The beauty of online marketing is that you don’t have to settle for one channel. Diversity is the key to success, both online and off line. In fact, we recommend diversifying your Web marketing strategies for more effectiveness.

Some of the methods of online marketing for small businesses that others have found successful in the past include:

• Pay per click advertising
• Article marketing
• Blog marketing
• Social media marketing
• Search engine marketing
• Link building
• Site sponsorship
• Video marketing
• Podcasting
• Content aggregation

And this is just to name a few.

The best way to diversify your Web marketing efforts is to start with one or two methods of marketing and work them until you meet with some level of success. Then, add another method of marketing but don’t stop what you’ve been doing. Every month (or three months), add a new marketing tactic to the methods you are currently working and if a marketing tactic isn’t producing results after three or four months of actively using it, drop it.

For instance, perhaps you start with blog marketing and pay per click advertising. Work them for three months and monitor your results. In the third month you might add article marketing. Let’s say you’ve been spending $100 month on PPC advertising and blogging every day. You can add article distribution with 5 new articles a day and see how that affects your marketing efforts.

After three months you should evaluate your marketing plan to see what is working. If pay per click marketing isn’t delivering a positive ROI, try to find out why and make a change. Remember, diversity is key if you want your Web marketing efforts to pay off.

Start up companies in the future should perform a domain name check on any brand name before they adopt it. I believe this will become an accepted and common practice for new start ups in the future, both for large companies and for small businesses.

There are several reasons you’d want to check the availability of a domain name before you settle on a brand name. If the domain name isn’t available then you’ll have a real hard time getting visitors to your website as many will be looking for your brand dot com. It won’t be impossible, but it will be difficult. It’s best to avoid that hurdle altogether and settle on a brand name and a matching domain name at the same time.

I believe attorneys and CPAs will likely provide this service in the future along with corporation filing services. Some probably already do.

Because Internet marketing will be integral part of doing business in the future, any new start up companies that plan to have an Internet marketing strategy should not adopt a company name until they are sure they get a domain name that will match the branding. It’s just good business.

More companies are spending more money on online advertising than print.

The big question here is, Why? And should you be spending more money for online advertising as well?

Keep in mind that by “online advertising” I mean more than just display advertising. I mean all forms of digital marketing. That includes search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay per click, etc. Again, why?

I think that companies that are migrating their marketing efforts to online forms of marketing are doing so in response to the trend in consumer trust in online sources. More people are conducting searches online for everything from real estate to churches. As more people conduct searches and find themselves interacting with others online (Facebook is now the second most trafficked site online) then advertisers will follow. But should you?

I think small businesses would benefit by having an online presence and by advertising online. You can get more return on less investment by advertising online. You might as well go where your audience is. Don’t you think?

For a few good years now small business owners have been told that the long tail is where to find high value click throughs. For the most part, that’s been correct. But what many small business owners have failed to calculate is that the advice to search the long tail was also heeded by the large businesses who have deep pockets. The result is a more competitive long tail playing field.

What should we do about this?

The small business advantage has always been stealth. Where large businesses have been able to throw money at a situation and dominate a market based on sheer size, small business owners have had to rely on creativity and sly maneuver. The way that has played in with search engine marketing has been to search the long tail, but I see that coming to a close very soon.

What is opening up, however, is a brand new way of marketing. Social media has been the buzz for a couple of years now. I believe we have yet to realize the potential in social media marketing. But I also believe that small businesses are better equipped to experiment and use the small business advantage to gain a foothold in a niche.

What do you think? Should small businesses abandon the long tail? Should we focus more on social media?

If you are new to Internet marketing you might have an incomplete view of content. You may have some questions, like “What is it?” and “Why does it matter?”

Well, first, content is anything you put on your website. It not only includes the writing, which is very important, but the graphics, videos, any audio files you include, widgets and anything else you put on your website that will allow your visitors to interact with your website. If that explanation doesn’t answer the second question – “Why does content matter?” – then you probably aren’t ready for Internet marketing.

Nevertheless, I’ll try to explain. Content matters because it is the most important asset you have as a company trying to market online. The most important thing about content is deciding what content is most important for your marketing and online branding purposes. If you get it right there then you’ve won most of the battle.

The following sentence appeared as a summary of an RSS feed:

No other marketing piece can do what adding fresh content to your web site can.

The article this sentence summarizes what can be read here. But I find the summary just as amazing as the article itself. Maybe more.

Think about it. Online marketers go to a lot of trouble to build inbound links to their website, promote their site through social networks, create videos on YouTube and so much more – off their website. But the real action is on your website.

This is why I think blogging is so amazing. You can create original content that shines every single day. Or 15 times a day if you can hack it.

Without a blog, you’d have to build a new web page every day. Nothing wrong with that, but that requires HTML and coding and activities that require time. A blog post isn’t as involved, but it can be just as effective. Bottom line: The content on your website is the most important marketing tool you have. Don’t chintz on it.

In traditional advertising there is a concept called “top of mind awareness”. The idea is to create an awareness of your brand based on the number of times a potential customer has seen it. Big brands have been using this marketing strategy for years.

The problem with “top of mind” advertising is that results are not so easily tracked. You can’t be sure if someone who is coming to see you today is responding to a billboard they saw last week, the radio ad they heard yesterday or the TV ad they saw three months ago. In reality, it is probably a combination of all three (and the fact that they were passing you on the freeway and remembered you, and since now is the time when they are ready to buy, now is the time they make the move toward you).

It happens all the time. But does it happen online? I think it does and I also think it will happen more often in the future.

For awhile, if you got traffic to your website it was because you did a great job of marketing with links or PPC ads. But I think the time is coming, and it’s largely due to the influence of social media, when people will just not be interested in what you have to offer, but when they are they will suddenly remember that they met you on Twitter and on Facebook and saw your display ad on their favorite website where you are advertising. It’s top of mind, online.

This type of advertising works because it touches people in their place of need at just the right time. But if you don’t advertise or promote yourself at all then it won’t work. You have to be active.

At this juncture in the history of online marketing, I find it a bit reflective to take a look at the nature of competition. In the early days – and I mean the early, early days – there were not that many websites online. Of those that were online, they had virtually little competition as there were so few websites representing the various industries that were represented at all. And search engine optimization was so much easier then.

As the Web has grown, both in the number of users and the number of websites, more and more people have joined the Internet marketing craze. Search engine optimization has gotten more difficult, there are more ways to market a business online and most industries are a lot more competitive. For most businesses competing online there is huge competition as you are not just competing against like businesses but also against unlike businesses seeking to rank for the same key terms.

The nature of online competition is so different to the competition in the brick and mortar world.

Today’s competitive landscape is so much more difficult. With so many businesses seeking to rank in the search engines for the same keywords, so many different ways to market a business and so many ways to fail, it can get confusing. What should a small business person focus on?

There’s nothing wrong with seeking help from someone who’s been there before. Sometimes, the smartest thing to do is ask for help. If you find yourself in that position, ask someone who is empathetic with your station. You are not alone.

Under Chapter 7 bankruptcy law, a company can sell off its assets and use the money to pay its creditors. The creditors may not get all that is due them, but they do get something. The company gets debt relief. That is the situation for online video sharing company Veoh.

Veoh was a distant competitor to YouTube, but a bit more pop-culturish. The site featured user videos, TV shows, movies, music, and indie film clips.

Veoh CEO said on his blog post that legal challenges was a factor in the company going under.

When it comes to doing business online, having a good idea isn’t enough. You’ve also got to be able to market your idea and get enough people behind it to sustain a profitable business model. Be sure you plan your business well. You’re never too small to fail.

Many small business website owners take it upon themselves to build their website and try to market their business online. Unfortunately, what they find is a brick wall.

Now, I’m not saying all small businesses have this problem, but there are small business owners who are lost when it comes to Internet marketing. And it all starts with web design. How you design your website and who you design it for makes a big difference in how successful you’ll be when you start marketing your website online.

If you have a website that isn’t performing to your standards then you might want to have your website evaluated by a professional. You can have a professional website evaluation that

• Assesses your search engine friendliness
• Ensures you target your most powerful keywords
• Will tell you if you are driving customers away
• Analyze your links to see if they are good or bad
• Evaluates your website statistics to see what they say about your website and business model
• And a whole lot more

Sometimes the smart thing to do is to ask someone else for advice. But you have to make sure you ask the right people. Get a professional website evaluation and find out what you’re doing wrong so you can make it right.