When I used to think of marketing, I thought of brochures, business cards, signs, paper advertisements and person-to-person sales. Now, with the evolution of technology has revolutionized the way we market.
Marketing today is not the same it was even a year ago. Where I used to look for ads in newspapers, I look for ads online. Most of the time, the online sales at, Macy’s for example, offer a better selection and sale prices than in stores. It is also all about convenience.
If you are a small business looking to immerse yourself in era of the internet here are a few tips:
- Step one: create your logo and your slogan. Together, these serve as the building blocks for your marketing.
- Develop your website entirely before you market it. Do not send users to a website that says coming soon! It will discourage users to return to the site. Make sure your site its completely user friendly and one that users feel is secure. Make users feel like navigation of and purchase from your website is as simple as 1, 2, 3.
- If you are a Twitter supporter… you must put forth a dedicated effort to keep up with it and provide informational and frequent tweets. Do your research. Learn how to get followed and how not to. It is very easy to get carried away with hash tags (i.e. #study, #tech, #gadget…). Beware of being a spammer. Before you tweet look at your message with a critical eye. Also, make sure you target the right market/people to follow. Don’t just base your decision on a search for key hash tags. Be thorough, research the potential candidate for your product further by seeing whom they follow and who is following them. Additionally, go back in time a bit and see what keywords were previously tweeted.
- A key thing to get users to your page is an unbiased blog. Provide free, informational and professional advice. For example, if your website is about fitness, offer site visitors free access to “Free Fitness Facts”; maybe a post written by a regular at the gym or an ex-personal trainer. Mention little or nothing about your specific product offered; if users like what they read, they will navigate back to your home site.
