Whether you are engaged in a start-up business or have been in business for 40 years, you are always looking for ways to find affordable internet marketing techniques. Can you possibly compete against the big boys or even the shop like yours down the street for free? In a word, “yes.”
Affordable internet marketing techniques have been spewed across the web, but you don’t need to feel overwhelmed or decide to go back to expensive paper yellow page books that most people use for door stops. You can look at these three free writing tips I offer below and just start with number one. The other two are just ways to improve your expertise. How much more affordable can internet marketing get?
Affordable Internet Marketing Tip #1--Writing Great Content
Today we are assuming that you already have a website up and running. Affordable internet marketing tip number one is that you need to work on your blog. Blogging used to be a simple process, but it has gotten a little more complicated the last year or so. Don’t let this get to you.
What you need to do first is write about what you already know. You want to help people solve a problem in your niche or add some kind of value to their lives. You were doing this anyway, right? So this affordable internet marketing tip is a given.
Do not think that the purpose of your blog is to sell your customers, clients or potentials on your very own business and products--because it’s not. The big part of this affordable internet tip is you want to use your blog to make friends, building rapport through having consistently useful content. Readers may not become instant buyers, but good content builds loyalty. People will often make a purchase from someone they feel loyal to even if not right away. When they do buy, they are more likely to become repeat customers.
Affordable Internet Marketing Tip #2--Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is the sand trap that has so many potential writers running off the blog course. Only you want to have it. Affordable internet marketing tip number two is that SEO is how your customers find you.
Let’s say your business is a small pet supply and training business. How are you going to differentiate yourself from Petco if you don’t have a way to encourage people to find you when they search? By using certain keywords you can be found by people looking for a business close to where they live or you can write a blog about your unique method of dog training. How do you think Cesar Milan became known as the Dog Whisperer? That keyword phrase is quite unique to him. You can develop your own and incorporate it into your website and your blogs.
You will also want to use other keyword phrases that will help people find you when they search. So what is the free (and you can’t get any more affordable) internet marketing tip that you can use to find those good keyword phrases? One good place to learn which keywords are the best is by using Google’s free Keyword Tool. Used in conjunction with what makes your business unique, the best keywords will send people to your website to learn more.
Affordable Internet Marketing Tip #3--Article Marketing
Article marketing, another affordable internet marketing tip, is a way to create backlinks, which are like arrows that point people to your site from other places on the web. One of the best free, therefore very affordable internet techniques to do this is to write articles specifically to post on article directories like Ezine Articles, Go Articles and Articles Base. At the end of each article you publish this way you put a link pointing back to your primary website. People will go straight to your website if they want more information on what you do.
The thing about writing for these sorts of directories is that a website can take your article and post it “as is” on their site. They are not supposed to make any changes to the article. So you are in essence now doing a guest blog post for a new set of potential clients. This makes you even more of an authority in your niche. As you do that, you bring exposure to your own website, making it more searchable through search engine optimization. This is one of the best ways to create affordable internet marketing.
By working on making your blog unique, using keywords with care to optimize being found when people search and by putting articles up on marketing directories, you have with very little money found three free, and thus extremely affordable, internet marketing tips.
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.