Preparing to Compete on the Internet

There are three essential things that you should do yourself if you want to compete in your online business environment:

1. Competition Research — you must thoroughly research and analyze your online competition.
2. Website Planning — you have to make decisions about:
   
   
   • the content and functionality you need — no more and no less.
   • strategies for persuading your target audiences to buy from you, not your competitors.
   • strategies for persuading the search engines to refer people to your site who are looking for the products and services you offer.
   • strategies for getting involved with social networking communities and for using social marketing tools to drive traffic to your site and to establish it as an authoritative source of information.
3. Website Content Development — you must develop concise, precise, search-term-rich content that speaks directly your target audiences and makes your site an authoritative information resource that will be favored by the search engines.

Managing Your Own Internet Marketing

If you're going to do your Internet marketing in-house, the owner or manager of a small business may not be the best person to manage or coordinate the company's Internet marketing. You may want to designate a trusted colleague, employee, or family member to be your company's Internet marketing manager. He or she:

• will be responsible for developing and implementing your search marketing strategies and your social marketing strategies.
• will collaborate with your Internet marketing professional.
• should know your products and services well.
• should be an intelligent, creative, energetic, and disciplined person who welcomes a challenge.

Most small businesses have an employee or family member who, if given the chance, could learn to coordinate Internet marketing competently.

The two strategic questions in the right column of this page are important starting points for your Internet marketing strategy.

Getting Organized — What and When?

After you’ve submitted your website to the search engines, here’s what you should continue to do as long as you have a website:

• Freshen up the text on your site every few months. If it hasn’t been updated in nine months, the search engines may start to classify your site as “abandoned.”
• Add useful new information to your site every month or two. Just have the essentials on your site when it’s launched; it’s best to add content gradually.
• Update your competition research and analyze the traffic on your site every couple of months.
• Have a “Partners” page on your site, and once a month contact a few other businesses nationwide about exchanging "partner" links. Sometimes a phone call is better than email. But don’t link to — or accept links from — “link farms” or businesses that aren’t relevant to your products and services.

You should schedule each of these things and do them faithfully. If the information on your site is better than your competitors have, the search engines will eventually list you above them.

Allied Internet collaborates with its clients who want to develop and manage competitive Internet marketing strategies. Call us at 303-935-1820 to discuss your needs and options.