Assuming you’re a business owner who has a website, you’ve probably been told that you need to do online marketing in order to get more business, right? You’ve probably heard the terms “search engine optimization”, “SEO” or other things that will get you found on Google and the other search engines when people are searching for you.

A lot of times, that information can be very overwhelming and difficult to figure out. What really works? What doesn’t work? What can get you in trouble with Google?

It’s almost just easier to do nothing and rely on “hope marketing” – that you “hope” someone will wander into your website and magically decide to do business with you.

I’ve been teaching online marketing (or just “marketing”) for many years now, and I agree that it can get very complicated and overwhelming from the get go. However, the whole process really isn’t rocket science, and anyone can learn to do it. Google with all their rule changes, has actually made it far simpler for the small business owner to get found, if she just follows a few simple steps.

Read about our upcoming Hands On Workshop to learn online marketing! Small arrow

Fix The Problems First

Three fundamental problems that 92% of all websites have cause customers to go away. You have to fix them!

  1. Make sure it’s easy to get in touch with you – either by phone, e-mail, or sign up for a newsletter. This has to be easily seen near the top of ALL pages of the website and blog.
  2. Fix any hidden technical problems that prevent the search engines from figuring out who you are and what your business is about.
  3. Make sure every page has had proper search engine optimization applied (see #1 bullet below). Most websites have this wrong, if they have anything set up at all.

The Five Fundamental Steps To Get Found Online

Your customers are looking for you. I guarantee it. But if they can’t find you, you’re invisible, and they’re going somewhere else to do business. These simple steps are all you need to do to get found by your customers when they are looking for you, and we’re teaching a hands on workshop in a few weeks that is specifically designed for small business owners to learn what to do to get found in 30 days.

  1. Set up Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – It’s easy to do, and doesn’t take much work. Set it and forget it, the move onto the next step. You don’t need to “do” SEO or tweak things all the time. Just get it done in a couple hours, and move on.
  2. Start creating content that is useful to your customers. Articles (like this one), videos, podcasts, infographics, PDFs, cheat sheets, how to’s, etc. are all wonderful things that your customers will appreciate seeing from you. It proves you know what you’re doing, and gives them confidence in you. I wrote about 5 ways to build trust before, and this is a critical step.
  3. Share the new content in your social media, like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. Your customers will see it there and may even share it with their friends.
  4. Put the content in your newsletter that reminds your customers that you’re always out there, ready to help them when they need you. It doesn’t take any effort to do this on a regular basis.
  5. Finally, and optionally, run paid ads to generate leads for your newsletter.

That’s it. Start doing this on a regular basis, and you’ll start building a following online.

Small Business Hands On Workshop for Online Marketing

SEO training video screenshotIf you feel like your website just isn’t generating any (or many) leads for your business, and you’re just not sure what to do about it, there is an easy answer. Join us at one of our upcoming Hands On Workshops (HOW). During this workshop, we’ll show you step-by-step how to identify the problems on your own website that may be turning away customers, and how to market your business online without taking a lot of time to do it.

Upcoming Dates:

  • March 23-24, 2015: Online Marketing Hands On Workshop (2 days) – Learn the five baby steps to get found online
  • March 25, 2015: Internet Marketing Retreat (1 day) – Learn how to apply the baby steps to your own business, and you’ll walk away with a completed marketing plan for your business
  • We also have training dates in May.