Online Marketing Blog

One of the most common questions small business marketers are seeking to answer is, “How can I really benefit from social media?” Social media has certainly changed and improved how small to mid-size businesses can carve out space and connect in an extremely crowded marketplace. When companies participate on the social web in a meaningful way, it helps create a personal connection between customers and the brand.

One of the greatest benefits specifically for small businesses is that access to potential customers has increased tremendously. Rather than strictly focusing on paid advertising, word-of-mouth referrals, and in-store promotions (or a wacky mascot standing outside) businesses can now directly find customers  that may be interested in their products based on profiles, active discussions, keywords or expressed interests. This is especially key in the early stages of a business life-cycle when cash is at a premium.

Many small and medium sized consumer products marketers strive for the biggest bang for the buck when allocating budgets. While our SEO firm specializes more in BtoB SEO, PR and blogs, there are some fundamental consumer product site promotion tactics we’ve found to be appropriate in many cases. Each is measurable to ROI and can be scaled to some degree.

1. Pay per click – Advertising on Google, Yahoo, MSN
2. Site optimization – Improving “natural” rankings on search engines
3. Optimized press releases – Announce sales, contests or special offers via press release
4. Blog marketing – Add a blog to web site to encourage search rankings, incoming links, interaction with consumers
5. Paid inclusion and shopping feeds – Submit a feed of your products to Google’s Froogle.com, Yahoo Search Submit and possibly comparison shopping sites such as shopping.com, bizrate.com or amazon.com