3 Online Marketing Secrets that Every Business Owner Should Know

by | Aug 26, 2013

Online marketing isn’t easy. But we want to let you in on some key insights that small business owners, like you, may not be aware of.

If you want your online marketing efforts to generate meaningful business results, you’ll be way ahead of competitors if you understand these three key concepts.


1. Just Having a Good Looking Website is Not Enough

You may have recently updated your website. It might be very visually appealing – “well-designed”. However, if the site is not producing results; specifically, if it’s not driving leads and sales, then it is not doing its job.

You need to think about optimizing your website for search engines so that it will be found by your prospective clients.

You need to strategically decide which social media networks to integrate with the site.

You need to clearly understanding how you will generate leads from your website, and how you will follow-up with prospects.

Takeaway: Your website is more than just an electronic brochure. It is central to your online marketing strategy.

 

2. Be a Good Online Citizen

Being a “good online citizen” will benefit your business through the connections you make and the resulting relationships that you create. In so doing, you will build your online presence and position yourself as a helpful authority.

The types of things you can be doing to make yourself a good online citizen are:

  • Engaging in valuable conversations with customers, prospects, influencers, and colleagues on social media.
  • Posting insightful comments on other blogs related to your industry.
  • Link out from your own blog to other relevant websites to provide additional information (as an added bonus, the other website may notice this and reciprocate).
  • Offer your connections “curated content” (content from other sources) as a way to enhance their understanding of a topic.

Takeaway: As with life in general, you will be rewarded online if you give before you get.

 

3. You Need to Be Committed to Being a Content Developing Organization

Valuable, relevant and timely content is what will get you noticed on line by prospects, influencers and search engines.

You need to consistently provide fresh and relevant content on your site, usually in the form of a blog, to build online visibility and authority.

Your content should provide the information prospects need to make an informed decision, in the most direct and concise way possible.

This means avoiding developing and posting content that is difficult to consume or on goes on forever. Be short. Be to the point. Give your prospects what they need at every step of the decision making process.

Use different content formats; your prospects are will be more inclined to view and share your content if it presented graphically, in videos, in short bulletins, etc. Your prospects are probably time pressured, so you need to make it easy for them to scan your content and simple for them to find what they need.

Don’t confuse or alienate your prospects with information that is poorly developed or inaccurate. Be a serious publisher. Content should educate, entertain, inform, evoke emotions, compel action, and provide confidence.

Takeaway: If you are not prepared to commit to being a content developing organization, you will never optimize your online marketing results.

 

Embracing these three concepts will give you a fighting chance of driving significant business results from your online marketing activities.

Ben Molfetta
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