For any small business taking the plunge and paying for a website to promote your company usually requires a large financial outlay and so it is vital that the right potential clients are reached. The website could be all singing, all dancing but if it is not found by your target audience it is wasted money.

This group of people who you consider to be specifically interested in your products and services are the people who you want to find your website amongst the abundance of websites out there but how do you make your website stand out?

A good place to start is to find an excellent web designer and developer who will be able to advise you on the most cost effective way to promote your website. Your marketing budget can be discussed, and most web designers will be able to provide a website to fit your budget. It is important at this initial meeting to identify who your target client group are and discuss your ideas for how to direct your clients to the relevant parts of your site. A web developer will be able to start to use search engine optimisation or SEO so that your site will be ranked higher when visitors are searching for products or services that your business specialises in.

Mobile marketing us now a huge industry and many companies have already seen the advantages that it can offer. It has grown massively over the last decade as more and more people are using their phones and mobile devices such as tablets, to not only search the internet but to make purchases. Mobile marketing includes marketing to people in a number of different ways using their phone as the way of connecting with them. It may be that you get them to download your app and opt in to receive notifications or that you send them text message marketing.

Because everything you used to do on a desktop can now be done on a mobile device it is important to make sure that your website is compatible for devices of all screen sizes and all browsers. If your website does not work on a mobile device the chances are people will not bother logging on to their computer to view your site, instead they will just go elsewhere. If you are going to the expense and trouble of doing a mobile marketing campaign, be sure that your website works ok on various mobile devices.

Mobile technology is all about customisation and personalisation, which is why marketing in this way can be so effective.

There are so many ways in which you can market your business you may feel a bit overwhelmed with the choice. Text message marketing is being widely used by several companies to target individuals. Often the way it works is that the business creates a text message to send out to a database of their existing or potential customers. It may be that they are asking them to complete a questionnaire about the service they received, informing them of a new product or service that is soon to be launched or asking them to enter a competition for example.

Due to data protection laws, you should have the permission of the person to contact them via text message prior to sending anything out. This is usually obtained at the time you collect any data from them and should be detailed in your privacy policy on the website.

If the customers have opted in to receive messages from such companies, then text message marketing can work quite well as long as you get the balance right and do not send them out too frequently.

A text message can be away of directing someone to a more detailed description of a product or service or news article on your website. As most people have smart phones, you can include html links in the message.

If you know that you need to start doing some marketing of your website but worry about where to start then you may want to enlist the help of a marking company. They will be able to advise you where the best place is to invest your money and time.

Some avenues of marketing work better than others for different businesses. What works for one business may not work for you so you need to closely monitor any marketing you do to see if it is worth continuing with. Some marketing such as Pay per Click gives instant results so you can tell very quickly if it is having an effect. Other forms such as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) takes a lot longer so you need to stick at it for a few months to see the benefit.

A marketing agency will often charge a fee to advise and help market your business but you should make this money back plus extra from the sales it creates. If you want to manage your own marketing but need some help and advise then some agencies will offer training to show you how to use social media and Adwords etc. effectively.

If you are looking at new ways in which you can expand your business reach and do not currently use social media sites, then you may wish to explore this option. Facebook is a popular social media sites that millions of businesses make a success out of.

When you first decide to take the step towards marketing through social media sites such as Facebook, you may be surprised if you don’t instantly receive a great response from it. Facebook can work wonders for some businesses and for others it takes a little more time and often money.

If you are in a business that sells a service or product direct to the public like a beauty salon or homemade jewellery then Facebook marketing can work really well and you may find that you have bookings or orders coming in quickly. You can build up a group of followers by asking friends and family to share and like your page. Another way to build up followers is to run competitions to get more and more people linked to your page. If you are within an industry that is a little bit more specialised or find it hard to promote through friends and family then you may want to consider using Facebook paid ads.

If you are looking for instant traffic to your website them you should think about using Google’s Pay per Click marketing tool. It allows you to create marketing campaigns to advertise your website as a whole or specific products or services. The number of ways in which you can set up your campaign is vast. You can set it up to only target people within a set geographical location, using certain devices or to only show your ads on specific days or times of day. Setting up specifics in your campaign will often allow your budget to go further but you do need to ensure that it is done correctly. One simple mistake in your settings could mean non or your adverts show or that you use your budget up far too quickly with little return.

Although Pay per Click can be expensive, many companies that use it successfully says that it pays for itself and that if they turn it off they notice an instant decline in visitors and enquiries or sales.

You need to be able to know what keywords you should target and this is particle linked to the budget you have. If you only have a small budget then you should focus on more long tailed keywords rather than generic ones.

If you have a website for your business then that is a great way to start online marketing, but it is important that you not only attract visitors to your site but manage to convert them in to sales or enquiries.

It is important to ensure that your site can be found easily. Simple steps such as making sure non www. and www. both show your site will help ensure you do not miss any visitors. Another way in ensuring yor site is easy to find is to achieve good rankings on the search engine such as Google. You can do this in two ways – one, through SEO (search engine optimisation) and two, through paid for adverts on Google Adwords. SEO will take some time to achieve and you may have to work very hard to achieve number one or two positions. Google Adwords can be almost immediate but it can be quite costly, especially if you are bidding on keywords that are very generic or highly competitive.

If you have a website for your business then you may be constantly checking where you are in the. If you are receiving traffic to the site but are not benefitting from enquiries or sales then it may be time to revisit the content within your website and have a look at what is happening when people come to your site from the search engines. It may be that your site is too busy and they cannot find what they are looking for or that maybe you are targeting the wrong audience. All of these issues will result in limited sales and enquiries.

As a business owner or blogger, it can be extremely disappointing to find that your website is nowhere in the search engine results. It may be that you are showing up but not until pages 5 plus which means you will get very little or possibly no traffic.

There are several reasons as to why this may happen which you need to investigate as soon as possible. Firstly, you may have some code on your robots.txt file or in the settings of your website or blog that don’t allow the search engines to crawl your site. If this is the case it means that none of your pages will existing in the search engine results pages and therefore will not show up for any of your keyword or even when your company name is typed in. This is a fairly straight forward issue to resolve and could see your site indexed within a week or two of removal.

Another reason that your site may be no where to be seen is that your lacking SEO (search engine optimisation) or are doing some techniques that has actually caused your site to be removed. SEO is optimising a website to get it to rank high on the search engines such as Google. It involves a number of processes and can take time to work.

Social media can be great for businesses who are looking market their business to large number of people quickly. It can also be a good way of keeping in touch with your existing customers and letting them know about events, sales or product launches etc.

Facebook has become increasing popular over the last decade with over two billion monthly users making it a potentially huge marketing avenue. Many companies are now using social media to marketing their business as they have started to see the potential it has.

Facebook marketing either using the free posting / sharing aspect or the paid for advertising can work well for many industries and different types of business. If your business deals direct with the public then social media is especially important as you can connect with individual users and offer those competitions, special offers and the chance to interact with you instantly. Even if you only do business to business trading, Facebook should still be used as you may be able to reach directors of companies or decision makers as well as it having a positive effect on your website position on Google.

Social media is a hugely popular marketing tool for many businesses and it can very quickly help you establish your brand and start interacting with your customers.

Although social media has many advantages, if used in correctly it can end up having a negative impact on your business, so it is important you understand what you are doing.

You may find that people have started to leave reviews on your social media accounts or that they have mentioned your company in one of their posts. If this happens you should ensure you acknowledge any activity on social media good or bad. If they have put a positive comment on about your company then a quick post thanking them for their feedback and stating that you are pleased they have had a positive experience can go a long way, but if they have put something negative on there then it is important to think carefully before responding. Refrain from nasty or negative comments in reply to a post on social media, it is never a good idea and not only will you upset that person you may find that you get a lot of bad press from the other people reading or commenting on the post too. If you do find a negative comment, reply saying that you are disappointed to learn about their experience and would like to contact them directly to discuss.