Local businesses find themselves facing more challenges from both local and national online competitors, but they can maintain a competitive edge by building a more effective Internet presence. Potential goals include:
1. Increasing profit
2. Increase revenue
3. Maintaining or reducing costs
4. Maintaining current customers
5. Reaching new customers
6. Building a Web site audience
An effective Web presence can contribute to all six goals.
Start with setting a Web site budget for production and advertising, just as you would with buying a spot on broadcast or a print ad in the newspaper. The Web site budget might be set as a percentage of your total advertising budget, and it should grow each year as more e-commerce is conducted on the Internet.
If you spent $ 20,000 a year to promote your business, consider allocating at least 10 percent of that total to online.
The majority of that 10 percent allocation should go to advertising the site, while the rest should pay for hosting, a simple but effective design and an e-commerce application that will be paid mainly through transaction activity.
Local advertising opportunities include the Web sites of the local newspaper, cable network, radio station or TV station. Typically, these opportunities include banner display ads which are more effective for branding than direct response. If you already advertise in print or on air with these outlets, ask about getting discounts for bundling your current campaigns with an online campaign.
The next opportunities are with local targeting through national Web sites that have that ability. Sites such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others can provide text ads that can target at the state and sometimes the local level.
Beyond the advertising budget lies the ?free? promotional tactics. Although they don?t cost money, they do cost time. The ?offline? tactics include putting your Web site address in:
1. Print or broadcast ads.
2. Flyers, receipts, invoices, business cards and other printed material.
3. Storefronts and other signage.
The online tactics include:
1. Expand and update your site regularly. Search engines favor larger sites.
2. Optimize your site for search engines. Numerous guides to Seach Engine Optimization are available online.
3. Include your site name in your emails.
2. Send out a monthly email newsletter to customers. Include coupons, sales and other news.
Measure all of these results each month by tracking Web site visitors, sales transactions and conversion ratios. Keep experimenting, keep learning and higher numbers will come your way eventually.
sun storm courtney stodden joe the plumber lra lra eric johnson eric johnson
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