Internet Marketing For  Small  and Medium Businesses....
...That Works!

Today's successful small business entrepreneurs seek and fight to maintain a very visible presence on the World Wide Web.

They may have a web-site that functions simply as a billboard, business card or simply for information. They may list merchandise on their site, with prices, and information about how to order it. They may present their products and service on E-Bay or other auction houses. They may let someone else promote their products and service on-line in exchange for a commission,royalty or for share of generated revenues. Or they may have a fully functioning shopping cart system on their own dot.com.

Whatever their level of involvement on-line, they must put into place active and deliberate strategies for creating visibility for their site and their products, and for maintaining and enhancing that visibility over time.

You have to get yourself as widely listed as possible. You have to influence people to actively and repeatedly link up to your site. Only in this way will you achieve a measure of visibility and respectable rankings among the millions of web-sites out there.

Successful marketing of any kind means:
-- Getting Seen
-- Getting Known
-- Getting Your Competitive Advantage Recognized
-- Providing a Customer or Client Service (Give first in  order to receive)
-- Making the Sale

To achieve these marketing goals on-line, requires putting into effect various internet strategies, some technical, others not. Towards this end, Our Generations, Inc.  can provide insights about the following:
1. Conducting an Initial Marketing Audit of your site
2. Optimizing Your Front Door Page
3. Choosing and Placing Key Words
4. Site Usability and Navigation Concerns
5 . Intensive Site Placement and Linkages
6 . Inexpensive Things You Can Do To Get Noticed
7 . On-line Advertising
8 . Getting Customer Feedback
9 . Competitor Surveillance
10. Establishing Baseline Site-Activity Indicators

1. Conducting an Initial Marketing Audit of Your Site

The first step is to get honest with yourself. How well do your current collective marketing and business strategies perform? How do they help or hinder you from achieving (a) visibility on the web, (b) credibility on the web, (c) customer responses and orders from the web?

This activity involves three steps:
1. Assessing current marketing materials, brochures, stationery, efforts and activities,
2. Assessing current web-site strengths and weaknesses, from a marketing standpoint, and
3. Setting reasonable and attainable marketing goals and objectives.

Do all your printed materials reference your web-site and/or your email address?
Is this information prominent and readily accessible, or is it buried?
Does it convey a sense of pride in your on-line efforts, or shame and embarrassment?
Do you routinely mention your web-site to your customers or clients?
Do all your emails end with a business signature, that includes your business name, address, phone, fax, and email?

Does your web-site clearly and concisely express what your business is all about, and how to contact you -- particularly in terms of the information on the front page, near the top, that would appear in the first screen that your customer would see?
Is your navigation bar/system/strategy easy to manipulate by any customer? Is each link labeled clearly? Does the set of all your links clearly and easily get your customer to each section of your web-site? Have you minimized the number of links it takes to get to any one of your product pages?
Is your front page indexable by search engine robots? Is there sufficient information on this page to index? Is the organization of keywords on your front page presented to your advantage, or disadvantage, given search engine indexing schemes?
Does your front page load relatively quickly? Have you kept your graphics on your front page to a minimum?
Does your website have the kinds of things that will encourage customers to remain on your site more than a few seconds?

2. Optimizing Your Front Door Page

The front door page is your most strategic web-site asset. It should be optimized in form and content so that it anticipates the indexing and ranking schemes of the major search engines.

Toward this end, some pointers:

1. Don't use frames.

2. Don't use a visually wonderful, but indexability aweful, splash page. You should settle for a slightly less visually appealing page, as a tradeoff for making it more indexable and rankable.

3. You're selling things. The average person will have the average computer system set-up. That means, you can't use the most up-to-date, exciting web-site technology available. Your pages won't load up for everyone, some may take too long to load up, and some may even lock up your customers' computers. Save the Flash files for your personal home-page. Save a lot of what you learned in the community college's computer graphics class for your personal home-page.

4. Don't use Microsoft Front Door or other similar Microsoft product to create your web-pages. Many computers will reject these pages, or these pages cause some viewability problems. Microsoft adds a lot of Microsoft-only computer code, and is an example where more isn't better. Use any other brand's WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web-page or HTML editor. If you're very into hand-coding HTML, use a product like Dreamweaver by Macromedia.

5. TITLE: Your title should be about 9 words (not more, not less), with your most important key word first. Don't repeat the same word twice in a row; separate it by another word. Use lower case letters for your keywords.
For example: "beads, jewelry findings, beading supplies - Fire Goddess  is better than "Fire Goddess- beads, jewelry findings, beading supplies".
For example: "beads, jewelry findings, beading supplies" is better than "Beads, beading supplies, jewelry findings".

6. Your first line of the page (and this will appear after the BODY code if you're hand coding your HTML), should be about 10 words, again repeating your major keywords, not putting the same word twice next to each other, and listing the words from most to least important.
Never start the page with a TABLE or Graphic file. Start with words.

7. Be strategic in the names you give your active links and web-pages. Use your keywords in these LINK DESCRIPTIONS (link-text) and URL ADDRESSES (url-text).
For example:
Call your gemstone necklace page "gemstonenecklace.htm" rather than something like "AC402.htm".
In creating the link description on your page, write something like "Gemstone Necklaces" rather than "Products Page".

8. Have about 3 paragraphs of text on your front-door page. Each paragraph might have 3 or so sentences. Your major keywords should appear:
- at top of paragraph #1
- in middle of paragraph #2
- not at all in paragraph #3
If you don't like the look of all those words on your front door page, you can always put the paragraphs at the bottom of your web-page.

9. For all your images, use the ALT tag. For the ALT tag, use your keywords to describe the image. By using the ALT tag, when someone places the cursor over the image, a yellow box will appear with the ALT tag words appearing. These are also very indexable.

10. Set up 2 or 3 headings on this page, and use your keywords in the heading text.

11. Put in at least one COMMENT tag using your keywords. In the HTML code, comments start with <!-- and end with --> .

12. If you haven't already selected a web-site domain name, you might try to create one using your most important keyword in the URL-text. "beadsatFireGoddess.com" would do far better than "FireGoddess.com".

You can also envision having more than one front-door for your web-site. You might have different kinds of customers, and may want to set up an entrance very tailored to them. From the search engine's standpoint, they do not like to see virtually the same page used more than once. You will lose points here if this is your approach. But you can set up differently designed pages as front entrances, and, based on how you get your site listed, you can use any of these as the link-reference point.

3. Choosing and Placing Key Words

Generate a keyword list of 1000 characters. You can use a word processing program like WORD, which has a character counter. In this list, you would include variations on upper case and lower case spellings, as well as common misspellings.

To research keywords, you can go to various search engines, plug in the major keywords you're interested in, and check out what keywords other sites which pop up in the search engines search, have used. On each site's front door page, review what words they seem to use on this page. Also, you can use the browser's VIEW button to bring up the Source Code image of a page, and check out what keywords other people have listed in their META TAGS. You can use Google's ad words program to generate keywords list. (You would use their tools here, but not pay for their program). Other search engines may have similar facilities.

It is important to determine what keywords your competitors are using. It is also important to determine what keywords various search engines and directories (such as Yahoo or Open Directory Project) use to categorize web-sites. These are the types of words you also want to emphasize in your list.

The list of keywords helps you figure out what words to emphasize on your front door page. They help you determine what words to use in link-text and url-text. You can also create a META tag for Keywords, and use your full 1000-character list. The field size of this tag is 1000 characters. While the META tags for keywords and descriptions used to be very important for indexing, they are considerably less so today.

4. Site Usability and Navigation Concerns

How usable is your web-site to:
- New Customers
- Returning Customers

a.Web-sites need very clear Navigation systems.
b.Web-sites need strategies to keep them from becoming boring. After someone visits a site a few times, and it only takes a few times, the sites become stale and boring to them.
c.Web-sites need all your contact information -- address, phone, fax, email -- right on your first page. Or at least a very visible link/button to CONTACT INFORMATION.

Navigation Systems
There is a series of research about the Magical Number 7 plus or minus 3. When people are confronted with 7 or more choices, they psychologically need to re-categorize them, such as into one group of 3 and another group of 4, in order to deal with all this information. Otherwise they get paralyzed and stumped.

People can easily handle 4 pieces (7 minus 3) of information, start to get uncomfortable with 7 pieces, and can be forced to deal with 10 separate pieces (7 plus 3) information. From a web-site design standpoint, you don't want to make someone have to travel more than 4 links to get to the product information they want. As the required number of links to click on gets greater than 4 clicks, your customers will begin to get paralyzed, and not make the next click. Wherever you find you have more than 4 clicks to get to a product, you can recategorize, so you have fewer links to navigate.

For example, suppose it takes 5 clicks to get from your section on Jewelry to your section on Amethyst Beaded Necklaces:
PRODUCTS - click 1 to - JEWELRY - click 2 to - NECKLACES - click 3 to - BEADED NECKLACES - click 4 to - GEMSTONE BEADED NECKLACES - click 5 to - AMETHYST BEADED NECKLACES

You might reduce the number of clicks the customer has to travel by reducing the number of web-pages they have to traverse:
PRODUCTS/JEWELRY - click 1 to NECKLACES/BEADED NECKLACES - click 2 to GEMSTONE BEADED NECKLACES/AMETHYST
On the PRODUCTS page, you list all your types of products. On your NECKLACES page, you list all your types of necklaces. On your GEMSTONE BEADED NECKLACES page, you list all the types of gemstones.

Avoiding Boredom
Web-sites get stale fast. Unfortunately, to keep things re-designed and very fresh takes a lot of time and effort. So, you want to come up with some simple, less time-consuming tricks that you can do to keep your web-site appear fresh.

One trick is to put something on the page that moves. Build in some kind of "movement" on your front-door page. You can use a .gif animation file, or create mouse-overs and other simple fun things which move using javascripts.

Another trick is to create a sense of Interactivity - forms, polls, message boards, chat lines, contests, games, ezine, email link, links/resources page listing other sites.

A third trick is to run specials and/or have a What's New section.

Contact Information
Preferably on the first page, include your address, email, phone, fax, and other important identifying contact information. If you have a separate CONTACT PAGE, be sure that the link/button to the page is prominently displayed at the top of your front door page. Many of your regular customers or clients will begin to use your web-site like a rolodex entry. Make it easy for them.

5 . Intensive Site Placement and Linkages

It is important that you get listed with all the major search engines and directories, as well as specialty directories associated with your specific business.

To make this process go as quickly as possible, it is important to have all your information together in one place, where you can cut and paste the information into the on-line forms, as requested. Besides having about 12-20 of your most important keywords handy, you should also create 25-word, 50-word, 100-word and 200-word descriptions of your site, heavy on keywords.

Don't pay for or use any of the multiple submission services. Take the time to submit your site to each search engine and directory, one at a time.

Use Yahoo or Google Directory to find the section on specialized directories. Get listed in as many of these as possible.

Many search engines and some directories now charge you for a listing, either as a flat fee, or as a click-through rate. You may not be able to afford all of the opportunities, but you might want to follow through on the major ones.

Some search engines will let you buy keywords. When someone searches on a keyword, a link to your site will appear. If someone clicks through on that link, you're charged a per click fee. My experience with Google ad words is that this is a program you should seriously consider.

Also, link up with web-rings -- as many as are relevant. Go to www.webring.com , to find out what is relevant. Web-rings bring customers to your site -- lots of them, in exchange for a link placed on your site.

Newsgroups, forums and message boards are great places to get visibility. While you usually can't put a blatantly commercial post on these, you can (a) respond to existing posts, and put your business signature information at the end of your post, (b) suggest a jewelry-making tip, or other similar tip, and add your business signature information to the end of your post, (c) and similar things.

There are many affinity sites, such as shopping malls or some personal web-pages that list a lot of links or maintain a personal directory of resources, where you should get listed. There might be sites that maintain lists of local resources, such as a site that maintains a list of Nashville, TN resources.

You can do a search on the URL web-address (www.yourcompetitor.com) of your competitors, as well as on their names, to see where they are listed.

Some of your suppliers may list you on their web-sites. Some of your customers or clients may list you on their web-sites.

To get a high ranking, search engines
a) categorize your site in relation to certain keywords, by indexing words on your site,
b) rate your link-popularity, by checking how often someone clicks on a link to your site, and
c) rank the link-relevancy of your site based on how long the person stays on your site, once they've clicked their way there.

So the more places that maintain a link to your web-site, the more likely someone is to click through to it. The better designed your site is, the more likely someone is to hang around awhile.

6 . Inexpensive Things You Can Do To Get Noticed

There are many low-cost or free things you can do to increase your visibility on line. Some suggestions:

a. Get reciprocal links -- "I'll list you if you list me". There are your friends and personal associates; other similar businesses; affinity sites such as shopping malls, specialized directories, awards programs.

b. Create educational and informational content. Share it with other sites in exchange for a link back to your site. In fact, there are Free Content sites on line that act as a repository and exchange for free content articles. Submit your articles there.

c. Respond to people's questions in forums, newsgroups, message boards and the like. Include a business signature with a link back to your site at the end of your response. You can go to www.delphiforums.com and www.about.com to get access to many, many forums.

d. Write articles for on-line ezines, newsgroups, forums, specialized portals and the like.

e. Join a web-ring. Join several. www.webring.com and www.ringsurf.com

f. Include a lot of explanatory and how-to information next to each of your products.

g. Run a contest.

h. Set up a group under Yahoo (groups.yahoo.com) and/or MSN. This will give you an email list. You might use it as an adjunct to your business, to run specials or announcements. Or you might set it up as a particular interest group.

i. Under www.delphiforums.com, set up a discussion group, forum, or message board.

j. Create your own on-line newsletter.

One thing we do NOT recommend is to send mass e-mailings, except through something like Yahoo groups, where people have very obviously opted in to receive emails from you. Mass e-mailings generate a lot of positive responses, but they generate a lot of negative responses, as well, from people overwhelmed with spam.

For more information or to put a comprehensive marketing plan in place for your operation  send us a e-mail or call today:

ideas@ourgeninc.com

(866) 630-1101

How do you drive potential customers to your business???

To find out how successful businesses get customers, keep them and grow their business  click on the link provided to schedule your initial interview:

Initial Marketing Plan Interview