Three Great Ways to Market Your Business on the Internet

While marketers spend hours identifying their niche market, these could be ways you might have never thought of to get your business name out. Entrepreneurs have invested a lot of time and money on social media and internet media making their business to work on both online and offline. But how many of them have really gained their return on the investment? Before you try out any other ‘Pay-per-Click’ campaign or ‘Search Engine Optimizing’ Campaign, see what kind of a return you would get from these ‘Business Networking’ and ‘Professional Networking’ websites discussed below.

Merchant Circle
As the internet gains popularity, the traditional advertising systems like Newspapers or cable have become very costly and ineffective. Merchant Circle provides you with a class platform to list your services with the company information and contract details. Its local business social networking website will build connections with other businesses in your area or a region you specify (this does not restrict marketing your services to any place else) and grow your network based on the activity and the popularity of the business. Again, it’s strictly up to you to become active on the website and work on the things you need to do become active. Your business profile on Merchant Circle helps you to enhance the band awareness. It also works great for SEO too.

Fast Pitch Professional Networking
Searching professionals and businesses has made easy with Fast Pitch Networking. It gives you more control on how you network with people and it even allows you to communicate with people on your network, real-time. You can network with professionals on the internet based on experiences, shared educational types, location, affiliations, etc. Fat Pitch allows you to distribute content directly to the members using blogs, press releases, video, email marketing and event announcements. Check it out for yourself here.

Linked-in Professional Networking
Linked-in is may be by far the most popular professional networking platform out there. Linked in has over 43 million members so far covering over 200 countries. According to Linked-in almost all the fortune 500 company executives are on Linked-in. ‘Relationships Matter!’ they say and yes, it has many features embedded to the platform to build the relationship between you as a professional with your potential client or the vendor.

These there websites too have paid subscriptions, but try it out for yourself with the free memberships these websites have.

Before you start building your website..

Whether you want to build your first website or enhance the existing website you have, the cost factor is likely to be on your mind on top. The website could be few text pages or something far more complex, but defining what you really need before hand would keep the costs down. Before you look for a web development firm, always define the purpose and the scope of the website. Here are few guidelines for you to follow.

Relax, take a pencil and a paper and try to answer these questions yourself.

1. Who are the primary users (ex: retail customers) of the website and why should they come to your website than your competitor?
2. What purpose the website will serve? Ex: lead generation, brand awareness, e-commerce, etc.
3. What media do you like to have? Ex: flash, audio, video, quality graphics, virtual tours, etc.
4. What are the similar websites you like?
5. What would you have your competition would not have?
6. How many pages you will like to have?
7. How would you market your website and what budget do you have?
8. Who will do the updates of the website?
9. Who will do the content writing (copy)
10. How will you measure the success of your website?
11. What's the time frame you have for the project?
12. Social Media?
13. Contribution you can provide for the marketing aspects
14. What would be the maximum price you can afford?

Having answered these is likely to keep your costs down and will avoid unexpected expenses. At the same time, it would give your website consultant information to understand your concept/thought better to make it a reality.