Marketing My Business: How to Survive Online

The way that business is done is ever changing at a rapid pace.  We have traveled through telephone answering services, VOIP, video conferencing, email support, and the almighty internet.  Business owners today are faced with many decisions that their parents and grandparents never had to deal with.

Many of you probably keep hearing from other business associates that marketing on the internet is the number one way of increasing business and creating a good foundation for customer support.  There’s only one thing that keeps you from jumping onto the bandwagon.  You have only recently learned how to send an email!  You have no idea about SEO, content analysis, pay per click, web design, ROI, etc.!

Should You Hire an SEO Company?

You are now faced with a dilemma.  You wonder if you should hire an SEO company or do you learn how to do it yourself?

One of the good things that we can say is that we as business owners do not slack when it comes to investing time into our business.  However, often, when it comes to learning new methods we are quick to reach for our wallets and contract anyone we can find that seems like they might be the right person to help with the situation.  This is by far the worst possible decision you can make.

You could dive right into the internet marketing community with your eyes closed and your wallet opened and hire an SEO company.  However that will probably result in a disaster if you are not schooled on how to wisely spend your money.  The answer is not to hire an SEO (search engine optimization) company to siphon your money.  Try instead to work with someone who offers SEO training so that you yourself or someone in your company can learn what is required online, how much effort is needed, and the pitfalls that should be avoided.

You as the business owner could blindly search online and hire an SEO company however, you won’t have any idea of what you would be actually getting into.  The secret to promoting your business online is that there really are no secrets to promoting your business online, only hard work.  Keeping this in mind I am sure that you can see that anyone with a computer and some gumption can learn how to get their company high search engine rankings. 

Old Fashioned Marketing Strategies

Back in the day using old fashioned marketing strategies (and still practiced today) owners of businesses would come up with their own marketing plan through business cards, flyers, newspaper ads, print media, radio ads, and TV ads.  Using these methods a company would track their results by trial and error.  Through these old fashioned marketing strategies companies could really find out what actually works for their industry.

Old fashioned marketing strategies include a simple trial and error process.  Marketing on the internet also requires a trial and error process.  It is unfortunate that many business owners don’t have a clue of how to start an internet marketing campaign and they fail to even try. Instead, they open their wallet to anyone that seems feasible and say here’s my budget you tell me what to do.  Forgive me for saying so, but this is a ridiculous practice.  Consider how much work and effort it took for you to get to where you are today and as soon as it comes to marketing your business online you simply shut down.

Internet Marketing Success Takes Time

One of the ultimate secrets to internet marketing is simply time…

T              Try and try again

I               Internet changes all the time

M            Marketing opportunities are around every corner

E              Eventually you too can succeed

Keep in mind that you could be 10 months out of the gate and still be locked in Googles sandbox.  (Google search Google’s sandbox)  Most likely internet marketing success has not eluded you it just takes time.  Hopefully within this 10 months you have only linked to companies that have something to do with your niche and your link popularity is starting to grow.  You may now just be beginning to come through on Yahoo and MSN search results.  You may even be able to find your company in the 200^th spot in Google’s search results.  All of these things show some internet marketing success.  Still you are now probably wondering why this is taking so long.

Well, such is the wonderful world of marketing your company on the internet.

Time is a key to internet marketing success.  If you want to win you must have patience and stay at it.  Learn as much as you can learn every chance you get.

Those who just opened their wallets during the first 10 months of marketing their company online will find that they have not found as much internet marketing success as those that actively learned how to do the marketing themselves.

Conclusion

Take the time to learn more ways to increase your internet marketing campaigns.  If you really don’t have the time to learn it for yourself then hire someone within your organization that can do the learning for you.  Remember that it takes T.I.M.E. to reach success on the internet.  Good luck with your internet marketing endeavors.  To your success!

If you learned anything new from this article then please leave a comment.