I recently attended a business get together sponsored by the Adirondack Regional Chambers of Commerce (ARCC) in Cambridge, New York in southern Washington County. I spoke to a few small businesses presenting on how they use Internet Marketing Strategies. I learned the majority of small businesses still rely on WOM - word of mouth as their main media channel.
A word of mouth channel is important and provides quality leads but will not be able to support a business over the long term. This was also substaniated in a survey I conducted with local businesses. This will be presented shortly.

Small businesses today still do not realize or have developed a strategy to promote their business effectively online. This mainly due to not understanding how to leverage the many options available such as:

• Site Optimization - What is the best approach?
• Pay per Click - What is the cost? What Keywords should I use?
• Press Release Optimizaton - Unsure of how this works
• Linking Strategies - Getting sites to link to yours is good
• Submission - There are many directories and search engines to submit to
• Email Marketing - How do I start a customer email list?

Small Businesses today are confronted with many options on how to effectively navigate the online media channel. Selecting the right Internet Marketing Strategies is key for a successful online campaign.

It looks like online advertising spend is on the rise again. This is no surprise seeing that businesses will follow where their customers are going and today their customers are going online to research and buy products.

“Online advertising marked its 10th straight quarter of growth, according to the IAB study, with the second quarter setting a new record for Internet marketing spending.
Search marketing continued to dominate, grabbing 40 percent of the total online ad spending in the quarter.”
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/F5V2QnRSncyYYH/Online-Advertising-Continues-Rapid-Growth.xhtml

The most popular online channel to use is pay-per-click marketing. This allows a business to place their ad copy in front of a user at the exact time they enter their search queries. It's good intelligence to know what keywords your prospects enter to find your product or services and which ones are entered the most.

Do you know?

The first activity for any search engine marketing program is keyword research. This encompasses research to determine what phrases users are typing in the search engines to find a businesses's product or services. Their are many tools available to accomplish this on the Internet. Some tools such as Overture inventory will present the average number of searches per month for each keyword.

As a small business you should ask yourself:

- Do I know the terms my prospects are typing in search engines to find my products or services?

- Do I know which terms are typed in the most?

- How can I leverage these terms to optimize my site or use in a pay per click campaign?

Small businesses that are serious about marketing online need to identify the keywords that drive traffic to their site.

The purpose of this blog is to educate and help small businesses learn about search engine marketing strategies to help their businesses grow and increase sales from the Internet channel.

I request all small business owners and interested visitors to click on the comments link located at the bottom of each post and enter any question or comment they have on Internet Marketing or Search Engine Marketing. I will review and provide an answer and follow up if necessary.

Best regards,

David Regan White
Search Marketing Strategist
Greenwich Media

Many small business today identify their web site as their main marketing channel yet they are remiss in developing search engine marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) to help drive traffic to their web site.

Greenwich Media was started to address this issue. Mainly to help small businesses learn how to leverage search engine marketing strategies increase traffic to and leads and sales from their web sites.