Identify your target marketMany small businesses are often a fulfillment of a passion for the product or service they provide but few are entered into with a foundation in effective marketing skills. Learning to make strategic decisions about how to allocate funds, attract customers, and promote your product is usually secondary to how to create, develop, or tailor a certain product or service to the current market.

Add to that the fact that many are on a limited budget that may restrict what marketing efforts they may be able to use. Even new businesses with little to no budget must consider how best to market their business. I think PR Web said it best in an article about how to overcome marketing challenges,“You are also savvy enough to know marketing can’t be ignored. Most likely, competitors are taking advantage of one or more marketing channels.”

The fact of the matter is that if you don’t take advantage of such a channel odds are that your customers will. Here are a few tips that can help you market your small business online:

Identify Your Target Market

This may seem like an obvious decision but you need to do more than know who your customers are. You also need to know the channels that they use to communicate through. Some may be using social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter and others may be using Google or other search engines to find the products or services they need. Knowing where your customers are looking for information will help you to decide which channels you should focus your marketing efforts in.

Optimize Your Website and Update Regularly

It is not enough to have a nice website available for your customers. You should also consider how to make it appealing to your visitor in a number of ways. Using targeted keywords within the headlines, and providing a steady and consistent flow of content can ensure that the information you provide is the same throughout. Provide your visitors with other means of communicating with you so that they can feel connected. Include email contacts, phone numbers, etc.

You also need to keep your website up-to-date by always adding new content. Search engines will always look for the latest information online and if your content is old it will most likely be pushed to the back of the pile. Continuously add blog posts, news releases, or informative articles to keep people engaged and in anticipation of what’s new. SEO-News stated that, “Regular website maintenance is essential to ensure visitors are getting the best information possible. Consistently updating a website’s content is the only way to maintain a competitive edge.”

This means that every business should be concerned with the challenge of keeping their content fresh, informative, and up-to-date in order to maintain their competitive edge.

Make Your Website and Brand Visible

Your potential customers should never have to search to find you. Unfortunately, it’s often hard to get visible in our current online landscape. You can start by making your web site easily accessible. This involves more than just having an easy to remember website address, you should also link back to your site from your Facebook page, blog, local directories, your top industry directories, every email you send, news releases, PPC and any other means of communication with your clients.

Chances are that all of your customers will not come from the same source so you need to diversify and find different ways for people to find out about you and the services you provide. A good tip to help maximize your brand exposure is to use remarketing. If you currently use PPC advertising you can create a remarketing list within Google Adwords to keep your brand in front of site visitors. Another remarketing service that I really like is AdRoll; which allows you to remarket to interested prospects across multiple networks such as Search, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Get Subscribers

Once you’ve already attracted a certain level of business to your site you need to keep them engaged. This means that those who are reading your news releases and blog posts should be free to comment and respond to your writings. Always remember to respond to their comments so that they feel they are part of a conversation. The more you interact with your followers the more they will be willing to share your content with others.

When it comes to marketing a website it is important that you remember that your work is never done. As soon as you have perfected the content on your site, new changes will be coming and you will have to start the process over again. WebStarts points out how important it is to engage visitors in this statement; “When you update your website your site visitors begin to expect to find something new on your site and keep coming back. The more frequently your visitors come back to your website the more likely they are to do business with you.”

When you are a small business trying to make it in this big Internet world you need to do more than just talk about product. Engaging your customers through intriguing content and interacting with them on a consistent basis will be the key to your future business success.