You’ve covered all your bases: your business is booming. There is a high demand for the product or service you’re offering. You’re ready to tap into the biggest, most plentiful marketing resource available: online marketing, After drafting up a budget, hiring a website designer, hiring a content writer, outlining everything you need, and paying everyone involved, your business as a magnificently designed and eloquently written website that will attract customers from all over the globe.

But you’re just getting started: now it’s time for internet marketing! You’re going to have the global-ready online world at your fingertips when they see your site. You are ready to open the doors for online marketing and reap the rich rewards so often promised of it.

Nothing comes without a price, though. In order to reap all of those great rewards with online marketing, you’ll need to be prepared for your website to be marketed effectively.

What you’re probably thinking now is, what amount should I be prepared to spend on online marketing for it to be effective?

If you haven’t yet, you need to draft up a budget for your business’ online marketing costs, so you are prepared to be paying for it just as you would any form of marketing. The amount that you need to set aside will vary based on the size of your business and the types of marketing that you’re interested in. DO you want to take advantage of social marketing as well as SEO and other types of marketing that ensure your website is well-viewed? Do you want to constantly be updating your site with the latest news about your industry, such as in blog or press release form? How interactive do you want your website to be? Do you want to host giveaways and promotions on your website, which will take extra maintenance than just setting up the website once?

In order to fully prepare, you’ll want to decide which marketing funds your internet marketing funds are coming out of, and why. Some companies include internet marketing in their B2B plans, while others designate internet marketing as part of their consumer company marketing budget. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s focus on the later: setting up part of your consumer company marketing budget for internet marketing. On average, businesses will often set aside approximately 2.3% of their consumer company marketing budget for internet marketing. This means that for a company with annual revenue of $500,000, the amount set aside for internet marketing would be about $11,500. Keep these numbers in mind when you are looking over your own budget and planning how you want to approach the costs of internet marketing. Rest assured, though, that even though it may seem foreign and overwhelming, internet marketing will be well worth the investment you put into it in the long run.

The idea of online marketing can seem huge, general, intimidating, and foreign. After all, even twelve years ago, online marketing was barely a blip on the business or marketing radar. It can seem vast and unknowable – all many business owners and executives know is that it’s a good idea and that it is well worth the work. But as you build your website and get started with online marketing, you’re probably wondering what is the scope of online marketing for a business the size of mine?

That’s an excellent, valid, and smart question to ask. There are so many choices and different roads to take when venturing into online marketing, and you’ll want to have a clear picture of your business’ needs for this powerful tool before you start.

Above all else, start with the basics – make sure your website is up to par with the websites of your competition. Investigate what they are working with and strive to make yours just as good or better than theirs. You must have a quality website in order for online marketing to be effective for you at all. That’s where quality site design and well-written content come into play: it will separate you from the pack. Don’t overlook these basic necessities, and the rest will fall into play very easily.

As you’re investigating in how to maximize your online marketing venture, price different marketers and companies offering online marketing services with one another based on their knowledge of marketing and what they offer. Even now, online marketing is still very new, and many people say they know how to do it well without actually retaining a full scope of knowledge about how to give you the most for your money. You will need to pay and pay well for quality online marketing, but the rewards will most definitely be worth it. Make sure that whoever does your marketing is knowledgeable about search engine optimization, or SEO, as that is an extremely vital part of good quality online marketing that will serve you more than almost anything else. Search Engine Optimization is the process by which your website will stay in the top search results when a customer searches for your product or service with a search engine like Google or Bing. It largely has to do with the key words in the headlines and copy on your website, and how well that website is put together. Search engines like Google will not list shoddy website in their top listings, so, again, you’ll need to make sure your website is of the highest quality.

As far as the entire scope of online marketing for your website or business, it will largely depend on your budget for marketing and the amount of time and investment you are willing to put into online marketing before you see it work. If you are willing to invest the money and a few months’ time into your website, you’ll see huge results from online marketing no matter the size of your business.

You’ve gotten your website set up and you’re ready to go ahead and dive into the online marketing world. You’re excited about all the opportunities for marketing that online marketing gives you, and you’re hoping to reap rich rewards from the hard work your website designer has done to create your website to your exact specifications. Truth be told, you’re off to an exiting start and you should be ready to see some incredible results from online marketing. But first, you’re probably thinking, what are some key elements I need to pay attention to as far as online marketing is concerned?

If you’re just stepping into the world of online marketing, the good news is that online marketing, with a few added pieces such as Search Engine Optimization and Graphics Optimization, is very similar to offline marketing in many ways. There will be key pieces to do with your website that you’ll need to pay attention to that would be the same whether you’re working with a website, a newspaper ad, or any other kind of marketing device you might use now or have used ten or twenty years ago.

First of all, you want to be sure you have an effective hook for your product or service. What are you ultimately trying to sell, and why do people need it? Consumers are just as savvy, if not extensively more so, in this digital age when they can compare products and prices with the click of a mouse. Present you and your product with confidence, relevant information, and most of all, an effective hook that will get your potential customers’ attention right away.

You’ll also need to have a value proposition that, while perhaps not explicitly stated on your website (or then again perhaps it is), needs to be prevalent and easily accessible to your customers. Why should customers choose you for the product or service you’re selling, and not one of your competitors? What makes you the most valuable business on the market?

Then, and just as importantly, you need to have quality content and a striking, memorable design on your website that is easy to navigate and understand. Customers have millions of companies and products to choose from when they do a search for something. You need to make your website stand out by being excellent quality, eye-catching, informational, upfront, and consumer-friendly. If customers are trying to read your website or can’t figure out where to go to get to the product or the information you’re looking for, they can quickly click out of it and back to their search results and go to another company’s website in an instant. Make sure that your website is as easy to navigate and as informational as possible, all set within an attractive design that will make the customer want to stay on your page and with your business.

Internet marketing is a wonderful resource for you to use to promote your business, and, frankly, it is vital in these times to tap into and use to your business’ advantage.  It may seem daunting and overwhelming at first, but it doesn’t have to be.  Once you begin to wrap your head around internet marketing and get a little bit of knowledge as to how it works, the rest will come naturally and soon you will be using internet marketing to your and your company’s great advantage.

To get started with online marketing, you’ll first want to sit down and draw up a budget that you’re willing to spend on the venture.  Of course, as with anything else, it’s true that the more you spend, the more you can get with internet marketing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to spend a lot in order to see results.  Come up with a preliminary budget with a little bit of wiggle room and get started – once you see results from internet marketing, you may then want to up your budget to take further advantage of the rewards you will reap as a result.

Good internet marketing is all about original content, having a well-designed, easy-to-navigate and consumer friendly site, and presenting the product or service you’re offering to your customer in a user-friendly, congenial, interactive way.  It’s always a good idea when you’re getting started to do your research and find out what your competition is doing – where and how they are focusing their internet marketing efforts.  When you have that information, and when you can, try to think outside the box as far as how to approach and attract your customers.  Where are your customers most visiting when they go online?  Are they reading national pages like CNN or the New York Times pages daily?  Are they interested in current events?  Are they more interested in entertainment or social media?  In other words, where is the most target-rich environment that your customers will be spending time online?  Once you determine that, you’ll know were you need to focus your advertising, whether it be through online ads, social media, interactive websites or pop ups, or a host of other options you’ll have when you begin online marketing.

Set a budget.  Determine your audience.  Find your audience, and capitalize on that finding.  Create quality, impressive content on a well-designed, easy-to-navigate website that your consumers will enjoy and find original and entertaining.  Once you’ve got those simple steps down, internet marketing will take off for your business and you’ll never look back.

Social media sites are a great way to promote your business. They’re the wave of the future, and you won’t find another hugely effective, up-to-the-moment way to market your product. When you start to promote your business with social media, you’ll see incredible results that you’ve never before imagined. It really is the one of the best ways to market your business in the present, very interactive online world.

So you’ve gotten your social media sights set up – you have a blog, you have a Facebook account, and you’ve made a name for yourself on Twitter, too. One of the first questions you might have now would be, how often do I need to update or pay attention to my social media sites to attract views or keep them current?

That’s a very good question, indeed. Setting up social networking sites is one thing, but maintaining them is a whole different venture. It’s also extremely vital to capitalizing on the effectiveness of the marketing that social media can do for you.

Different types of social media can be updated at different intervals, though. If you are maintaining a blog on your website, you want to make sure your content is high-quality, and you’ll need to update it several times per week. Unlike the up-to-the-moment nature of Facebook statuses or Twitter feeds, blogs are the more literary aspect of social media and you’ll want to be sure to treat them as such. Make sure that your blog entries are well written with solid content and meaty, interesting, dynamic points in each one. The good news about blogs is that you’ll only need to update them about 3 times per week, possibly 4 if your blog gets a heavy amount of traffic. You can update it every day, but it isn’t completely necessary, as you’ll have posted several paragraphs worth of content very recently – as in, one or two days before – and you’ll want to give your readers a chance to catch up with their reading without inundating them with too much to read at once.

Facebook and Twitter updates, though, are a different story altogether. Since these updates should be shorter – only one or two sentences each, or a few phrases – they’ll be easier to update on a more prolific basis. You should update your Facebook and Twitter feeds several times per day (at least, during the week) to get maximum results. You can even use the same sentences or updates for both venues, and there are programs you can set up which will feed your Twitter updates into your Facebook status.

All in all, keep a watchful eye on your competitors and make sure to keep your sites up-to-date, and you’ll reap wonderful rewards from social marketing.

So you’ve decided to embark on a social media advertising campaign and you’re ready to go.  You know which sites you want to utilize and you have your information and web content ready.  But you might be thinking, isn’t social media just for teenagers?  How can I attract customers of all ages with social media?

Fear not!  The great news is that while social media used to just be something teenagers and Generation Y used to communicate, that is certainly no longer the case.  With the advent of many, many businesses utilizing social media to further their marketing needs, social media is just as much of a place for businesses and professionals of all ages than any other form of marketing available.

From celebrity Twitter accounts, to Facebook pages dedicated to restaurants and stores you know and love, to thousands and thousands of blogs written on every subject imaginable, the world’s way of communicating about consumer goods has moved directly into the realm of social media and it looks as if it plans to stay there for a very long time.  In fact, if your business does not have at least several pages devoted to social media, it’s seen as behind the times.

Basically, social media sites are attracting all age groups, but slightly older or more experienced generations of customers will be more expectant of high quality and will be less willing to take risks or to devote their time to poorly constructed sites or sub-par content.  Know your audience and who you’re ultimately selling to, and build your social media network from that knowledge.  Keep mind that younger customers will influence their parents and grandparents to check out your site and your company, so don’t overlook them.  Simply put, make sure that everything you share on social media sites is of the highest quality, and you’ll do well at attracting a vast and varied age range of customers in no time.

Social media is a wonderful, interactive way to get your customers involved with your brand, your product or service, and your business.  By using social media, you give your customers the opportunity to really feel as though they are involved with your business and that you are personally interested in their needs and providing what you can to accommodate them.  It’s the best of both worlds for most businesses and business relationships.
You may be thinking, that’s all well and good, but how long can I expect to wait before the rewards of social media marketing pay off?
The short answer is that it varies, but there are many things you can do to shorten the time frame it takes to get your social media marketing efforts noticed by potential customers.  As with most other internet marketing ventures, it all comes down to content, competition, and interest in what you’re promoting.  You want to make sure your content is of the highest quality and that you (or a representative from your company) are active on social media sites on a daily, or even several times a day, basis.  You’ll want to size up your competition in your field to see what you’re up against, and do the best you can to keep up with them in the race. Lastly, you want to promote your business as being useful to everyone, no matter what it is you’re selling or offering.  People want and desire to feel included, so if you can include as many as possible on your social media sites and have blogs and updates that are dynamic, relevant, and interesting, you’ll create a larger friend or fan (and thus customer) base more quickly, and see faster results.

In short, you can expect that social media marketing can take weeks or even months to see substantial results, but it doesn’t have to take many months or years.  The more active you are, the more quickly you will see your rewards.

When you begin to start using social media to promote your business, you’re in luck, because social media is, by and large, very user friendly and very easy to get started with by nature.  Everyone uses it!  It’s a great way to expand your customer base and spread knowledge of your business by, essentially, virtual word-of-mouth.

To begin using social media, you basically just need to create specific pages on social media sites for your business and then begin to add “friends” or “followers” to get attention for the site itself.  Creating a large fan base using social media can take time, such as weeks or months, but it will be well worth it in the end.  A very large percentage of the population uses social media to communicate even the most basic of information.

When you’re creating your site, decide on things like which photos or promotional material you want to include on the site(s) itself.  You’ll want to have a good quality photo or logo which represents your business to make your main picture on social media sites, which will instantly brand your business and make your logo recognizable to those customers you already have and also potential customers who may be seeing your business for the first time.  The information you’ll need to provide is basic as well – you’ll want to provide your street address and contact information if you want customers to come to your brick-and-mortar store or business.  If it’s a website you’re promoting, obviously you want to put a link to the site on your social media page.  Include any and all information you’d put into more conventional advertising like newspaper or television spots.  Make sure to inform your customers as much as you can without making it seem like you’re trying to sell them something.

After you put in the facts, you’ll want to put quality content into your sites to “update” them daily with “status updates,” “tweets,” or blog entries.  You want to keep your social media sites as active and up to date as possible to generate interest in them.  Considering that most people check social media sites multiple times per day, it will behoove your business to be active on those sites daily or even several times per day as well, with updates, offers, or just joining in general conversation about current events and giving your customers a place to have their voices heard, all the while underneath the brand of your business.

Social media is a fantastic, popular, and interactive way to promote your business and website, and you would be remiss in not using social media to your advantage as much as possible.  If you’ve never really used social media before and you’re questioning how you can, the good news is that social media is by nature a very user-friendly and easy-to-navigate medium that you can easily have at your disposal.

There are several types of social media sites and outlets from which you can choose to promote your business.  You’ll need to determine, based on the product or service you’re offering, which of the following sites or types of social media will be the best for you and will serve your business needs most effectively.

Probably the most popular social networking site today is Facebook.  On Facebook, you can create a “fan” page for your business, where you can put important information like what your business offers, where it’s located, contact information for your business, and also some information about you or your staff to make your page personable and accessible.  Remember, with social media, it is all about building relationships with your potential customers.  Once you’ve established your Facebook page, you’ll want to gain friends by first “adding” your own family, friends, contacts, coworkers, and the like to become “friends” on Facebook.  Their “friends” will then visit your business’ page out of curiosity, and your net of “friends” will expand.  Also, when customers visit or patronize your business, or otherwise search for your business online, the Facebook page will come up and succinctly and originally provide information for them so they can research your business quickly and in a format they are already well familiar with because they already use Facebook personally.

Another extremely popular social networking site is Twitter.  You’ll want to set up a Twitter account for your business and either hire someone to write your Twitter and Facebook status updates in-house or employ a content writer to write these bits of web content for you.  You’ll need to have quality “tweets” and Facebook status updates that are engaging, interesting, and not too sales-y (remember, it is all about relationships!) to keep your customers interested, amused, and engaged with your business.

Lastly, a quality means of social networking you may want to explore is blogging.  In fact, you may even want to incorporate a regular “blog” (which stands for weblog) on your company’s site.  You’ll want to hire a web content writer, whether in-house or otherwise, to provide quality content and relevant copy for your company’s blog.  That way, you’re continually updating your site, engaging with customers, providing new information to keep them coming back, and giving them a reason to return to your site repeatedly.  All of those things are the goals when it comes to using such an interactive, up-to-the-minute form of advertising as social media.

Since we’re sure you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the phrase “social media” in the last several years, and you’re probably wondering what it’s all about. More than that, you may have even heard that social media is a great way to get publicity for your business and gain hordes of customers interested in your product or service. Well, good news, that’s true! But it takes some finesse and some knowledge to use social media to your advantage.

Social media has exploded, especially with the advent of Facebook and Twitter, over the last five years or so. Plainly speaking, it has made the world a much smaller place, made new information transferable and shareable within nanoseconds, and, likewise, turned news into old news faster than ever. Remember when the best way to increase your revenue and customer base was by word of mouth? Well, social media is essentially word of mouth too – just now, on a global, interactive scale.

All that said, you absolutely can – and should! – use social media to promote your business and to your advantage. The key thing to remember about using social media, though, is that it is less about selling and more about building relationships with your customers. Think about back in the “olden days” when customers would frequent local stores because of the special service they received or because they knew the owners or store clerks. They would be loyal to those stores even if other stores had what they wanted to buy, because they knew someone there, right? Social media gives you the opportunity to relate to your customers in that way, but on a huge, global scale.

The first thing you’ll need to do is to set up social media pages for your business – a Facebook fan page, a Twitter page, possibly even a Youtube page if you like and have content for it – and then work at developing “friendships” and relationships with your customers. Don’t try to start selling right away. Instead, reach out to your network of customers, family, and friends whom you’ve built up already and have them “add’ you on Facebook or “follow” you on Twitter and Youtube. Have them “like” your business’ page on Facebook. Start to post status updates and Tweets on a regular basis – not selling, but simply conversing. You’ll want to reach people where they are, not where you want them to be (i.e., buying what you’re selling), in order to win them over. Get them involved in discussions about current events. If you can, host a giveaway on your Facebook or Twitter sites where customers compete for prizes by various methods (recruiting others to the site, for example). Concentrate on the content on your social media pages; again, the quality of the content will be vital. Is it well thought out? Is it cleanly, succinctly, entertainingly expressed? Are you engaging your “friends” or “followers” in the conversation instead of just trying to sell them something?

Once you have built up a following, the interest in your site and your services, and then sales, will come naturally. Remember – social media is all about building and maintaining relationships through active use of social media sites. Stay in the conversation; make yourself congenial and your business vivacious. If you can do this, social media will open doors and expand your customer base on a global level like you could never have experienced otherwise.