For many smaller companies, online marketing is – or should be — a crucial component of their business. But online marketing, which involves SEO, e-mail marketing, and pay per click ads, takes time, some money, and increasingly, some expertise. Products designed for small and midsize businesses are finally entering the market.

I got a chance to talk with Anita Campbell yesterday, the editor of Small Business Trends, a comprehensive site that explores trends in the small business market.

One of the topics we discussed was online marketing, specifically what smaller businesses should be doing. Campbell said that beyond the Web site – the centerpiece of a smaller business’ online presence – are five basic things that will provide smaller businesses with a good return. They are:

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New technology and gadgets may be appealing for website development, but from the perspective of a supplier brand, branding remains the most crucial issue, according to Mark Wong, VP of Marketing and Development for Preferred Hotel Group.

The role of hotel marketing has evolved since the introduction of the Internet, as Wong discussed with participants of the “Roadmap to Online Success’ panel at the Eye for Travel Sales & Marketing in Travel Asia Pacific Conference for 2008.

It wasn’t too long ago that Web 1.0 was prevalent, and the job of a hotel marketer was to create visibility and manage perception, in order to improve revenue.

However, the introduction of the interactive version of the Internet, Web 2.0, has developed this role. Marketing now requires the development of trust and influencing of opinions for the same result of improved revenue, as Wong disclosed.

Trust is considered crucial in marketing, as the increased transparency that the internet has brought allows a multitude of opinions to surface.

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Online marketing should always state the truth and not mislead consumers. It must ensure the protection of businesses and consumers and preserve the integrity of the Internet as an advertising medium. Online marketing involves research and active outflow of information. Combining offline and online techniques can double profits.

In order to allow business to benefit while protecting consumers from the perils of this new arena, many advocates are encouraging the passage of an "Internet Sales Rule" to offer consumers the same protection in online purchases as they have in other distance sale situations, such as purchases made by telephone.

The marketing organization is responsible for assessing the information used to validate ad claims. A consumer cannot simply rely on an advertiser’s assurance that the claims are proved. In order to protect themselves, catalog marketers should ask for material to back up claims rather than replicate what the manufacturer states about the product. Further, they should believe their intuition when a product sounds too good to be true. Disclaimers and disclosures must be clear and evident so that consumers can understand the information. Display of the product must indicate how it will perform under regular use. The marketers must refund money to dissatisfied consumers, especially if such refunds were promised. Sellers should take special care not to misrepresent a product or its performance when advertising to children.

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Joe Zawadzki’s traders spend their days in front of two computer screens, feeding their systems with data and trying to perfect their trading algorithms.

But they are not analyzing stocks. They are analyzing advertising.

What they are measuring is activity on advertising exchanges, where companies bid to place their online ads on space provided by publishers. As advertising exchanges gain popularity — Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all moved into this arena recently — Madison Avenue is borrowing tactics from Wall Street.

It is reminding some observers of what happened when technology came to the stock exchange, including the arrival of trading advisers like Mr. Zawadzki’s firm, MediaMath, that are running numbers and promising to offer sophisticated financial instruments.

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You’re sitting on a goldmine of untapped backlinks. They are the customers who have been with you for years, or perhaps decades. It’s time to start developing those relationships to enhance your backlink profile.

While your competitors are utilizing their resources on low-value link building techniques, such as comment spam, social media spam, and link trading, your company could be focused on obtaining links with lasting value. These valuable links can lead to direct sales for years to come and build brand awareness at the same time.

Why are links from customers so important? Everyone in sales knows that normally your best new business is from customer referrals. Often those referrals are already sold on your product/service. In addition since these are the types of links Google is less likely to devalue they have a higher long-term worth. This is simply a method to obtain new customers and links at the same time. Plus, it can be used to jump-start a word-of-mouth marketing campaign.

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I ask this controversial question for two reasons. Firstly, so many people now understand on-page SEO basics, and secondly, it has widely been accepted that PR, of the online variety, is key to building up links.

So where does this leave the SEO professional?

The end is looming for SEOs, whose bread and butter comes from telling people how to construct title tags and what to highlight in H1 tags.

Other professions — from web designers/developers to content writers — have absorbed such knowledge to add value to their own work, and almost everyone can get most of the basics right without hiring a SEO consultant.

The reason the role of the SEO is still important is because non techie people don’t want to get into the world of trying to understand and keep up with Google’s algorithm.

They know about on-page optimisation because it’s on their website, but off-site optimisation isn’t their bag.

In truth, off-site optimisation, link building or link baiting, should actually be in the domain of PR professionals.

PRs understand – or at least should understand – how to take a brand, product or service and get people to talk about it.

They are also apt in the art of crisis management and keeping things out of the media.

This is a skill that is increasingly becoming important online (such as negative search result rankings), in a world where today’s news isn’t tomorrow’s chip paper but something that will linger forever.

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Unsurprisingly, Google says yes, search marketing does increase brand awareness no matter where it appears on a results page, and they have released the results of a recent study to bolster their case.

In a recent study called “Brand Value of Search”, Google attempts to answer the age-old question of whether search marketing increases brand awareness, reports MediaPost.

Over 2,400 people took a brand survey using consumer-packaged goods brands and Google concluded that, when a brand did not appear in search results, awareness was decreased. This, says the search firm, shows the importance of search marketing in ensuring the brand is represented within search results.

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When you are looking to set up a website for your business, you will be faced with several hosting options. Before signing up for any type of hosting service, you need to work out your requirements and ensure you get the service your site needs, and at a fair price.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of web hosting you can sign up for: Shared, Dedicated, and Managed Dedicated service plans.

Shared Hosting

A shared hosting service (or ‘virtual hosting’ service) will host a large number of individual websites on a single server. Most websites are hosted this way, and prices are typically low as you will be sharing the services of the server with a number of other sites. Sometimes hundreds of websites are hosting on a single shared server. You can easily sign up to a shared service for under £100 per year.

Shared hosting would suit many small businesses – especially those that do not have, or do not want to get involved in the more technical aspects of running their own web server.

With a typical shared hosting account, you can be up and running in minutes. Once your domain name has been pointed towards your web hosting account, you can simply upload files and manage your email accounts with ease – typically via some type of user friendly “control panel”.

You should expect to receive customer and technical support for a shared hosting account, although the quality of this support can vary significantly between hosting providers.

Dedicated Hosting

A dedicated server would host a single or a small number of sites. The cost of signing up to such a service is understandably much higher than the shared service option – typically from £500 to several thousand pounds per year, depending on the specification of server you sign up for.

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Bangor, ME (PRWEB) July 16, 2008 — No Doubt Marketing announced this week that they are offering a new private label content solution service for web design and development companies as well as SEO and internet marketing companies and professionals. These companies can outsource all of their writing needs to avoid overhead such as content managers, editors, proofreaders and demanding writers.

"Content is still king, and any SEO, internet marketing or web development company is really missing out if they are not offering writing services. No Doubt Marketing has provided companies and individuals with content written by native English speakers and now we’re taking it to the next level. It has never been easier to offer a writing service that can significantly add to the bottom-line, or outsource your writing services eliminating profit-sucking overhead." commented Justin Stewart, the founder of No Doubt Marketing.

This revolutionary new private label content solution from No Doubt Marketing will provide companies with full turnkey content. No Doubt Marketing handles all aspects of content creation and management, providing customers with tailor made results that can in turn be branded by the companies looking to eliminate the overhead of their writing department.

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