This article will give you a quick rundown on a few small business web hosting companies you may want to consider when choosing a company to work with. The amount of information and effort going into building a website can be very great so this article is meant to serve as a shortcut in finding a company to work with.
The first and usually most popular company that many people recommend is GoDaddy. This company is very widely known for its Super Bowl commercials that allowed it to burst onto the scene. It is one of the largest domain registrars and offers almost anything that your website would demand. One of the strongest features is the Support Staff. This area is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can talk with them, email them, or find the answers yourself through their extensive help section. Basic hosting can cost as little as 2. 99 a month when talking about Linux.
Another highly rated small business web hosting company is Infinology. This has ranked very highly with many active web site users and often can be found near the top of the list, if not at the top of the list, for overall satisfaction. There are many different scripting languages available for free with cost usually being around $6. 95 a month.
The final one which will be discussed is LunarPages. Some languages will cost an extra dollar or two a month but the best part about this website is the generous space and bandwidth included in the price. The cost starts at exactly the same rate as Infinology: $6. 95 a month.
There are third party web sites where you can find more information if you want to do more extensive research on any of these three companies. Any good small business web hosting company should not charge a great deal for basic web hosting activities.
Looking at the above examples shows you how little it can cost to find a good company with good service. As you can see from these three examples, costs can run under ten dollars a month without batting an eyelash. You may want to see which particular company will work best with your situation, especially if you start using more bandwidth if you get into social networking. One of the major keys is the customer service because you will not normally worry about your website’s hosting until it goes down. At that point, you will want someone ready and available to help bring your website back up.
All marketing resources will eventually talk about your marketing mix, but what do they mean exactly? Marketing mix is a term that the marketing world tries to hold as a private term that only the industry knows about, but as a small business owner, you need to understand how to plan and implement your marketing mix. The marketing mix is defined as the four P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. These four areas make up the complete outline for product or service marketing. Once you have defined the variables for each P, you have a basis for proper marketing. Market research will play a major role in each area of your marketing mix. You must understand what you are competing with in regards to products and pricing. Although you may have a new and unique item with an innovative type of distribution, you still must compare your product or service to existing ones. Here are the four P’s of your marketing mix for small business marketing. P #1: ProductThe product or service or selling must be defined first. What are you selling? How will it be packaged? Determine your product’s features, and then build the benefits from them. At this point, you will make all of the decisions relating to your product or service: style, quality, packaging, warranty, etc. P#2: PricePricing actually plays a vital role in the branding and image of your product. Determining your price can be difficult, especially if you product is in a widely-variable industry. You must determine pricing strategy, retail and wholesale pricing, possible bundling, and any type of discounts. P#3: PlacePlace refers to how you will distribute the product. Will you sell to retail stores, or will you sell directly to customers? Is your product a wholesale item? The decisions made about distribution will affect your marketing mix in terms of how you will warehouse your products, how you will process orders, what types of channels will you use, and how will you cover the market. P#4: PromotionPromotion is the area where you will make decisions on how people will learn about your product. What types of sales strategies and promotions will you use? What kind of sales force will you need to sell your product? How will you use public relations and publicity to support your product? There are many aspects of the promotion element of your marketing mix. In fact, the other three P’s will affect your promotion strategy. Decide on the first three P’s before you tackle Promotion, but ultimately, each P will coordinate with the others. Once you complete your marketing mix decisions, review the entire plan to make sure you have a consistent and precise marketing mix plan in order to properly sell, distribute, and promote your product.
What is the right price for your product or service? Most small business owners struggle with this question, because they confuse the cost of producing the product with the value it brings to the customer.
When it comes to establishing a price for your goods or services, the value of your product has absolutely nothing to do with production cost. The value is based on how much you help clients save, increase, reduce or improve. If you can quantify these benefits, then you have a foundation for establishing an appropriate price for your goods or services provided by your small business.
It is All About Value
Think about your last software purchase. You opened an attractive box which contained a CD and a small manual. There was less than $10 worth of material in the box, and yet you may have paid $300, $500 or even $1,000 for the software.
You paid a premium, well above production cost, because of the need the software fulfilled and the benefits it would provide.
Calculate Your Value
The same is true for your product or service. How much value do you deliver?
Use these questions to build your value:
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How much can my product save my customer? Savings may be in time, money or effort.
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How much can my product earn for my customer? Can you help them increase their income; directly or indirectly? Does it create a foundation for future opportunities or establish valuable personal relationships?
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What intangible benefits might customers realize, and is it possible to quantify these benefits?
planning achieve exceptional results. An accomplished marketer, she has won regional and national communication awards. Her articles on marketing, networking, and business development have been featured in Contracting Business, New York Forum, and ACH&R news. Her books, ?The Entrepreneur?s Notebook? and ?Confessions of a Networking Junkie? are popular resource for business owners across the country. Active in the Indianapolis business community, Lorraine is the President of Rainmakers, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Network of Women in Business. Her monthly networking newsletter Business Notes from Roundpeg is distributed to more than 4,000 local professionals and her blog, www. indy-biz. com, is rapidly becoming a must read for local business owners. Lorraine holds an MBA from the University of Texas, and a BA from Queens College, City University of NY. She has been on the faculty of University of Indianapolis, Marion College, and the Indiana Institute of Technology. Today, as the founder of Roundpeg, she helps business owners find a ?Starting Point? for growth and change.
Using these Internet Marketing Strategies to market your small business online will get the best return on investment and allow you to dominate your competitors plus you will be paying less for your clicks than your competition.
You don’t have to be afraid of the Google slap when you apply these basic rules when using Google Adwords.
When you are using Google adwords for an affiliate campaign your job will be to pre-sell the prospect before they go to the company sales page. There are several ways to do this.
When you are writing copy for your pre-sale landing page keep in mind you are helping someone find a solution to their problem or pain. People will always move away from pain into pleasure, you just have to show them how.
If you always keep solving the person’s problem your focus you will never have to sell them, they will want the solution you are offering them.
Google is doing the same thing. Their concern is on the millions of eyes that read their search results and ads. These are the people they are trying to please by giving them what they are searching for. So if you always keep your solution as relevant and targeted to the problem of your prospect the easier it will be to sell the product.
When you do this Google will reward you by charging you less for your clicks. The people in the number 1 spot of the Google sponsored links are paying less than the people below them. It is all about relevancy.
Give the people what they want and Google will give you what you want.
The best way to do this is to keep your keywords, ad copy, ad groups and landing pages, all congruent. If you do not follow these simple principles Google will raise your cost per click, ban your ads and slap your pages. Google can suspend your account for as long as they want also.
This is not a good thing because Google is really the only game in town for advertising if you are talking reaching the major part of the market. It is much more effective to learn to give Google what they want, which is to satisfy the people searching.
Buyers know what they want and are on Google searching for it. There are also other ways to use Google Adwords in the content network. Most marketers just focus on the search network because the buyers are more aggressive. The content network can be a goldmine if you write your ad copy with thought streaming in mind.
Keeping these basic ideas in mind when using Google adwords to market your small business online will help keep your expenses down and keep you from being banned by Google. These internet marketing strategies will greatly increase your ROI when you market your small business online.
Did you know that most small business websites generate very little traffic? Whether you have outsourced your web design or have it done in-house, it is important that your webmaster understands the basic structure and on-page criteria that will make the search engines happy. And when the search engines are happy, the result is increased targeted traffic.
Website Mistake #1: Not Building Trust
Probably the biggest mistake I see is the lack of trust-building content. If your website is filled with sales pressure tactics or doesn’t offer any helpful and informative content, people will simply move on to something else. Remember, when people come to your site, they are in complete control. Give them just one reason to leave and they will. You must earn your visitor’s confidence through original, useful and compelling content. Remember, in many cases, people are coming to your site from the search engines to find information, not to make a purchase. Give them what they want. If you?re not sure what kind of content to write about on your site, then it?s time to invest in a paid keyword research tool like Wordtracker or KeyWord Discovery. These tools will help you uncover search phrases that you can then use to write page content.
Website Mistake #2: Improper On-Page Criteria
The search engines look for certain elements contained within your page. There are proactive ways you can help ensure your pages get ranked favorably. These include making sure all your META Tags are correct, your primary keyword phrase is sprinkled throughout your text, and that you include a link with your main keyword in the anchor text.
Website Mistake #3: Not Building Inbound Links
Did you know the search engines look at how many external websites have links that point to your site? If there are a lot of high-quality websites that point back to your site, the search engines see that as a vote of confidence and they will give your site more weight in the search engine rankings. If you are constantly adding quality content to your site, it’s just a matter of time before other sites start linking to yours. However, don’t wait for other people to discover you – be proactive. Here are some simple ways to build links. * Submit your site to quality directories * Submit articles that contain a link back to your site in the Author Bio * Provide you link partners with appropriate keyword-rich anchor text * Answer questions in forums and blogs, providing a link in your signature file * Work to get links that point to deeper pages within your site (not just your Homepage)
Website Mistake #4: Poor Website Structure/Navigation
Search engines will come to your website and try to collect as much information as they can for their index. Some small business owners have such haphazard website structure that it’s a wonder the search engines come visiting at all. It would be sad to see all that good content go to waste because the search engines couldn’t find your pages. One highly recommended design is a three tier structure. Your Tier 1 page is your home page. Your Tier 2 pages are your navigation link landing pages. Your Tier 3 pages are the additional content pages that support the theme of the respective Tier 2 pages. Most of your site will be comprised of these Tier 3 pages. Tier 3 pages should always link back to their respective Tier 2 parent. Likewise, all Tier 2 pages should link back to the Homepage. The search engines can easily picked up on this link structure and index your pages.
Website Mistake #5: Lack of Monetization Models
Having a compelling website that drives over 1,000 unique visitors a day is something to be proud of. But what is it worth if you are not able to capitalize on that traffic? You need to ensure you have several monetization models in place on your website so that you have multiple sources of revenue. In addition, if you have several income streams developed, you’ll be in a better position if one of them dries up for some reason. Your parents were right when they said not to put all your eggs in one basket. Several popular monetization options include selling downloadable ebooks, selling physical products, and revenue generated from affiliate sales or commissioned products. There?s a lot of small business websites that generate little traffic. Follow these simple strategies to make sure your site isn?t one of them.
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