Why does my business need an internet marketing strategy?

Every small business needs to have an internet marketing strategy to stay competitive. According to estimates, 85% of customers today begin their search for products and services on the internet. If you are not online, you are losing a large number of potential customers.

Your internet marketing strategy begins with a professional and responsive website. Your website is the base of your internet marketing strategy. Your website conveys your company brand and message to your customers. It needs to be professional and fully responsive or mobile-friendly. Your website should look great on any device- desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone- that your customer chooses to browse the internet. If your website is unreadable on a smartphone, or only a portion of the site is visible because it is sized for a desktop and not responsive, it is no longer effective for internet marketing. Customers are not going to spend time trying to scroll sideways or trying to pinch and zoom in to read text. They will click away to the competitor’s site.

What should my internet marketing strategy include?

The internet marketing strategy for your business should include the following items.

• A professionally designed business website to market your products or services. Your website is the foundation of your online marketing strategy so it needs to impress your customers.


• Your business website must be responsive or mobile-friendly. It should scale to provide a great user experience on devices of all sizes- desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Customers today can access your website using any of these devices.


• The website should be optimized with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve its rankings in competitive search engine listings. SEO helps increase the quality and quantity of organic (free or non-paid) traffic that your website receives.


• You should use Social Media Marketing by creating company pages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and others and link them to your website.


• You should use Content marketing and provide a blog with informative articles, a newsletter and also include YouTube videos on your website.


• As your business grows, you can add Pay-per-click advertising using Google AdWords to attract more customers. Pay-per-click ads are the ads you see featured on the top and bottom of the search results page when you search online for a product or service.

Search engine listings, blog articles, social media marketing and content marketing will all drive customers to your website. Once your customer has arrived at your website, a professional website will provide more information to market your products or services.