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1. Online Marketing Small
IDEAL INTERNET MARKETING SMALL
BUSINESS
Business
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Online marketing small business companies is a highly
lucrative opportunity - for the web designers, web hosts
and internet marketers. They can capitalize on new
entrants, frighten them with technological talk, press them
into substantial monthly payments and more often than
not - drive their online marketing small business efforts
into the ground.
That's the scary thing about the internet - everyone will
take your money. Entering the online world is so risky;
because it's technology that you simply don't have
experience with. Internet marketers know what they have
to do to captivate people like you and win your businesses
custom.
There are two ways to go about marketing your small
business online - actively and passively.

3. The latter comprises of simply sticking up a website with a
little bit of information about you, your company, your
product and some contact information. You may list
yourself in a few directories but it isn't something that is
going to open up the web to you and make you millions.
Using a website actively to market, acquire leads and
generate business is a much more effective way of using
the internet. You can automate systems, make them run
around-the-clock and potentially deal with a lot more
business without all that much extra expensive.
However, actively marketing your website requires traffic -
a lot of traffic. But just like in the offline world, you need
targeted traffic. Ideally...
There are two functions an 'active' website has for online
marketing small business.
Prospects find you - not you find your prospects

4. The internet is an increasingly social place and people
naturally gravitate towards the big discussions (no one
likes talking to nobody right?). The nature of search has
flipped the way marketing works in favour of you. You can
compete at Google with the large companies for people
who are actively looking for your services. You need to
find yourself at the front of discussions and at the front of
the search engines.
Creates a dynamic conversational platform
Having established yourself as a key conversation leader,
you need to carry this conversation over onto your web
'platform'. This need not necessarily be a website - you
could use a blog, Facebook page or even tools like
Twitter. The key is the maintain more control over the
conversation and work with your (now) audience to offer
solutions to their problems.
Marketing is no longer pushing what you've got into "their
faces." Individuals are finding you and presenting needs
for solutions. It's much more like everyday conversation.

5. Your platform must "give" before it "gets"
The best online marketers will engineer their websites to
give away their best information and products to users to
gain their trust and relationships. People will naturally
reciprocate any kind of positive gesture - they will listen to
you - and be far less defensive to the prospect of 'being
sold to'.
Two important points here: I'm not suggesting you should
use the internet as a freebie platform, or that you should
engineer relationships merely to break the defensive sales
barrier prospects have. Offer helpful advice, engage in
conversation and keep on giving.
Present your product not as a sales pitch, but as a
genuinely helpful tool and solution to their dire needs and
problems. Ignoring the cheesiness - it should make their
lives better, and also strengthen your relationship with
them. If they like what you've suggested or offered them
before, chances are they'll be more receptive to what else
you have to offer.

6. This process is called 'PREselling'.
"Okay, so how do I do it?"
We've talked about the theory of online marketing small
business firms; so now discussing the detail.
Blogging is a much talked-about system for establishing
conversation on the internet, but the big question is how
to "get noticed" in a world where everyone is blogging.
When I first started a few small scale blogs I couldn't get
their momentum going enough to make it worthwhile.
Blogs eat time, and aren't such great tools for marketing
specifically as building relationships. You will constantly be
treading the 'content wheel' as your subscribers demand
more and more quality demand. Can you afford this whilst
running a small business?
Perhaps you could look to use Facebook or Twitter or
some other online service - but the nature of such services
leaves the traffic and 'discussion' primarily outside of your

7. control. It's more like 21st century lead generation - that
drives traffic to YOUR platform.