Internet Marketing for Small Businesses and Online Advertising for Local Businesses

Internet Marketing for Small Businesses Online Advertising for Local Businesses How to start small business internet marketing and online advertising for local businesses is a question that many small and medium sized businesses are pondering as more and more consumers ignore the books yellow pages and other forms of traditional print media and head online to find what they are looking for.

The internet is drastically changing the way we do business and all the big companies are dominating online advertising, leaving small and medium sized businesses in dire need of an internet advertising solution to connect and engage with local consumers who they move online in record numbers.

Many businesses that have created an online presence for themselves are quickly realizing that an attractive website is not the same as being found among the millions of websites online. Add to that the cost of dealing with designers and developers, and many companies have no hope of competing in today’s Internet-savvy communities.

One effective way is to use some of the many article directories and press releases available online to announce your arrival to the online community. Providing concise informative information is the key here. It is not about selling the products of your business, but about providing solutions to consumer problems.

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

Another way that small and medium-sized businesses try to compete is through pay-per-click (PPC) programs like Google Adwords. Unfortunately, most high-target keywords and search terms have become highly competitive and are often hemmed in by major companies with large ad budgets. And, to add fuel to the fire, there are now real concerns about click fraud.

Are click fraud and PPC advertising a problem?

According to Click Forensics, the overall industry average click fraud rate was 17.1% in Q4 2008, up from 16.0% in Q3 2008. The problem, while not new, is that companies get paid based on how many times users click on online ads. Scammers develop software that simulates user clicks to increase traffic and artificially inflate revenue. -Source: Peak Solutions/SEO Since 1999

What this means is that if you and I are real estate agents and I find out that you are advertising on a pay per click search engine, I will get up at 6am and start clicking on your ad until you use up your daily budget to stop the ad to appear 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 SEO, as it is more commonly known. Internet keyword research studies confirm that keyword searchers prefer 6-to-1 organic search listings over sponsored pay-per-click ads that sit at the top of previous pages or to the side of searches organic. But SEO is another story.

What about geo-targeted advertising?

However, new small business internet marketing technologies and strategies are paving the way for small and medium-sized businesses to succeed in their online business advertising and compete in this lucrative online market. One of these strategies is geo-targeted advertising that is driving online shoppers to return to local stores and use local merchant services.

It works by identifying the IP address of the online shopper, gamer, or surfer and serving ads for local businesses on those websites. These ads can be seen popping up everywhere from top search engine pages and gaming sites to popular social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and other high-traffic sites like eBay.

So it’s no wonder that local has become one of the hottest words in advertising. Drawn by the enormous growth opportunities, everyone, including the world’s largest technology, search and media companies, is gravitating towards local business advertising.

Savvy business operators are laser-targeting their ad campaigns by selecting appropriate postal codes for their business needs. This means that your ads only appear on websites when and where potential customers from your designated areas are online.

When the consumer clicks on an ad, in many cases they are taken to a mini-website complete 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 of their online branding features combined with a powerful local advertising presence.

To top it off, many sites 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 and medium businesses have been looking for to speed up their online business advertising?

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