If you run a small local business, you may have thought about starting an internet marketing campaign to increase your presence and attract new customers. Many small businesses are starting to adopt it into their business as they are finding it to be one of the most effective ways to promote their products and company. Marketing online is cost-efficient and easily implemented often resulting in fast response and business growth.

The question is how does a small business owner undergo advertising and marketing on the web effectively to generate higher sales and profits while keeping costs to a minimum. The most common and the first element that might come to mind is to set up a website for your business. No matter whether you sell your products online or offline, a website can act as your 24 hour sales person to showcase and even take orders around the clock.

Indeed, internet marketing is essential for offline companies just as much as it is for online businesses to increase business and sales. It can generate more customers whether you have a small specialty store, a bakery or a restaurant, you can leverage the Internet to let know about it and to find it easily and quickly when they search on the web.

Even if your business is in a small town, you can bet that more people will find your place online when you incorporate some online marketing strategies. Statistics show that around 70 per cent of people use the web to find a local business.

If you optimize your website for the search engines, your website can rank higher than your competitors, thus sending you more visitors. This is a fundamental part of small business internet marketing. It has been estimated that 75 per cent of the traffic to websites comes from search engines. More traffic means more customers.

You can use a range of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques which include optimizing your website’s content for a specific keyword or posting content on other related and popular websites and getting back links to your website in return.

Article marketing and video marketing are important elements of small business internet marketing. When you post relevant articles on popular directories, you not only get a back link to your site. You can use the article content to promote your company and products. The same applies to video marketing.

You can use videos not only to promote your business and products, but also to increase the conversion rate at your online store by offering video product presentations and video user guides.

Use social media marketing for effective small business internet marketing. This type of marketing has to do with promoting your company and products using social medial such as blogs and social networks. Setting up a blog on your website will help for more effective SEO and for marketing your products.

It is a must for every business to be present on the most popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter at least. Once you establish your social network presence, you can gain more fans by organizing promotional campaigns, offering coupons and competitions with prizes.

Email marketing along with social media marketing is effective for retaining existing customers. You can use it for announcing special offers, for providing loyal customer discounts and for keeping in touch with your customers.

The possibilities for increasing customers to your local business are plentiful. While anyone can learn and implement effective small business internet marketing strategies. it does take a fair bit of time for a newcomer. For best results, it is a good idea to hire an Internet marketing expert such as a consultant who will be able to take care of your campaigns while you focus on running your business.

Source by Stuart Stirling