Business
Will you join me in a little exercise? Take a moment and consider how you would answer this question: Are you already marketing on the Web? If you really think about it, just about any business owner who utilizes the Web for any purpose will likely find that, whether or not s/he intentionally organized a Web marketing campaign, s/he may already be marketing products and services on the Web. This article will examine some subtle ways business owners may already be marketing their businesses on the Web even if they did not set out to.
Let’s begin with your website as it is most probable that if you own and operate a business in today’s world you probably have a website for your business; and if so you are, therefore, already marketing your products or services online just by virtue of the fact that you have a website online.
This is true because the mere fact of having a live website means there is the potential for curious Web surfers to access that site. And although you may not be actively engaged in promotional activities, you may still find that it creates interest in your products despite the lack of sustained marketing efforts on your part. Such activity without effort is known as passive marketing.
SEO
Another area of participation without promotional intent is commonly known as message boards, and if you participate in such an online venue and put a link in your signature that leads back to your website, you would be considered by most to be marketing that website online. Savvy business owners realize the importance of participation in industry-related message boards to create an interest in their products and services, thereby establishing themselves as knowledgeable about, or expert in, their industry by offering a link to their own website, even if it is in the signature line of information they provide in their posts.
In fact, even business owners who do not realize it, may already be inadvertently enjoying the benefits of Web marketing as a result of message board participation simply just by doing something they enjoy as a form of leisurely activity.
You’ve heard of, and probably are knowledgeable in, the use of keywords in the sense that when you include keywords in the content of your website that are relevant to your business you will likely answer yes to the question, do you use keywords? And in view of that answer you also are, therefore, already marketing on the Web by optimizing your website for such keywords. Search engine optimization (SEO) have an affect on websites whether or not website owners are even cognizant about the concept of keyword density and how it can help to optimize a site for the benefit of search engines.
Business owners will likely use certain words – often depending on the type of products and services they offer – simply because it is natural and logical to do so. This tendency, however, can result in search engines boosting their website rankings for the particular keywords used. The concept of SEO is much more involved and complex than employing the frequent use of keywords, though; but business owners can gain some benefit just by naturally applying relevant keywords to their website.
Feedback
Do you solicit feedback from your customers online? This is yet another example of how business owners may accidentally be marketing their business on the Web. Most business owners realize the importance of soliciting feedback from customers for business purposes, and business owners who offer products online might solicit feedback in the form of online surveys. Although the business owners may be doing this simply for business purposes, the fact that it is done online, puts it into the category of Web marketing.
We have discussed several ways in which business owners may already be marketing online but, what about business owners who do want to have an increased online presence? If you are a business owner who may already be marketing online accidentally and wish to launch full scale Web marketing campaigns, you can do so by hiring a consultant with experience in Web marketing to assist you in creating an effective and worthwhile campaign which is optimized for your target audience. Best of luck!