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.

Today, small businesses are facing tough competition from their large competitors. With this increased competition, the marketing strategies to promote your offerings have also changed. One of the best ways to market your small business is to have content on your website which is unique, fresh and informative. By regularly updating your content, you can attract many new customers without spending a cent.

Unique, meaningful content on the Internet attracts potential customers. It makes your website different from your competitors. When you consistently generate unique content, you distinguish yourself from “me-too” websites, and give online users a reason to visit and stay on your website. Once customers know your website content is unique, they will find reason to visit your page again and again. They will learn to rely on your content for quality information and also share it with others. This can go a long ways to building up your credibility and brand awareness.

Search engines like Google have several standards for ranking website authority (or popularity). Unique content is one of the standards on the basis of which search engines divert traffic towards different websites. It means that not only does the reader want to read something new, but search engines also give priority to sites with regularly updated content.

Since most small businesses don’t have large budgets for marketing, one of the best ways to market efficiently is through SEO. By uploading fresh and original content that integrates popular keywords associated with your business, you can compete on par with giant corporations. SEO is the great equalizer.

How Can You Have Unique Content for Your Small Business?

Write Content Yourself
The best source for developing unique content is you. No one knows your business like you. What is the unique selling proposition (USP) of your product? How can your product satisfy the need of your customers? Take some time to research your own business to better understand what unique content you can publish that will resonate with your target audience.

Hire Professionals
Most small business owners find it difficult to spend time developing content. Or, they are simply just not good at it. Don’t let this stop you. Turn towards professionals who can write blogs, articles and other content to use in your online marketing. This does require a budget, but is an excellent choice when you are clear on your subject matter and objective, your primary keywords and key phrases for SEO, and your target audience. If you find a good content developer or agency, keep using them as they will gain a more intimate knowledge of your business and develop a consistent tone of voice.

Competing with large organizations with millions in their marketing budgets isn’t easy. But, you can. Commit to a content marketing strategy and see for yourself.

“We’ve got to have a Facebook page!”

That’s the exclamation of most small businesses these days. And, while many Facebook business pages go live, they sit almost lifeless, as one of an infinite number of silent trees in a dense forest.

Many small business owners are increasingly recognizing that Facebook is fast becoming their No. 1 public relations tool. But in order to sustain the life-blood for that page, they need to incorporate public relations tactics to generate traffic and build brand awareness. An easy and creative way to do this is to incorporate these 4 Cs to PR your Facebook small business page – Command, Contest, Cause and Connect.

Hubspot is an example of a good Facebook business page.

1. Command

Creating command of an issue or topic is central to establishing a niche authority in your industry. Apple commands the portable music market. Google is the search authority. Nike is the running shoe king. They all sell other products or services, but have commanded a niche. Let’s say you’re a baker with shelves full of cookies, cakes, pies, donuts, and breads. Pick one of your products. In this instance, let’s take the cake.

Establish your command as the local cake authority. Some suggestions might include posting fun articles on your page about cake related stories (i.e. Kim Kardashian’s desire to have a “William and Kate” cake), contacting local reporters offering yourself up as the local “Cake Boss”, and posting any ensuing coverage on your page. And, while we’re talking about “cake” TV shows, post comments that critique episodes of Ace of Cakes. Encourage your Facebook fans to send in their favorite cake recipes, or have them vote for their favorite cake. Gradually, your command of the subject of cakes will begin to spread, inevitably drawing more customers to your business who, while there to buy a cake, may pick up a dozen donuts and a loaf of bread as well. Substitute “cake” for any of your product offerings, then “command” becomes a repeatable process.

2. Contest

PR driven contests are a great way to build traffic and fans on your Facebook business page so long as the contest raises and reinforces awareness about your service or product offerings. MasterCard and American Airlines, Dunkin’ Donuts and Captain America: The First Avenger, and EA Skate and Miracle Whip – all non-competing entities, recently teamed-up for co-sponsored Facebook contests.

Similarly, for a small business, Facebook contests are more successful and effective when co-sponsored with a non-competing local partner. Let’s go back to the bakery. We can indulge ourselves in pastries – almost guilt-free – as long as we keep up with our exercise. How about hitting the gym, literally and figuratively!

For example, a small business bakery works with a local gym for two weeks on a mutually beneficial promotion, and offers fans of the gym’s Facebook page 15% off of its whole wheat bread and gluten-free products; in exchange, the gym offers a 15% discount on products and services available at the health club to the bakery fans. During this promotion, new members of the bakery’s Facebook community will be eligible to win a month’s free supply of whole wheat bread. Similarly, new fans of the gym’s Facebook page can enter to win a free one-month membership. This out-of-the-box contest and unlikely pairing allows the bakery (and the gym) to spread brand awareness to a new new audience, online.

3. Cause

Nothing spreads goodwill like supporting a local cause, particularly one that you’re passionate about and has an active fan base on Facebook. Every major corporation and business helps support a variety of causes – Toys “R” Us and Autism Speaks, Macy’s and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Kmart and the March of Dimes. Local businesses should adopt the same big-business mentality, and not only help support a local charity, but engage your fans (and theirs) in a clever campaign to raise awareness for the cause and for you. Let’s go back to the baker who is in the food business. Inevitably, the baker is providing day-old bagels to soup kitchens, which is noble, but is it helping grow brand awareness and business, particularly via social media?

So, let’s put together a cause campaign. Suppose the baker embarks on a “Pie-Us” campaign to help the soup kitchen. The first order of business is to partner with a local restaurant (preferably one that the baker works with as a vendor, or any non-competing food business) for a new pie recipe contest through the bakery’s and restaurant’s Facebook pages. The champion pie (named after the winner) prepared by the bakery, is then sold to the restaurant and served there for one month. For each pie sold, the bakery and restaurant make an agreed-upon donation to the soup kitchen. The campaign helps a worthy cause, promotes brand awareness (for all three entities), solidifies the bakery as the local authority on pies, and creates excitement and new fans on the bakery’s Facebook page.

4. Connect

By its very nature, social media is meant to connect. So, Facebook initiatives should connect your business with new and existing customers. For every new fan you gain on Facebook through unique cause programs, contests or promotions, you’re automatically connecting with your fans’ Facebook friends, introducing your brand to an entirely new audience.

Many businesses keep their posts and activities limited to stale and business-centric posts, links and comments. Moreover, they treat the page as a circular, posting endless sales and specials. This isn’t what Facebook was intended to be used for, and this will not connect you with new customers.

A famous automotive CEO once said that the secret to success for a business is to “communicate, communicate, communicate.” Today, that word can be replaced with connect. Connect by commanding an issue. Connect with local and non-competing businesses. Connect contests to causes and promotions. Connect your brand to new customers by connecting PR to social media campaigns on Facebook!

Guest Author – John Casey, a former public and media relations executive for Toys “R” Us, Sears and Kmart, is currently director of freshfluff: spread good stuff!, a PR/social media agency in New York. Read about freshfluff’s successful PR/social media campaign for a Michigan tax business in the latest issue of Taxpro Journal.

Whether you are selling products via your website or trying to generate new business, building buzz is vital. As with offline marketing, if you can build up buzz around your brand, it will help boost your traffic and interest in your business. Not only can being active online bring direct traffic, it can also make the job of PR and marketing your services much easier. So how do you start? Here are a few tips to help you get the ball rolling. Remember, every website starts in the same position and that it does take time to build your brand online.

Meaningful and Useful Content
The content that you create and publish on your website should be at the center of your online activities. Good websites thrive on a constant flow of interesting and informative contextual content, and it is this content that will help push your brand. Having a regular source of content doesn’t just mean writing articles and blog posts; rich media like videos and images, and online contests are other great examples of engaging content.

Build Your Following
Right from the start, concentrate on building up your following. Focus on attracting follows on Twitter, Friends on Facebook or by encouraging people to subscribe to your opt-in mail content like newsletters and whitepapers. Test several channels. Establishing a growing amount of highly engaged people that you can push your content to, will dramatically increase your ability to generate buzz.

Converse Through Social Media
It is no secret that social media is a great way to reach a huge audience. However, to be effective you can’t just post randomly. Your strategy has to be backed up by regular and interesting content. There’s nothing more irritating than constantly being messaged by a company with nothing substantial to say or offer. Instead, take a more organic approach and converse with your followers, offering them useful content or to learn about their experience with your brand. If you can master this, you’re following will grow.

Keep Blogging
Having a blog on your website is a really easy way to keep your site updated with fresh content, as well as positively impact your SEO. If you already have a blog (and you should by now), use it as a hub to release regularly new and updated content. Publish a new blog post and then promote it via your social media accounts and email lists. This will drive follower traffic back to your website, and not to a third party site.

Be Consistent, Consistently
There’s no hard and fast rule to how much you should blog, or how much you should post via social media. However, it is important that you follow a consistent schedule and frequency that your followers can come to expect. As well, if you’ve set the expectation of offering up high quality content, don’t digress or you could begin to erode your followers. Stay consistent with expectations or, better yet, raise the bar.

Guest Author – Jon Quinton works for Who Is Hosting This, a one stop shop for hosting reviews from the people who use the services themselves.

Example of a Magento ecommerce theme.

Building a successful ecommerce website can be challenging, and require a lot of time and investment to ensure it delivers the online sales you expect. So, before you start building your money-making website, consider these five important things to help you generate revenue from site visitors:

1. Content is King
When thinking about the content, implement proven SEO principles to ensure that your webpages contain meaningful, original content rich with your primary search keywords. This will help you rank high in search engines like Google, which will in turn increase traffic to your site. Factor into your budget a good content writer who understands how to write for SEO. Over time, this service will prove invaluable.

2. Backend and Administration
Once you have mapped out t the content of your website, consider how you will run the site on a day-to-day basis. A database is required to keep track of orders and also create a backup which would protect important data. Also look into where you will be hosting your site. A good outsourced, dedicated hosting provider can save you lots unwanted expense and headaches.

3. Improvement
Keep your website as user friendly as possible. Continually test your landing pages, button placement and content to increase sales conversion from your ecommerce website. A great shopping experience will turn first-time shoppers into repeat customers. Think Amazon or Zappos. Out-of-the-box shopping cart solutions have become far more advance like allowing customers to save their information for future purchase or recommend additional complimentary products based on the original item selected. All, with the end goal of improving the user experience and revenue generated from your ecommerce website.

4. Design
What you put onto your site will determine how successful it will be. Review best practices for building a high conversion website. Or, even choose existing themes and templates for WordPress or the Magento ecommerce platform. It isn’t all about pretty pictures. Functionality, bold and relevant call to actions, and pleasing visuals all play a role in driving more sales through your ecommerce website.

5. Setup a Paypal or Other Merchant Account
Now that the rest of your ecommerce website is complete, you need to get paid! Choose the payment method that best works for you and your audience. Most smaller ecommerce websites start with just offeringPayPal payment because it’s simple and reputable. However, as your business grows, you will need to offer more payment options like Visa and Mastercard which means you’ll need to set up a merchant account. Merchant account forums are a great place to start your research, as there are many merchant accounts available. Find the one that best works for you.

Image Credit: All-Themes-Templates

Guest Author – Nisha Sandhu is the editor at merchantaccountforum.com. Nisha is passionate about online business ideas and growth.

The local newspaper in my city recently ran a “Best of 2011″ feature, revealing readers’ favorite restaurants, bars, boutiques, retail stores, etc. Living in a somewhat touristy town where small businesses are constantly vying for tourist dollars, these types of features have a direct impact on their bottom line.

The interesting part about the story was that this year they decided to not only announce the winners (based on percentage of votes), but they included a breakdown of how the votes were distributed. The results were very revealing and showed exactly why small businesses need to invest in some form of social media.

In the majority of categories, there wasn’t a dominant winner. In fact, most winners won with around 15-25% of the votes, with the Other category receiving the majority.

With so many different options to vote for, it makes sense that there wouldn’t be a single standout winner. However, this does highlight the importance of social media and how it could have been leveraged by small businesses to win this contest.

Realizing what the title of voted Best Whatever in 2011 could mean for their business, a savvy owner with a social media network in place would have simply had to send out a Tweet, Facebook message, or email to their subscribers asking for their loyal customers to please vote for them in the upcoming poll.

Given how spread out the votes were, this little push from a loyal customer base could have been enough to grab the title and pronounce them King of their industry for the year. This is exactly how the upfront effort of setting up any kind of social media interaction has direct payoffs in the real world.

So, while you may think that having a Facebook page for your burger joint is a waste of time, the competition – whose food and service is worse than yours – is boasting that they’re the best in the business and stealing your customers because they’re actively using social media to reach out to their customers or community.

A social media strategy shouldn’t become the sole focal point of your marketing and advertising efforts, but it’s definitely worth your while to think up some simple giveaways or discounts to entice your customers to follow you on your chosen social media stream.

Remember, if you do go this route, you have to engage your customer base regularly and offer them value to keep them interested in being on your lists. It would be bad business, after all, to offer them nothing and then count on them for support when something like this contest rolls around.

Guest Author – Steve Albright is a marketing consultant and editor at Reviewopedia.com where he also helps readers find Legitimate Work at Home Jobs.

The online advertising industry is one of the fastest growing industries as of late. According to an eMarketer report, online ad spending will grow 20% this year to reach $31.3 billion. As a small business owner, that leaves us wondering where all this online advertising success if being found?

Well, the majority of online advertising spending is found in search, with Google and other search engine giants set to take in $14.4 billion. However other advertising methods are growing steadily, and slowly seeing measurable results with small business marketing.

Banner Ads (Display Advertising)
In 2011, banner ads will grow roughly 22%, making online ad spending a $7.6 billion dollar industry. eMarketer is quoted with, “as more people view more pages, banner inventory growth will outpace pricing growth—but the bottom line leads to more overall dollars as more marketers, including local ones, buy more display ads.” Display ads priced on a CPM scale can offer superior value for your small business. Here are 3 tips to follow if you are thinking about purchasing banner advertisements in the near future:

1. Always evaluate a potential publisher’s audience and choose quality traffic over quantity.
2. Make sure your product is “brandable” and test display ads before investing too heavily in banner.
3. Test different landing pages and different ad copy consistently.

Video Advertising
Video is seeing success amongst big, corporate companies for its engagement figures however; can this medium translate to small businesses? I think if done correctly video poses a huge opportunity for small businesses in 2011. Video is not only engaging, but it is being leveraged in different placeholders within websites to improve retention.

According to the same eMarketer survey, video ads are set to grow 52% this year to $2.2 billion. For SMBs, video poses somewhat of an uncharted territory. The barriers to entry are high and many small businesses will need to see demonstrated success that this medium works before jumping in. With a targeted ad network of publishers and an engaging message, I think small businesses can really benefit from video. Personally, as a consumer, I would trust a video message from a local business much more than a corporate online commercial.

Both banner and video pose opportunities for engagement. As banner continues to be driven by mobile ad spending and video remains, somewhat of a dark horse; I think that business can successfully leverage these advertising platforms in their marketing mix. All that is needed is a highly targeted publisher, a focused and clear message and bit of faith.

Guest Author – Matt Krautstrunk is a writer on topics ranging from social media marketing to telephone systems at Resource Nation, an online resource providing small business payroll services tips for SMBs and entrepreneurs.