You have to get your name in front of the people who are interested in your product or service. Advertising isn’t cost effective for most independent business owners. Attending community meetings and speaking for local business groups gives you exposure to a group of individuals and can take up a lot of your time. Here is one suggestion how utilizing the power of the Internet greatly expands your ability to connect with potential clients. A website…
Allows the business owner to attract and cultivate new clients
Any business, whether local or online, needs to have their domain name on all printed and published information, such as business cards. Write and article? Make sure your domain name is noted in your bio. Interviewed by the local paper? Your domain name needs to be here too.
Many metropolitan areas have online listings of businesses by category. Get your name and domain on these lists. Take advantage of the interactive quality of the Internet and get your business reviewed in online services such as yelp. You want to build a list of potential clients.
The goal is to bring people to your website where they can find out more about you and your business. Think of the time you save. You don’t have to meet everyone in person in order to introduce them to your business. Your website will do that for you.
Your website is an opportunity for people to get to know you further by putting their name on your list. You offer them an incentive for adding their name . Depending on your business or service you may offer a free quote or a report you’ve prepared. You have started to build your list. Congratulations!
WORD OF THE DAY: List Your list consists of the names of people you collect on your website. They have indicated an interest in hearing more about you or your product and, by entering their information, have consented to receive your emails. This is a bare bones definition. There is a lot more related to the subject of building a list which I will cover in more detail later.
-Pat
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Last week Jeff called to ask about developing a website. He said a number of people had recommended he put “something” up. He thought it was probably a good idea only he wasn’t sure how it would work for him.
Jeff has a number of business interests in the area of holistic health, one of which is Iyengar Yoga. He is an instructor and wants to focus first on building his local business, particularly his list of clients. I explained that a website could accomplish this goal and more. One of the benefits of a website is the ability to get the attention of people interested in your local area. A well-planned website…
Allows the business owner to target a specific geographic area
Someone who has a yoga business in city, for example Los Angeles, wants to have as many people from that area coming to their website. Or, in Jeff’s case, he may want to attract people who are looking for a yoga instructor in Los Angeles or are traveling to the area for business or other short-term stay.
Jeff wanted to know more about how his website could be set up to target people in LA. I explained how Google, Yahoo and the other search engine programs allowed the business owner to specify their geographic location. When someone looking for a local yoga studio or instructor types “yoga instructor Los Angeles” into the Google search bar, Google looks for all yoga instructors specifying that they are in Los Angeles and displays the list. There are more tools available to attract local clients. We will be covering them in the future.
WORD OF THE DAY: Search Engine The Internet is huge. Google, Yahoo, MSN and others are companies who supply a program someone can use to find information and places of business they want. Each company has a proprietary program that sets the way they search for and retrieve information.
Pat
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“You’re funny,” she said. My reaction was “oh, oh.” You see I’m not a standup comedian or anything like that. I’m a marketing person and I had been explaining how she could increase her profit by taking her offline business to the Internet. My potential client pointed out that she didn’t understand half of what I was talking about. I was lucky. Sometimes a client will just disappear if she doesn’t understand the language
You see, I had grown so comfortable with doing business on the web that I temporarily forgot that not everyone understood what I was saying. It was a little like trying to understand what my boyfriend was talking about the first time he took me to a UCLA basketball game. I had to learn the language in order to participate.
I’m not sure exactly where I blew it. I’m pretty sure she was okay with Google. Was it keywords? Page rank and Alexis? She was ready to go ahead marketing her business on the web. It was time for me to slow down and make sure she understood each step we were going to take.
She also needed to know why it was important to do what we were doing. Today she has a successful blog that is moving up in page ranking. Oops, there’s one of those “funny” words again.
I love marketing. I particularly love my new passion, marketing on the world wide web. What I would like to do here is to share that passion with you and, at the same time, bring you up-to-date on the language and the opportunity for you to increase your profit by developing an active Internet presence.
The definition of the word “blog.” is a good place to start since that is what my client and I were discussing.
WORD OF THE DAY: Blog or web + log A public web page where the blog owner, or blogger, journals about a topic or person that is of interest to them. Anyone who comes to the page has an opportunity to comment on the information and opinions of the blogger.
Blogging is an important part of your Internet marketing plan. We’ll be covering why as we go along. You will also become more comfortable with the language as we will be adding new words to your vocabulary along the way.
Tags:blog·business blog
Independent business owners recognize they have an opportunity to ramp up their business using the power of the Internet. However, the tech stuff and the language can be a bit overwhelming at first. My goal is to publish information specifically targeted to the independent business owner. A basic plan for the start up website is designed to introduce the owner to another venue for promoting their business.
Tags:business owner·independent business owner·internet start up
