Start Advertising on the Internet as Soon as You Can
The one advantage traditional advertising has over Internet advertising is, it is instant, in so much as you can design an advert and next week it can be in a local or national paper or in a specialist magazine next month, if it is monthly or within a few months, for bi-monthly issues.
Internet advertising is a bit more long term, unless you want to pay to advertise on the Internet. If you want free advertising then a website should be build for your business, but please realise it will not be in front of anyone for some time. But done correctly, when it is receiving traffic, people viewing, it will receive traffic regularly and for a long time to come.
So unless you have all the contacts and potential customers you need for your new business you should arrange your Internet presence as soon as you can. If you are willing to pay to advertise on the Internet you can have instant exposure on Google or Facebook. Both provide a paid for advertising scheme.
If you want free advertising you will have to look to the Internet as traditional advertising is rarely free. We now know that 500 million people have a Facebook account and 50% login daily spending on average 20 minutes on line chatting to friends. Although Facebook has, at present, overtaken Google for traffic, Internet users still use the main search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to search for information.
Now we have iPhones and smart phones, computers and laptops are not the only way we browse the Internet. The younger generations are increasingly using the Internet technologies in their lives. Rarely do young people pick up a local paper or local directory to find anything, they use their computers or their mobile phones to find the information they want.
I don't know about Yellow Book in the US but Yellow Pages in the UK used to be A4 in size and about 1.5 inches thick. Now it is A5 in size andinches thick. It is not smaller because they have reduced the print size it is because businesses are advertising on the Internet and some in the online version of Yellow Book and Yellow Pages.
Whatever age you are when you start a new business you know a large group of your customers will be the 25 to 45 age group unless you are a funeral director you will need an online presence. That said even funeral parlours are now online. Having an online presence is a long term project for all businesses. Although you can change you website design regularly building high visibility of your website takes time.
This is where businesses are put off advertising with any serious intent on the Internet. Yes they want a website but after paying out for one, they see it just sitting there in the Internet wilderness, without any visitors. Some find website designers who are also good website optimisers but most end up with a pretty and functional website ready to take orders but no one is visiting the website because they are unaware it exists.
Although website designers can guarantee a website design they can rarely guarantee getting your website to a top search engine result. The first question a website designer should ask you is do you want just a website designed or do you want to get customers from the visitors of your website? If you want customers from your website your designer should ask you the next question, which should be, what type of customers are you looking to attract? Not just buyers but buyers of what?
Lets say you are a business that makes and supplies curtains. In a traditional advertisement you could advertise all your different services in a single advertisement. Or advertise one particular part of your curtain business, something like custom made blinds as an example. Either way your paid for advertisement will be in each paper delivered and hopefully read by a number of potential customers. End of that advertisement until you do another.
On the other hand your website will not be seen by the local population the week after your website designer completes your website. It may not be seen by anyone for the next six months or even after a year. You will have spent out for a website and received no ROI, unless your website designer or someone else optimises your website for the search engines.
When a company or individual offers an optimisation service for your business website you need to know exactly what keywords or phrases you want the website optimised for. For example if you want to optimise your website for broad terms like 'curtains' you will find there are millions of websites competing for that term and to obtain a page one or two ranking for that term may be impossible in the short term because other websites have established themselves.
This is the time when your optimisation company and yourselves will need to carry out some research. You may of heard the term niche marketing which is how you must view your business in regards to getting traffic to your website.
In the traditional world of advertising you know when you advertise locally that you may see other local companies advertising similar businesses at the same time as you but you know your advert is visible. It is quite different in Internet advertising. Everyone is advertising all the time, Websites, which are adverts, are not put up for a short period of time and then taken down. If there are a million 'curtain business' websites they are there all competing for that top page one or two ranking in search engine results constantly.
So how do you get visibility for your website when you are another 'curtain business'? You choose a specialist area of your curtain business like 'hand made blinds' or 'custom made shutters' or a niche area of the curtain business. How do you know what niche area to go for? You carry out that all important research into what people are searching for in your business.
There are many tool on the Internet to help with this research and the best free tool is Googles keyword search tool. Once you understand you will have to go for a niche market you will still have to wait to see if and when your website moves up the search engine ranking. But when it does it generally will stay there for a period of time. Optimising a website is an on going process and do not be surprised to see your website move up and down the rankings.
Websites come and go the same as businesses. A business does well when it attracts customers because it has the products or services its customers want. A website is the same and will do well if it offers its customers the products and services they are looking for. The major benefit the Internet gives us is the ability to monitor and analyze the visitors to our websites so that we can modify and change to the trends of our visitors and contact through email and respond to enquiries.
Internet advertising is a bit more long term, unless you want to pay to advertise on the Internet. If you want free advertising then a website should be build for your business, but please realise it will not be in front of anyone for some time. But done correctly, when it is receiving traffic, people viewing, it will receive traffic regularly and for a long time to come.
So unless you have all the contacts and potential customers you need for your new business you should arrange your Internet presence as soon as you can. If you are willing to pay to advertise on the Internet you can have instant exposure on Google or Facebook. Both provide a paid for advertising scheme.
If you want free advertising you will have to look to the Internet as traditional advertising is rarely free. We now know that 500 million people have a Facebook account and 50% login daily spending on average 20 minutes on line chatting to friends. Although Facebook has, at present, overtaken Google for traffic, Internet users still use the main search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to search for information.
Now we have iPhones and smart phones, computers and laptops are not the only way we browse the Internet. The younger generations are increasingly using the Internet technologies in their lives. Rarely do young people pick up a local paper or local directory to find anything, they use their computers or their mobile phones to find the information they want.
I don't know about Yellow Book in the US but Yellow Pages in the UK used to be A4 in size and about 1.5 inches thick. Now it is A5 in size andinches thick. It is not smaller because they have reduced the print size it is because businesses are advertising on the Internet and some in the online version of Yellow Book and Yellow Pages.
Whatever age you are when you start a new business you know a large group of your customers will be the 25 to 45 age group unless you are a funeral director you will need an online presence. That said even funeral parlours are now online. Having an online presence is a long term project for all businesses. Although you can change you website design regularly building high visibility of your website takes time.
This is where businesses are put off advertising with any serious intent on the Internet. Yes they want a website but after paying out for one, they see it just sitting there in the Internet wilderness, without any visitors. Some find website designers who are also good website optimisers but most end up with a pretty and functional website ready to take orders but no one is visiting the website because they are unaware it exists.
Although website designers can guarantee a website design they can rarely guarantee getting your website to a top search engine result. The first question a website designer should ask you is do you want just a website designed or do you want to get customers from the visitors of your website? If you want customers from your website your designer should ask you the next question, which should be, what type of customers are you looking to attract? Not just buyers but buyers of what?
Lets say you are a business that makes and supplies curtains. In a traditional advertisement you could advertise all your different services in a single advertisement. Or advertise one particular part of your curtain business, something like custom made blinds as an example. Either way your paid for advertisement will be in each paper delivered and hopefully read by a number of potential customers. End of that advertisement until you do another.
On the other hand your website will not be seen by the local population the week after your website designer completes your website. It may not be seen by anyone for the next six months or even after a year. You will have spent out for a website and received no ROI, unless your website designer or someone else optimises your website for the search engines.
When a company or individual offers an optimisation service for your business website you need to know exactly what keywords or phrases you want the website optimised for. For example if you want to optimise your website for broad terms like 'curtains' you will find there are millions of websites competing for that term and to obtain a page one or two ranking for that term may be impossible in the short term because other websites have established themselves.
This is the time when your optimisation company and yourselves will need to carry out some research. You may of heard the term niche marketing which is how you must view your business in regards to getting traffic to your website.
In the traditional world of advertising you know when you advertise locally that you may see other local companies advertising similar businesses at the same time as you but you know your advert is visible. It is quite different in Internet advertising. Everyone is advertising all the time, Websites, which are adverts, are not put up for a short period of time and then taken down. If there are a million 'curtain business' websites they are there all competing for that top page one or two ranking in search engine results constantly.
So how do you get visibility for your website when you are another 'curtain business'? You choose a specialist area of your curtain business like 'hand made blinds' or 'custom made shutters' or a niche area of the curtain business. How do you know what niche area to go for? You carry out that all important research into what people are searching for in your business.
There are many tool on the Internet to help with this research and the best free tool is Googles keyword search tool. Once you understand you will have to go for a niche market you will still have to wait to see if and when your website moves up the search engine ranking. But when it does it generally will stay there for a period of time. Optimising a website is an on going process and do not be surprised to see your website move up and down the rankings.
Websites come and go the same as businesses. A business does well when it attracts customers because it has the products or services its customers want. A website is the same and will do well if it offers its customers the products and services they are looking for. The major benefit the Internet gives us is the ability to monitor and analyze the visitors to our websites so that we can modify and change to the trends of our visitors and contact through email and respond to enquiries.
