Internet marketing. A Fast overview for small businesses
Many business start-ups and small businesses ask us for advice on marketing themselves on the internet. The following is an adaptation of a report we sent to a small sized business. You should find it suitable for many businesses.
Ad Finem is providing this advice as a courtesy service at no charge. It is intended as a guide only and you should consult with a professional advisor before undertaking any of the strategies here mentioned.
Paid search engine adverts
These are adverts which appear alongside search engine results usually in a column on the right. Not to be confused with the main (free) results. You are charged for every time a customer clicks on your advert. Adverts appear in order of bid amount. For example, if you specify you are willing to pay 30p per click, your advert will appear lower down and less frequently than someone who has offered to pay 40p.
You should find this to be an effective method of advertising.
Google run their own adverts. Overture.com run the adverts for Yahoo, MSN, AOL and most other search engines. Using both companies will cover over 90% of search engines. The ROI on this form of advertising is not linear. Doubling your payment amount will not generate double the enquiries, therefore it is best to spread your costs across both Google and Overture. Google is the favoured company; they have a principled approach to business.
When opening an account you will need to select which search terms the advert should appear under. You should have no problem setting this up yourself. Visit adwords.google.co.uk and www.overture.com to open an account. Adverts will begin appearing within a week (immediately on Google).
Search engine optimisation
SEO is the process of engineering a website to rank highly within a search engines main (free) listings. How it works: A search engine crawls through the internet looking for websites and archiving their content. When a user makes a search the search engine will display the websites which it considers to be most relevant. SEO is the process of reverse engineering the website to fit the search engines ranking algorithm, i.e. to make the search engine believe that your website is highly relevant to your choice of search terms.
This is a long term method, as optimisation can take weeks, and results can take months to be seen. The engineer will need to make some changes to the website, although he will of course not want o impede the functionality of the site. He may need to add extra text to the website.
SEO is an unregulated industry. SEO can be taken to varying degrees and using different methods, which makes it seriously difficult to compare what each company is offering. Even certain reputable internet service companies are offering unprincipled SEO services.
Service directories
The best known are www.kelkoo.co.uk and www.dealtime.co.uk. They are directories of products and services offered by national businesses. Customers simply search for a product or service, but unlike search engines, these directories only display consumer products and services. As with paid search engine adverts you pay for each click. You should consider using www.kelkoo.co.uk, www.dealtime.co.uk and froogle.google.co.uk (new service from Google - currently free). Again, you should be able to set this up yourself by visiting the websites.
General internet banner advertising
Internet banner advertising is undersold and may prove cheap. You may wish to seek out industry related websites and contact their webmaster to advertise. It will be necessary to design a banner. It may be time consuming to seek out suitable websites and follow up applications, especially as it would be necessary to advertise on many sites.
Business Link directory
Business link for London provide a paid directory suitable for B2B services. Please contact The Business Link for details.
Final note
Please beware when selecting internet advertising methods. DealTime and Kelkoo advertise themselves well, but many directories charge for listings but do not draw customers to their website. Companies may offer to have your website submitted to search engines and directories for a fee, yet the directories are never visited.
