Relationship Marketing | Build Your Online Business

As I did further research on putting together a Marketing Plan for my business I found a great deal of information on the topic.  A point that was immediately evident is that whether you are marketing a service or product one of your biggest challenges is to determine how you will reach your customers.

One publication recommended doing a study of what your competition is doing since they would already have done the research to find out what works best.

This reminds me of a study I did several years ago for a business project, which showed that two of the largest national hardware stores in the United States are often built in close proximity to each other.  The major chain built a store in an area only after careful study of the demographics, etc.  The other chain took advantage of that research and built a store in the area as well.

The following are some offline and online marketing methods that can create growth in your business:

• Blogging
• Article Marketing
• Social Media
• Affiliate Marketing
• Teleseminars
• Press Releases
• Printed Materials  – business cards, brochures, and flyers (more…)

Does your small business have a website?  If you do have a website, then you are ahead of many other local small businesses in your area.  But how much control do you have over your website? What type of website do you have? Is a static e-commerce site, one on which the content rarely changes?  Do you have the ability to make changes and updates regularly, or do you have to wait for your webmaster?

Having a website is essential for local marketing online, but for this to be effective there are four important points to keep in mind:

1)   Google and the other search engines love blogs because they are content-rich websites and the content is updated frequently.

2)   Management of search engine optimization, or optimizing each page on your website with keywords around your topic requires that you have a search-friendly (more…)