Eight Essential Small Business Internet Marketing Tools
Marketing your business on the internet successfully is a very important part of today’s competitive business landscape. There are many internet marketing tools available to small business that they can use to grow their customer base and challenge their competition big or small. These are some of the tools that I use when working with my clients. Some may be very familiar to you and perhaps underutilized where others might not be familiar to you.
Here are eight essential marketing tools:
HootSuite
If you’re looking for a marketing tool to track your Social Media efforts, HootSuite is a very feature rich dashboard for managing your brand on Social Media channels (I.E. Facebook) with excellent reporting capabilities. You can immediately publish and schedule content for release on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress and many more. HootSuite is a free tool but if you’re tracking more than five Social Media channels you will have to pay a small monthly fee. HootSuite is based in Vancouver, B.C. www.hootsuite.com
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a great way to start your first blog and/or get a website live in seconds that has loads of functionality but very cost effective, nada! They have great themes for the look of your site, plenty of widgets (add-on pieces) and lots of viewer stats and you can track blog comments. Blogging is a great way to express thought leadership on a topic specific to your industry or business. Search engines love blog content. www.wordpress.com
Google Analytics
A lot of people are familiar with Google Analytics but may or may not be using it. Google Analytics is a free service by Google that generates detailed statistics of the traffic (viewers) of your website and presents this information in the form of an easy to read dashboard. Google Analytics can track website visitors from all search engines, AdWords campaign traffic, pay-per-click referrers etc. All it takes is for you website guru to drop a bit of computer code on your website and you’re ready to go in a few steps. Use it; it’s a powerful marketing tool! www.google.com/analytics
Google Keyword Tool
Keyword research is a very important part of your internet marketing strategy. Keywords are the search terms that people enter into the search engines when there trying to find your business (I.E. Hair Salon Milton). It’s really important that your website or blog have these keywords in locations like the title of your website so that search engines can rank your site accordingly. Take a few minutes to check out the Google Keyword Tool to determine the actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search for your business. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
YouTube
I’m pretty sure by now most everyone knows the video sharing website YouTube. YouTube was purchase by Google in 2006. Billions of videos are watched on YouTube every single day. It can be a very effect marketing tool for any small business trying to market their product and services to a global or local customer. Businesses can have their own dedicated YouTube page or Channel on which you can post product videos, company profiles or just a walk through showcase of your business. The Milton Chamber of Commerce has a YouTube channel for member videos and event coverage. Again search engines love video, use it effectively as a differentiator in your business. www.youtube.com
Open Site Explorer
This marketing tool is probably not familiar to you. One important part of winning the search engine ranking game with your business is to have what are called backlinks or incoming/inbound links to your website from quality external sources or other websites (I.E. Partners/Friends/Customers). The more legitimate backlinks you have the higher your website is ranked against your competition. At Open Search Explorer you can input your website address and see how many websites link to yours. Don’t forget to try it for your competition as well to see where you stand. Try it! www.opensiteexplorer.org
GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is an internet hosted service for remote meetings and sharing your desktop that enables users of GoToMeeting to meet with other computer users, customers, clients on the internet in real time. This tool has really help me in marketing my business through hosting webinars with prospects to review products, give presentations or help someone resolve a problem by viewing their computer desktop. Hosting a weekly webinar is a fun way of spreading the message of your products and services to a global audience. GoToMeeting does have a price to it costing me approximately $50 per monthly. Considering how much it saves me in travel and fuel costs its well worth it. www.GoToMeeting.com
Market Samurai
Market Samurai is another one of those more obscure marketing tools that you may not have heard of but it does have some great features when it comes to search engine keyword analysis and research. I use it with quite a few of my clients. Market Samurai is like Google Keyword Tool on steroids. It can not only preform keyword research but it will also compare your rankings to that of your competition, very powerful. Use it as a key differentiator. The price of Market Samurai is a little more than the other tools I have offered here but it is definitely worth it, expect to spend somewhere between $100 and $150. Try the free trial for 12 days and get a discount. www.marketsamurai.com
I hope you have a chance to try some of these internet marketing tools and they help you in growing your business.
Richard Bolton – Centricity360 Consulting
