I work with companies of all sizes. The ones that are at the same time the most fun and the most frustrating
are on the smaller side of the spectrum. These companies are hungry and want to succeed. They even tend to be much more optimistic about things than their enterprise counterparts.
That’s all well and good but I see far too often that when it comes time to act on the confidence the crickets can be heard pretty quickly. The “I’m going to beat this!” bravado can be interesting at a networking event but when it’s time to act it holds little water.
Here are 5 quick, easy and basic options for small and medium businesses to consider so they can “walk the talk” for little or no investment (other than time of course).
- Have an audit performed on their entire internet presence – While this may seem a bit more than quick, easy and basic it really isn’t if done correctly. Internet marketing is complex only because there are a lot of options. Unless you know where you are and then have a road map to move forward you will end up in the ditch of the information superhighway.One way to do this very inexpensively is my tool SEMCheck (shameless plug).
- Create a LinkedIn profile for you and your business – This takes all of 30 minutes in total and at least gets you in the game of social networking. You don’t need to be any type of technical person either. Just do it.
- Check your information at InfoUSA – This will allow you to make sure that the data for your company is correct at least in this one major database. The others to consider are Acxiom and Amacai. If you don’t take control of your data someone else will.
- Do basic internet marketing – Make sure your title tags are unique for all your pages and utilize the appropriate keywords. Review your content and update it regularly. Add pages or modify your existing content. The search engines hate to see that you last updated your site in 2008. By the way, there is SO much more to consider here but you gotta crawl before you can walk.
- Encourage your customers to review your services – Of course, how much they can review and rave about you is dependent on where you have a profile etc so look around for the most influential local directories and listing services. At the very least make sure that Google Maps and Yahoo! Local have the right information for you. That will help.
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Well, if that isn’t basic I don’t know what is. Stop talking and start doing. It’s not hard. You made it this far, right? Don’t quit the race before you use all of your resources to make it through these tough times.
FT Takeaway: Any business on the planet can do some very basic things to at least start some from of an internet marketing campaign. While there are hundreds of ‘basic’ things to consider you are better off doing something than trying to find out if it is the absolute right thing.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Frank,
The challenge as an internet marketing company in working with smaller companies, is that their budgets are typically small and they need every dollar to create an immediate and high margin return. In many cases they do not have good analytical data to base marketing decision from. I enjoy working with small to mid-sized enterprises as well. I have found that setting reasonable expectations that everyone can agree, on the front end is the best way to ensure a successful relationship.
Well internet marketing is the activity of both advertising and selling goods and services online. This type of business is constantly growing in popularity, with millions of people now buying things on the internet.There is no formula for an effective Internet marketing strategy.Ne ways good post!