Currently, job opportunities for Internet marketing are one of the few bright spots in a down economy. With more than 2 billion Internet users worldwide, it’s easy to see how companies like Salt Lake City-based PurePPC.com are hiring those with a keen understanding of how to market to consumers via the Internet.

Companies are realizing the value of social media and Internet marketing. Experts said Internet marketing could grow to a $20 billion industry in 2012

Davis High School teacher Jeff McCauley’s classes touch on areas like search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and social media.

“Chances are these kids will be working a lot with [Internet marketing] in the future. I’m not trying to make good high school students; I’m trying to shape the next generation of marketing professionals,” said McCauley.

Universities are also teaching Internet marketing in the classroom and beyond. Many are offering programs for non-traditional students. The University of Utah, University of San Francisco, Columbia School of Journalism and University of Virginia are just a few of the schools offering certificate programs through weekend courses and online education. These programs cater to everyone from senior executives to rank-and-file marketing professionals who are interested in broadening their skills or seeking career advancement.
But according to Tim Gilson, vice president of sales and marketing for PurePPC.com, one of the best ways a person can become well versed in Internet marketing is outside the classroom through individual study.

“When it comes to school, a university is going to provide more depth.  But to make it in an field like pay-per-click advertising it takes a lot of private research. Someone needs to spend a lot of time studying Google AdWords,” said Gilson.

Gilson said the biggest change in Internet marketing over the past few years has been the growth of social media.

“A student should study Internet marketing because search engine marketing is number one for hiring. A quality Internet marketing company shouldn’t be affected by the recession,” Gilson said. “Having a technology-based education fits well within the future of sales and lead generation, and with all business. Studying Internet marketing gives students an edge over traditional marketing studies.”

PurePPC.com President Todd Julien said he expects the demand to increase for students who have backgrounds in online marketing.

“Internet marketing firms are searching for individuals who can demonstrate success and provide a good return on a firm’s investment. Social media marketing and pay-per-click advertising skills are in high demand,” Julien said.

Compared with the earlier forecast, this update indicates only a slight increase overall by 2015. However, revenues for 2011 have been revised upward significantly to $2 billion from the $1.2 billion originally estimated in March.

“Even as more consumers sign up for deals programs and awareness grows and new markets are entered, we see a ceiling on how many deals consumers will buy, and their overall interest level in deals,” said Mark Fratrik, BIA/Kelsey vice president and chief economist. “With that said, a strong foundation has already been created in the promotional ecosystem of this young industry. We believe daily deals reinforce other advertising and that related services, like instant deals and flash sales, will significantly boost income for key players.”

Among the factors underlying this revised forecast are:

• A bigger increase in the number of registrants for deals services. Market leaders Groupon and LivingSocial have expanded quickly and many more participants have entered this arena, including vertical sites and local media companies (either in cooperation with Groupon and LivingSocial or through white-label firms)
• Growth in the number of registered users who are “active” (e.g., buying coupons).
• Greater specialization of deals sites (both vertically and by neighborhood), better targeting capabilities and continued marketing of these services will lead to more activity by registered users.
• Increase in the average number of transactions, resulting from more efficient providers of these services and expansion of the types of products and services being offered (e.g., more travel deals).
• Rise in the average price per transaction, owing to general inflation and the attempt by some providers to offer more valued services at higher margins.

Groupon and LivingSocial continue to lead a growing marketplace of 600-plus players, which include destination sites, white-label providers working with local media such as directory companies, newspapers, and radio and television operators; vertical players; mobile/location-based providers; flash sales sites; exchanges; and aggregators.

“It’s worth noting that the deals market continues to grow, despite the recent departure of Facebook and others that may not have been well-equipped to invest the time and money necessary to participate in such a crowded market,” said Peter Krasilovsky, vice president and program director, Marketplaces, BIA/Kelsey. “We expect to see local media companies leverage their existing promotional, sales and other local assets to play a significant role in this industry, alongside today’s deals leaders Groupon and LivingSocial.”

Deals at DMS ’11 and NAB Radio Show

BIA/Kelsey analysts will highlight details from this new forecast at DMS ’11: The Small-Business Advertising Summit, Sept. 20-22, Denver. Day 2 of the conference features a session titled, “SMBs and Deals: The Next Wave,” which will include SMBs discussing their deals experience. The event is being sponsored by BIG Marketing for Small Business. More information about DMS ’11, including the complete agenda, list of speakers and companies attending, is available at their website.

In addition, BIA/Kelsey’s Fratrik will present the forecast to attendees of NAB Radio Show tomorrow during a panel discussion titled, “What’s the Real Deal with Daily Deals.” His presentation will focus on specific revenue opportunities related to deals for broadcasters in small to midsize markets.

BIA/Kelsey will present its new US SMB Spending Forecast to attendees of its upcoming conference (sponsored by BIG Marketing for Small Business), DMS ’11: The Summit for Small-Business Advertising Solutions, September 20-22 in Denver, CO. DMS ’11 is focused on how marketing services and solution providers can increase their penetration and profitability with SMBs.

The study goes on to say that by 2015 SMBs will allocate 30 percent of their marketing budgets to traditional advertising (down from 52 percent in 2010), with the remaining 70 percent going to digital/online media (mobile, social, online directories, online display, digital outdoor), performance-based commerce (pay-per-click, deals, couponing) and customer retention business solutions (email, reputation and presence management, websites, social marketing, calendaring/appointment-setting).

“With the advent of daily deals to drive customer acquisition, SMBs are now increasingly focused on leveraging technological solutions to engage, grow and retain a higher percentage of their customers,” said Neal Polachek, president, BIA/Kelsey. “As this trend accelerates, these SMBs will turn to outside providers — media companies as well as pure-play technology providers — to harness simple tools, which will enable them to maximize the long-term value of each new customer they acquire.”

BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. SMB Spending Forecast is derived from the firm’s US Local Media Annual Forecast and its proprietary Local Commerce Monitor study, which tracks the advertising and marketing spending habits of SMBs. The forecast’s key findings include:

• Overall, U.S. SMB spending on media, marketing and business solutions will grow from $22.4 billion in 2010 to $40.2 billion in 2015, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12 percent.
• SMB spending on traditional advertising will be essentially flat during the forecast period, experiencing a 0.6 percent CAGR, from $11.8 billion in 2010 to $12.1 billion in 2015.
• SMB spending on digital/online media will grow from $5.4 billion in 2010 to $16.6 billion in 2015 (24.9 percent CAGR).
• SMBs will also increase spending on performance-based commerce and transaction platforms, from $1.7 billion in 2010 to $4.6 billion in 2015 (21.5 percent CAGR).
• Spending by SMBs on customer retention business solutions will grow from $3.5 billion in 2010 to $6.9 billion in 2015 (14.6 percent CAGR).

“Our forecast clearly indicates that the allocation of SMB advertising and marketing dollars for acquiring and retaining customers will both shift and grow over the next five years,” said Mark Fratrik, vice president, BIA/Kelsey. “Traditional media companies and new upstarts that are actively building products and solutions in the areas of digital display, SEM/SEO, email marketing, calendaring, and other acquisition and retention tools will be in a good position to take full advantage of this substantive change in the overall SMB landscape.”

The DMS ’11 program sponsored by BIG Marketing for Small Business, features more than 50 senior executives from across the small-business marketing solutions marketplace, including headliners Rita Fabi, head of market solutions, global customer marketing and communications, Facebook; Joe Walsh, president and CEO, Yellowbook; Clare Hart, CEO, Infogroup; Pat Hays, vice president of global search and display services, Microsoft; and Ben Smith, founder, MerchantCircle.

For more information about DMS ’11, including the complete agenda, list of speakers and companies attending, visit www.biakelsey.com/DMS2011.

Digging deeper into the LCM data, the marketing behaviors of newer businesses and younger business owners is strikingly different from more well established and older business owners. BIA/Kelsey says younger businesses are a leading indicator of where the SMB media and marketing world is headed – more digital, more engagement, more use of digital tools and cloud-based applications.

Within this in mind, BIA/Kelsey is hosting a conference next month focused on the latest tools and technologies for small business marketing. DMS ’11: The Summit for Small Business Advertising Solutions, which takes placed Sept. 20-22, in Denver, will bring together top executives from companies like AT&T Advertising Solutions, Facebook, Infogroup, MerchantCircle, Microsoft, Urbanspoon and Yellowbook, to break down the components of modern SMB marketing and analyze where the biggest opportunities are for players in the local-social-mobile ecosystem.

Exclusive Offer for BIG Marketing Readers
As a sponsor of DMS’ 11, BIG Marketing for Small Business readers and subscribers can receive a $200 discount on the cost of conference registration when signing up with promo code DMS11BIG. More information is available on the conference website at http://www.biakelsey.com/DMS2011.

The internet has completely revolutionized the advertising world. Businesses are now focusing more on Internet marketing rather than traditional marketing tactics like newspapers, telemarketing, television, and radio. The main reason is that marketing budgets are tight – and online marketing is efficient. You can target specific audiences by demo and location, manage your spend daily, and track your results in real-time.

Marketing your small business online is critical to growth. Tweens and teens literally live online. And baby boomers, generations Y and X aren’t far behind. To reach them, you need to be active online, not just there. According to Borrell Associates, in 2011, small and medium sized businesses will increase their online budgets by 29% and 91% will have a website – very few businesses will be left without a web presence.

For small businesses, it’s necessary to break the news of your product at the right time and at the right place. Let’s say you have a small business bakery specializing in low carb, gluten-free items. You prepare your baked goods early morning and immediately update your fans through popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and now Google+. If you regularly use the online medium to educate customers as to why they should buy low carb, gluten-free baked goods and how it benefits them, chances are you’ll be moving a lot of  product. You can also use this platform to obtain real-time customer feedback to help improve your product and introduce new ones.

3 Useful Ways to Market Your Online Business Effectively

Increase Your Visibility
Try to increase the visibility of your business on search engines. Potential customers, while searching for a product, click the top five organic listing results the most. Focus on SEO and select relevant keywords for your business to engage the right audience.

Update Your Content
Update the content of your website with timely coupons and offers, opinion pieces, whiterpapers, case studies and so on. Content is king online, and  insightful content attracts visitors and search engines. It also increases the chance for your content to be shared by site visitors, which draws in new potential customers who haven’t heard of your brand.

Mark Your Social Media Presence
When you know you have a limited budget to market your product, be very specific. Try to interact with customers directly. Get to know about their choices and preferences. You can do this by creating a business page on Facebook and LinkedIn to interact with members/fans, and using Twitter to converse with your followers. Use these platforms to encourage people to discuss their experiences with your product. Announce clever incentives to attract even more customers through your current ones.

Google search engine advertising is a direct response form of advertising–you’re reaching a potential customer at the moment they are very interested in your product or ready to buy–versus a brand awareness medium like display (banner) advertising that builds preference over time. For that reason, it’s far more critical that your PPC landing page converts that motivated buyer into a captured qualified lead, often and fast. The only way to know if you’re yielding outstanding landing page performance is through testing.

A/B Testing is a highly effective form of testing landing pages for optimization. It’s easy too. Start by taking an existing landing page or design a new one, decide what component you want to test–for example, headline and copy–create a separate version, and run them against one another. A fantastic tool that I use for running landing page A/B tests is called Visual Website Optimizer. It’s simple to implement, highly intuitive and very affordable.

A typical A/B test using Visual Website Optimizer would be to have a Control landing page (existing version) versus a Variant landing page (new version). Visitor traffic to your landing page is then split in real-time 50/50 without the website visitor knowing it. For them, it’s a seamless experience. For you, it’s an automated process provided by the tool that begins giving you real-time data. Run it for some time, typically 4 weeks, and you’ll begin seeing if the Variant is outperforming the Control, by how much, and a prediction of how likely it will be pronounced the winner.

Incremental improvements to your landing pages can have a significant impact on the volume of leads you generate. Testing copy, graphics, colour, and page layout can each have an impact on your landing pages ability to convert better. Some tests may prove inconclusive, and that’s perfectly fine. But, only through continuous testing will you find improvements ranging from the marginal to dramatic. Testing also provides you with great insight on what your online visitors respond to, which can be further reflected in other areas of your marketing.

1. “You need a great idea”

One of the biggest business myths of all is the importance of having a great idea. Basically, this myth says that you can’t succeed with an ordinary business like a restaurant or retail store or hotel chain. In order to really make it, you need to come up with a revolutionary, floor-shaking idea akin to the next Facebook or Google. Only then will your quest have any meaning or potential.

In truth, this is dead wrong. What matters far more than your idea is how swiftly and intelligently you execute that idea. A well-managed restaurant in the right part of town can make an absolute fortune for its owners, even though “the idea” is ordinary and hundreds of years old.

2. “I’m good at [insert skill here] so I should start a business that does that”

This is what Michael Gerber refers to as the “E-Myth.” In a book of the same name, Gerber writes that many entrepreneurs are actually “technicians” (skilled writers, chefs, architects, etc.) who had an “entrepreneurial seizure”, got tired of working for others and started businesses around their skills. Sounds logical, right?

Unfortunately, these technicians soon realize that there’s a lot more to running a business than performing their skill. The owner of a creative studio, for example, can’t spend all day writing anymore. In order to thrive and grow, they also need to learn project management, finance, marketing and various other business functions. It’s not impossible – not at all – but the transition from technician to entrepreneur is not as easy as it sounds.

3. “I’m friends with this person, so they would also be a good partner”

“Don’t do business with friends” is some of the most ignored advice in entrepreneurship. And it’s easy to see why: if you know and trust someone on a personal level and they want to get involved, why wouldn’t they make good business partners? Who else would you even think of working with? You might be right, but the odds are much higher that you’re wrong.

Simply getting along with someone is not enough for a successful business partnership. Once you begin working together, you immediately start caring about qualities that never mattered before: your friend’s work ethic and lifestyle choices, for example. No longer is he just a casual bar buddy or someone to watch the game with – now, a big part of your future is riding on their effort. This forces the relationship to become more professional than personal, and often creates disputes that render the partnership ineffective.

4. “X% of small businesses fail”

We hear this all the time: various studies and reports about the percentage of small businesses that fail within one, five or ten years. They sound threatening, but here’s the truth: you aren’t starting just a small business. You’re starting a web design company, or a bakery, or a web startup.

In other words: generic data about all small businesses are nowhere near as relevant as data about your particular type of small business. Every industry has different market forces, trends, buying patterns, decision makers and other factors that shape how successful you’ll be. You’re much better off paying attention to these things than dwelling on what happens to small businessesin general (many of which have nothing in common with yours.)

5. “You need a business degree”

Most fields require you to have some type of license or anointed status before starting. Technically, this is true of some businesses too like restaurants, for example. For the most part, though, business is unique in that you don’t need permission to succeed. You just do it and get paid or don’t and fail.

Furthermore, business degrees are not all they are cracked up to be. They’re certainly useful for learning hard disciplines like accounting that you might ignore on your own, but no degree program teaches you what to do when disaster strikes: when your biggest customer backs out on a moment’s notice, or when a key employee goes rogue and sabotages your store. Most of the day-to-day knowledge you need to be successful comes from experience and targeted research, not boilerplate classroom lectures.

6. “If you build it, they will come”

This phrase is a fantasy that novice entrepreneurs love: the notion that once you open for business, customers will instinctively flood through your front doors and start buying. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. If your business has a prayer of making it, you will need to be its biggest cheerleader, chief publicist and most vocal advocate.

In short, you need to get the word out. Waiting for people to notice is a fool’s errand – they wont. They’ll just get scooped up by one of your competitors who understood the necessity of active marketing and outreach. To avoid this, put serious time and effort into reaching your target market.

Guest Author – Kevin Allen is a freelance writer for Invesp.com. Invesp helps businesses improve their online revenue, reduce customer acquisition cost, and provide their visitors with a better user experience through landing page optimization.