Owning and operating a small business is very unpredictable and competitive. So, it is very important for small business owners to apply efficient and result oriented marketing strategies in order to survive, sustain and succeed. Internet marketing is considered as the common and best method for marketing small business products or services compared to other forms of marketing.

Internet marketing helps small businesses in many ways such as it creates new customers, provides 24/7 visibility of the business, cost effective and targets wider local audience. But many small business owners end up committing some mistakes as do not know how it actually works. Some of the Internet marketing mistakes that small businesses generally make are:

Ignore the importance of website
Today, most of the customers check online before they go for shopping. So, a small business not having a website will surely loose those precious prospective buyers who are looking for the products and services they sell. As per the latest survey by Citibank, about 84 percent of them are not selling products and services online and about 37 percent of small businesses are not using website for expanding their business. They tend to ignore the fact that a website is a reflection of the company itself.

Poor maintenance of website
Even if a small business owns a website, they manage it very poorly. Today, many of the small businesses do not have good quality websites. A good quality website not only increases the number of customers but also builds trust and authority among the customers. A good quality website reflects and spreads awareness about your brand.

Not advertising the website
Some small businesses do not have websites of their own, some have website but they do not maintain them properly. Another common mistake many small businesses make is that they do not promote their website. Unless they promote their website, they cannot reap all the benefits of online presence. Some of the common and best ways of promoting a small business website are search engine optimization, local search engine optimization, link building, social media optimization etc.

Ignoring local search submissions
As per BIA/Kelsey survey, about 97 percent of the consumers are using online media while researching products or services in their local area. This shows that it is very essential for the small businesses to run a localized marketing campaign to target these prospective buyers. If executed properly to a perfect local search marketing strategy, the local small businesses can win over large businesses and get huge benefits from online marketing.

Ignore monitoring and analyzing results
The practice of monitoring and analyzing the results is very important to measure the marketing efforts of a small business. Many small businesses know that Internet marketing is result oriented, but unless they monitor and analyze the results, they cannot know whether their marketing strategy is working or not and what they need to do to take it to the next level.

A small business, which overcomes all these mistakes can grow consistently and stay in the market for a longer period. Internet marketing surely benefits every small business, provided they avoid the above mentioned mistakes.
 

(Source: Articlesbase)

* Michael Rey is a freelance writer.
* The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his/her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SME Times.