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Internet Marketing for Small Business
You have created your website, uploaded your products information, and
left your contact information on the website. Now you are about to promote
your website. There are numerous techniques that you can use to mark your
web site, whether a new web site or an existing one. However, the major
three of them are search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and
bulk email marketing.
Web Site Submission & Search Engine Marketing
Everyone wants the best placement in the search
engines and directories as more and more people use search engines to find
what they want. But which search engines should I register with? It is
estimated that the top 20 search engines account for 95% of web traffic
combined; Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Hotbot, Lycos and
WebCrawler. Actually, Yahoo isn't really a search engine, but rather a
directory.
Paid Advertisement
Paid advertising includes fixed-rate banner
program in portal websites (e.g. Yahoo) and pay-per-click advertising in
search engines (e.g. Overture). Banner Advertising is one of the oldest
forms of online marketing. The click-through rate (people clicking on the ad
to visit a website) can be relatively low. But it's not on click-through
alone that you should assess banner advertising effectiveness. It can also
raise your brand awareness and reinforce brand recognition.
Pay-per-click is alternative if you want immediate
traffic to your website. As its name suggest, you only pay for clicks. Many
search engines provide such opportunities. Major of them are Google AdWords,
Overture, LookSmart, etc.
Email Marketing
E-mail marketing can be effective only if it is
permission-based. Continually sending unsolicited emails can be prosecuted.
If you are accused of sending spam you can run into trouble, ranging from
impolite responses through to loss of internet access accounts and the
destruction of your business reputation. In short: don’t spam your
customers. They won’t like it, and you won’t like the results.
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are great tools for promoting
your web business. Affiliate programs are a lot
like networking marketing. Affiliate programs pay
other websites for referring people to your
company's products, services or web sites. The
commission that you pay to them can vary between
5% - 15% of the purchase price for any product or
service that they referred someone to and they
made a purchase.
Link Exchange
Link exchange program is free, but is a very
efficient technique you can use to increase
traffic to your web site and boost your search
engine rankings. The benefits of having a large
number of relevant web sites linking to yours are
two-fold: Direct Traffic and PageRank for link
popularity.
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