Internet Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses

Did you know that currently there are 3,691,710,349 internet users around the globe? That’s a lot of people! This does not stop here as the internet user base is growing at a steady yet rapid pace. The eMarketer in 2020 estimated that digital ad spending is likely to increase from $83 billion in 2017 to $129.23 billion in 2022.

This simply underlines the fact that internet marketing has taken over the old school channels of marketing such as TV and radio broadcasts. In fact, it won’t be wrong to term 2017 as the year where internet marketing officially took over marketing via TV. Here is a quick look at the total spending on internet marketing in the USA from 2014 to 2020.

Marketing through mobile has been a big part of the statistics shown above. However, one cannot exclude social media and video ads while highlighting internet marketing. Half of the budget shown above has been injected into marketing via Google and Facebook.

Let’s have a look at revenue generated by different digital media platforms through advertisements.

While big or established companies are often open to experimenting with Google ads and Facebook ads, at times it is not as suitable for start-ups or small businesses. The targeted marketing offered by Facebook and Google requires a good amount of money to be invested which definitely is not suitable for small businesses. You do not need a huge corporate budget to compete online.

So if you are a small business owner and you are looking for free yet effective ways of internet marketing strategies, you have come to the right place.

What are the different popular internet marketing strategies?

The popular internet marketing strategies include:

1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
4. Content Marketing
5. Display Advertisement
6. Email Marketing

However, when first starting out as a small business, you need not worry about trying every possible internet marketing strategy. The wise thing to do is to pick and choose and refine the strategy as you go along – sticking with approaches that work and weeding out the ones that don’t.

Internet Marketing Strategies – Approaches and Challenges

1. Up your SEO Game

The first thing you would want to do is to analyze your current SEO situation. There are plenty of SEO analyzing tools which are freely available on the internet. You can use these tools to analyze your content. Using an SEO analyzer will help you get a glimpse of the search performance of our website as well as that of your competitors.

Don’t forget that you can use the keywords in description tags, header tags and title tags. These factors are given more weightage by Google than fiddling around with overall keyword densities and stuffing. By performing these simple steps you can familiarize yourself with how you are ranking against others. Once you grasp this idea, things will get easier and you can start to improve your SEO.

Although these are only the introductory level SEO steps, but if your content strategy is serving the needs of your customers well, you can start seeing significant organic improvements for your website.

2. Keep Focused on Keywords

Keyword search is the core of improving your internet marketing strategy. It is always recommended to perform keyword search with fresh keywords at least two to three times a week. Adopt this habit and you can stay at the top of search results.

 If you are already not familiar with it, Google Adwords has an amazing Keyword Planner Tool. You can simply go to Google Adwords and search for relevant keywords for your small business. Planning your keywords will help in ranking your business.

If you are new at planning the keywords, here is a tip. Go to Keyword Planner and check for searches related to the keywords shown in your Google Analytics Acquisition Reports. You can gather lots of keyword ideas to utilize on your website and boost your organic traffic.

This is one of the most effective ways for small businesses to compete against others through SEO as one of your core internet marketing strategies. In this way, you can make your presence known.

To hit all the right keywords and opportunities, you need to fill the web pages with content. The simplest yet effective way is to start a blog!

3. Let’s Talk Blog

WordPress published a report stating that approximately 409 million people read more than 23.7 billion blogs every month. Those are some huge numbers! So if you want to draw people’s attention to your small business, you need to create quality content.

Why is blog important? According to a research, it is the fifth most trusted source of information online. People rely on blogs for authentic information.

So make sure that you create content which is not only unique but also true to facts. This way the reader will keep coming back for more!

Writing a blog that will grasp readers’ attention is not difficult. You can hire an expert to create a blog for you or you can do it yourself. However, it is important to note here that nobody likes to read content overstuffed with keywords. It not only bores the reader but it also loses the quality.

While creating a blog is always an option within your CMS, you can also host a separate blog on sites like Blogspot or WordPress. They are as useful as having a blog in your CMS. But it is crucial that you make sure that the information is readily available for the user.

But writing a quality blog can take up a lot of time. Some bloggers say that it takes them at least 3 hours to create a quality blog.

4. Create a Facebook Group or Join One

One of the most underrated tools of internet marketing for small businesses are Facebook groups. They are often looked over or ignored by marketers.

Facebook is a user-administered platform which uses optimization. Similarly, the Facebook groups use the same algorithms to connect people with similar interest or tastes. These platforms are repeatedly used to share and discuss ideas.

But make sure not to over-post as the moderators of these groups tend to remove “overly spammy” people or posts. The trick here is to share valuable content in the Facebook Groups. It facilitates easy yet effective marketing strategy for small businesses.

There are a lot of groups on Facebook which have a high number of members ranging from 1,000 to 100,000. Search for the groups using keywords in the Facebook search bar and scroll through the suggestions. Do this a couple times in a month to expand your social reach.

5. Participate in Forums

Besides Facebook, there are plenty of other forums where you can start or participate in discussions. Get involved in discussions at such forums and spread the word about your brand. Some of these forums are Tumblr, Quora and Reddit.

It is highly recommended to build your reputation on such forums so people start seeing you as an innovative and intuitive individual. It is a great marketing strategy, especially for small businesses.