Your Questions About Internet Marketing Strategies For A Small Business

Drew answers:

From my experience it helps to put together a marketing plan so you can understand the market that you operate in and the type of customers you are looking for and the best way to find them.

Its a common mistake to look at what medium (on-line media, traditional media) first rather then understanding your customer and what they need, how best to reach them? What type of message do you want to give? Being an on-line business does not mean that you should not use traditional media. I have found that a mixture of the two derives the best results and gives you more for your pound.

Weather you are a new business or an established business i have found that the following approach works best in preparation of a marketing plan. It is called SOSTAC ( SOSTAC® is a registered trade mark of PR Smith. More information at www.prsmith.org.) which stands for Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action, Control this is an integrated approach to planning. The plan asks specific questions
1. Where are you now? (Situation)
2. Where do you want to go? (Objectives)
3. How are you going to get there? (Strategy)
4. How are you going to get there (Tactics)
5. How are you going to get the plan to work? (Action)
6. How are you going to ensure arrival? (Control)

This will assist you in developing an appropriate plan but will also allow you to take into consideration the whole organisation, your financial situation, legal etc. This is quite a comprehensive tool and can be used for small or large marketing organisation. I have included a number of resources which should assist you.

Everything is an assumption unless you have a clear plan of action and clear understanding of your customers and market. Once that is done it will be clear for you as to what is the best way to target those markets. You will be surprised as to what you find out and what you see once you have undertaken this process.

Today there is plethora of activities you can undertake especially on line with the emergence of social media, applications, mobile devices, and the advancement of technology at such a fast pace opens up a range of routes to market and methods to communicate.

But when it comes down it its the best laid plans that succeed. There is no need to write 100 page document but a detailed plan will make the road clear.

Remember social media can have huge impact on your business but how can you control weather that’s negative or positive and are you prepared if its negative remember if its easier to reach your customers its easier to reach you. With the speed that information travels on this global highway bad news will reach your customers as will good news.

The plan will help you determine how best to tackle that, avoid mistakes and invest your hard earned money in the most fruitful avenues that gives you the best payback, return on investment. After you have undertaken this plan you may find that social media is the best media for you to access your key stakeholders but at least you know and your sure with the help of the plan you will know how best to communicate and engage with them but will also give you some valuable knowledge.

Good look with your endeavours and I hope this was useful for you

Drew answers:

Standard investment advice is that you should invest in a diversified mix of stocks, bonds, and money market funds. If you are like most people you will invest part of your money aggressively in stocks, and part conservatively in money market funds and bond funds. However, some young people will go all stocks, and some very conservative people will go all money markets. The links below have on-line questionnaires which will give you an idea of how to do “Asset Allocation,” determining how much to put in each type of investment.

You want to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks as individual stocks are too risky. Highly knowledgeable people can buy a properly balanced portfolio, but most folks have a difficult time balancing things on their own. They will misbalance their portfolio by buying all small stocks or all growth stocks, or some other misbalanced assortment of stocks. Back in 2000, Some people bought all Internet stocks; they got burnt when they all crashed together. You have to diversify across industries. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best to buy mutual funds that will diversify for you. Buy no-load, low cost funds. Mutual funds should have expense ratios of less than 0.5%.

If your company offers a 401K plan at work, try to invest the most you can. The money grows tax free, and some companies will match your contribution. Investing in a mutual fund IRA is also a good idea. If you have children, you may want to consider a 529 plan or other college savings plan that grows tax free.

I like index funds. Because of their broad diversification, you are less likely to have a dramatic drop in value. They also have the lowest expenses. For stock funds, I would suggest putting ~70-80% of your money in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. And ~20-30% in a foreign stock index fund. The Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund is good for a bond fund. The Vanguard Target Retirement funds can be good all-in-one stock and bond funds for an IRA. However, there are many different opinions out there on what the best mutual funds are. Read the links below and form your own opinion.

If you have high-interest debt, like credit cards, it is best to pay this off first before trying most of the investment ideas above. You should also have 3-6 months of salary saved up as an emergency fund in a bank or money market fund before trying more risky investments.

I will warn you that there is a tremendous amount of stock investing books and websites that teach stock investing strategies that don’t work. Particularly bad are people that teach “technical analysis” systems that sound impressive, but don’t work.

Believing advice you get on Yahoo answers can be risky, so read these websites for further information. If you find it too confusing, contact a professional financial advisor. They will charge you significant commissions, however.

Drew answers:

The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is
to first set up a website and publish its domain name
on major search directories such as Google.com,
Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?…… And
MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these
search directories to provide them with goods and
services. In a sense, these search directories are a
very large Internet Yellow Pages.

Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage
fail to contain “generic” keywords, then anyone using
such “generic” queries will not be able to discover
your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website,
in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.

You may want to consider some simple algorithms which,
when observed and committed in designing of a website
with placement of various critical metatags that can
surely achieve a high search engine presence and
increase Internet traffic to your website. These
metatag strategies work well with published webpages
at Google and Yahoo.

Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based
website, make sure to fill-in the property entries
such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing
to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can
be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the
Internet audience and their incoming setup. For
example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages
take too long to load up and therefore analog users
will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the
Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL
lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So
before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple
question, “Who’s my end user – is he on dialup or
DSL?” And if you had to choose between these two users
for maximum marketability, then select analog users
since 80% of most resident users are still analog
Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages
is best for them.

A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text,
is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit
the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a
graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.

Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots
are unable to properly classify textual material.

Placement of Metatags:

A ranking or search order does take place with Google
and Yahoo and it begins with the “Title” metag which
should consist of no more than 65 characters separated
by commas. The “Title” should describe in generic
terms, the goods and services, followed by a location
from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state.
The placement of a domain name which is not generic
within the “Title” is not appropriate, unless your
domain name is a major recognizable brand name.

The second metatag is the “Description” which is
usually 41 words to form a complete sentence which
best describes one’s goods and services.

And the very last category – “Keywords” are also
somewhat limited to 15-16 words which can be plural
and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries
which could be mistaken as “spamdexed entries” which
is defined as the loading, and submission of
repetitive words into a particular metatag category.
“Spamdexing” when discovered on a webpage and reported
to Google’s spamreport.com can result in the
elimination of your website from their search
directory.

Good luck!