Eyes

We’ve all done it. You have an amazing idea that you put in to practise, that gradually grows in to something special. It’s your baby that you’ve been immersed with it since day one, and don’t want other people to mess it up.

However the problem with being so hands on with a project means your perspective of it can be skewed. What you see might not be what the wider public sees.

In terms of marketing it’s important to get a fresh pair of eyes to give an unbiased appraisal of what to do next.

Outsourcing allows you to see your project from different perspectives, that you may not have considered while developing it.

Accountability

If you pay a professional company to do your internet marketing you are guaranteed a high level of quality. They are accountable if things go wrong and are responsible to make things go right. At the end of the day it’s their job, and they will work with you until you reach your goals.

Doing it yourself or giving the project to a friend is less formal, and you’re less likely to see the same kind of effort, even if you do know what you’re doing. You might cut corners, take time off, or make bad decisions.

4 SEO Myths that are Wasting Your Time in 2021

At this stage in the game the majority of businesses and website owners know that search engine optimization is a fundamental part of building an online presence. However that doesn’t always mean they get it right. Not only are search giants like Google constantly changing their algorithms, but many SEO techniques that have been around since the concept was born, are in fact completely ineffectual. In 2021 here are 4 SEO myths that are wasting your time.

1) Ranking is Irrelevant

The idea that ranking in search engines is now irrelevant and SEO is essentially dead, has mostly been floated with the rise of social media and the fact that so many sites have been negatively impact by Google updates like Panda and Penguin.

The first theory suggests that because social media has become so big, businesses can thrive only on traffic generated from the likes of Facebook and Twitter. This is coupled with the second theory that Google simply no longer rewards search engine optimization and your strategy should be abandoned.

In reality an engaging social media presence is of course very important, but this needs to be partnered with high quality content and an up to date SEO strategy. Those complaining that SEO is dead are mainly those that failed at it, are behind the times or were trying to cut corners, and Google finally caught up with them.

As long as search engines return searches, SEO will remain alive and well.

2) I Just Need to Include My Keywords

Keywords are still the bread and butter of how Google and other search engines operate, but the idea that all you need to do is choose a few keywords and work them in to your website’s content, is grossly misrepresenting the time, effort, and range of technique needed to rank high in 2021.

Did you know that since 2009 Google does not even use the meta description and keyword tags as a ranking factor? You could describe your fitness blog as “a giant chocolate elephant,” and it would have no direct impact on your rankings. It will however turn away real users, which should always been your main focus.

3) SEO is for Bots not Humans

This is perhaps the biggest misnomer of SEO. The idea that all you need to do is optimizeSEO 2015 your website for Google’s web crawlers and the traffic will come flying in. The intent of Google has always been to return the highest quality and most relevant content for human users. In the early days of SEO certain loopholes like spamming keywords or paying for tonnes of irrelevant backlinks essentially allowed you to trick the bots in to thinking your site was the best. However in 2021 Google has a highly evolved algorithm that can easily distinguish between high quality content written with users in mind, and spam written just to fool search engines.

An intelligent web marketer knows that for real success targeting the user and the search engines is a hand in hand relationship.

4) I Can Do it all Myself

While anyone with a cursory knowledge of website development can implement some SEO best practises, chances are they would prefer to spend their time doing something else. An online clothes store wants to sell clothes, not rank web pages. The risk of crafting your own SEO plan is that as time progresses, you just won’t stick to it, you’ll get behind on the latest SEO trends, and other areas of your business will suffer.

An internet marketer and SEO specialist makes it their job to constantly tweak your SEO strategy and stay on top of the latest techniques. Hiring a professional is still the best option in 2021 for your website.