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Marketing
Your Business - How Do I Adapt To The Internet?
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The way we do business is changing rapidly. From VOIP, video
conferencing, email support, telephone answering services, and
the almighty internet. As a business owner we are faced with
hundreds of decisions our parents and grandparents never had to
contend with.
Some of you keep hearing from other business associates that
internet marketing is the greatest method of increasing business
and building a foundation for customer support. The only problem
is, you've just learned how to send emails to people! Never mind
learning about SEO, web design strategies, content analysis, pay
per click, ROI, etc!
Do you hire an SEO company or do you learn yourself?
Investing time into your company is what we business owners do
best but, in many cases, when it comes to learning new methods
we quickly open our wallets to anyone out there who seems like
the right person to help with your situation. This is the worst
possible decision you can make.
Diving into the internet marketing community with your wallet
open will result in a disaster if you aren't properly trained on
how to spend your money wisely. The key is not to hire an SEO (Search
Engine Optimization) company to take your money and promote your
business behind your back. Try finding someone who offers you
their "training services" in order to train yourself
or someone within your organization to learn more about what is
required online, how much effort it entails, and what pitfalls
to avoid.
As a business owner, if you blindly search online and pick a
company, you have no idea what you could be getting yourself
into. There are no secrets to promoting your business online,
only a lot of hard work. That being said, anyone with a computer
can easily learn how to get their company high search engine
rankings. Search engines don't look to see whether or not you're
running a scam. No, they are concentrated on delivering relevant
results for your search terms.
Old Fashioned Marketing Tactics:
In the old days (and still practiced today), business owners
would devise their own marketing plan through print media,
business cards, postcards, flyers, brochures, newspapers,
magazines, TV ads, and radio ads. By doing this, the company
could track their results by trial and error and really find out
what truly works for their industry.
Old fashioned marketing is a simple trial and error process. So
is the internet. Unfortunately, all too many business owners
don't have a clue how to start their own internet marketing
process and they fail to even put their foot in the water.
Instead, many business owners simply hire anyone they can find
that seems reputable and then turn a blind eye and say; "Here's
my budget, you are the professional, you tell me what to
do". This is simply preposterous. You've worked so hard to
get to where you are now by learning and adapting and as soon as
it comes to marketing your business online, you simply shut down.
I hope that this article has awoken some of you. Don't be afraid
to dive into the internet's vast realm of marketing potential.
So what if you fail the first time around. When we started out,
we had no idea what we were doing, 3 years later our website
ranks higher than many other internet marketing companies world
wide.
The ULTIMATE secret to internet marketing is simple...
A concept I call "T.I.M.E."
T - Try and try again
I - Internet changes all the time
M - Marketing opportunities are around every corner
E - Eventually you too can succeed
Think of it this way (Illustration only)
Here is a timeline of your internet marketing campaign:
Start date - Research only: June 7th, 2005
Hired a website designer - August 31st, 2005
Website Complete - October 15th, 2005
Website launch - October 20th, 2005
Started an internet marketing campaign - November 1st, 2005
Started a Pay Per Click campaign - November 10th, 2005
Made a sale - November 15th, 2005
Increased our website�s link popularity - January 1st, 2006
Website gets hit by the Google Sandbox Effect - January 20th,
2006
Increased our Pay Per Click campaign - February 5th, 2006
Made some changes to the website - February 21st, 2006
Increase the website�s link popularity - February 28th, 2006
Got listed in the Yahoo directory - March 3rd, 2006
So here you are 10 months out of the gate and your website may
still be "locked in the Google sandbox" ( Search for
"Google Sandbox" in Google for an explanation). Your
link popularity is just starting to grow a little bit. Hopefully
you haven't tried to link to everyone you can find and are
actually linking to companies that are directly related to your
business. Your PPC campaign is doing good. People are finally
starting to come through Yahoo & MSN search results. You can
sometimes find your company in the 200th spot within search
results in Google and you are now wondering why this is taking
so long.
Welcome to the world of marketing your company on the internet!!!
This timeline representation from above is just something to
show you how "T.I.M.E." is the key of success on the
internet and all we are required to do is keep plugging away and
keep learning more every chance we get.
For most people who simply open up their wallets, they would
have learned nothing in those 10 months and for everyone else
starting an internet marketing campaign, those who didn't simply
just open their wallets, their websites are probably 10 times
further than yours!
In Conclusion:
Learn more about how to increase your marketing campaign on the
internet. If you have to, hire someone in-house who can learn
for you and give you updates on everything. If you truly need to
hire an SEO company make sure it's for the right reasons like
"starting and finishing a marketing campaign with you
learning in the process", or "enhancing a campaign
that is already in place", or "to revise your website�s
conversion rate" or "create a impactful key word
optimization campaign", etc. Take your time and use "T.I.M.E."
to increase your business slowly but effectively on the internet.
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