Starting a New Online Business

Many businesses online and offline do not have a plan for success. You should do searches online on Google, and Yahoo, and MSN, and see which of your competitors come up for that search term and also you should know that you have a large enough target market.

Some search terms produce a couple or 20 searches a day, and others a few thousand a day. You will need a big enough market to target because you will be sharing that market with competitors.

1. Your website needs to be better than competitors.

2. Come up in the search engines either through SEM or PPC.

3. Optimize your website through SEO.

Common Mistakes

1. They target and promote keywords before knowing the value of the keywords.

2. When using PPC they direct everyone to the front page of their website. Direct your ads to a detailed web page which matches up to your prospects search term.

Tips for a Successful Ad Campaign

1. Have a customized landing page, which takes the prospective customer to the exact page for which they are searching.

2. To have a cost effective online marketing strategy there need to be enough people searching your product or service.

For example, if someone searches for a special flute, your ad should feature that special flute. The more specific you are and the less searching the customer has to do on your web page, the more likely they are to contact you and buy your product.

Research which search terms are sought more frequently so that you can make sure that you have the largest audience possible. Do this using Google's keyword tool (valid only for searches on Google). Doing this  research can make the difference between success or failure.

Google's Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Below are some features of the tool:

1. You can enter phrases describing your products into the search box. The tool will give you results on different phrases and synonyms matching your description. It tells you which search terms produce the maximum traffic on a monthly basis.

2. If you are targeting the United States then the monthly traffic column per keyword is accurate. If you are targeting a particular state then you would need to multiply the monthly traffic by the percentage of population in that state.

3. The tool also has a column that indicates the average cost per click for each search term. This can be helpful to price your product or service. For example, if you are selling something for $50.00 and it costs you $50.00 to draw enough visitors to your website before anyone buys your product then you need to rethink your pricing model. If however, your product sells for $50.00 and it only costs you $10.00 in advertising before someone buys your product, then you have a cost effective marketing campaign. This is assuming that the difference $40.00 covers your costs.

Other SEM Strategies

In addition to pay-per-click, you can pursue search engine marketing techniques such as:

1. Article Marketing

2. Channel Partner Marketing

3. Directory Marketing

4. Community Forum Marketing

The goal of all of these marketing techniques is to get a higher search engine ranking for the search terms you are targeting. All of the methods above include backlinks to your website. Backlinks to your website is an important criteria used by search engines to rank your website.

Online Market Penetration

One way you can discover if you are in a growing market is by using Google Trends. When using Google Trends, enter a search term which describes your business and view the trend line in the results.

Another way is to look at your online competitors. Often if their websites have not been updated in a while, it can indicate they are doing good business. Also, if you have to scroll down to the third page of the search results before you find a decent looking web page, that can indicate a large market.

Do market research, do competitive analysis and research market trends for your industry, then you will be on the road to success.