KevinNewcomb.com

Internet marketing for a small business can be a daunting task. First, there’s the Web site to be built, which can be a huge job in itself…but once you get your site up and running, what’s next? The online marketing space can be a scary place, even for seasoned offline marketers and savvy small business owners.

There are so many online marketing ideas to choose from, and so many unscrupulous consultants looking to make money online at the expense of your small business, that it can get to the point where many small businesses avoid Internet marketing altogether, and stick with their tried-and-true Yellow Pages listings.

There are far too many marketing opportunities on the Internet for you to consider them all, and many of them are not the right choice for a business that’s just getting online. To cut through some of the confusion, here are some small business marketing tips to help you get your business online:

1. Create a Web presence. The first step for most small businesses is to register a domain name and build a Web site. Try to pick a domain name that’s easy to remember, and doesn’t have lots of dashes. Get a dot-com domain whenever possible. Choose a reliable host that allows you to set up an e-mail address using your domain.
2. Build a Web site. Your small business Web site doesn’t have to be an elaborate site, with all the latest bells and whistles, but it has to look professional. If you’re not a designer, hire someone who is. Remember that for most service businesses and local retailers, your Web site’s main purpose is to inform potential customers about your business and convey a professional image. If you create a Web site for your business that does that, you’re ahead of the game. Make it easy to find your physical location (including city and state), your phone number, and your e-mail address (but only if you’re going to answer it by the next day, at the latest). If you service other towns or regions, make sure you mention those areas on your site, so that users searching for those locations will find your site.
3. Get listed in Internet Yellow Pages listings. See, you don’t have to step far out of your comfort zone after all. Start with the Yellow Pages providers you’re already working with. They’ve all got an online version by now, and you can get listed in many of them for free, or nearly free. They also offer “preferred placement” or other premium services, but you can begin with a free listing and move on from there. Start with Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com. These services supply data to several search engines and directories as well, so they are the best place to start.
4. Create a profile in local search engines and city guides. Like the Yellow Pages directories, you can also get free listings from local search providers. For example, Google, Yahoo, Bing Local, Local.com and CitySearch all provide a simple interface to add or update a listing.
5. Submit to the major data suppliers. Many directories and local search engines use data from one of the top data suppliers to fill out their listings with local business data. You should check to be sure you’re listed correctly in the databases of Acxiom, InfoUSA and Localeze.
6. Add or update your profile on local review sites. Chances are, some of your customers are using sites like Yelp, Insider Pages, or OpenList to find and rate local businesses. Make sure you’re listed there, and then consider asking your satisfied customers to write a review of your business. You could tie it into a promotion or giveaway, or offer some kind of coupon for users who go to the trouble of doing so.
7. Submit your site to quality directories. Gone are the days when quantity won out over quality. Don’t waste your time submitting to hundreds of directories, or paying for a service to do that for you. They won’t help you, and they could actually hurt your site’s rankings in the search results. There are about a half dozen general directories worth paying for, including Best of the Web, JoeAnt, GoGuides or MassiveLinks . Look around for local directories and vertically targeted directories in your niche.
8. Build quality links. Start with your existing business partners, professional organizations, satisfied customers, and even your competitors. Remember, it’s about quality now, so forego the random reciprocal link exchange, be cautious with paid links, and spend the time to build links for the long haul. Deb Mastaler offers a terrific guide to link building for new Web sites on a budget.
9. Test out a small pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. A PPC campaign, in the form of search ads or contextual text ads, can drive targeted traffic to your site. You decide how broadly or narrowly to target your ads, using keywords, location, and other factors. You bid on the per-click price you want to pay to have your ad appear in the search results for each keyword, and set a budget so that you won’t spend more than your limit. The PPC platforms, like Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, and Microsoft AdCenter, make it fairly easy to create a simple campaign. If you’d rather not take on the management of a search or contextual advertising campaign yourself, you can take advantage of a growing number of a managed PPC providers, which offer packaged deals for marketing a small business. Providers like Inceptor, Leads.com, LocalLaunch and ReachLocal all have solutions tailored to the small business marketing needs of local businesses.

So right there, you have 9 ways to promote your small business Web site. And that’s not even counting an advertising campaign.