Google is Your Website Home Page

Most people in the business world don’t have a clue that their home page of their website is not really their home page at all. The home page of a website is Google.

G Marketing Your CompanyLet me explain that statement and expand on the Google Home page premise for your website. The majority of people that find your business online for the first time probably are looking in one of two ways. One way is they find your business online through an online directory with a small snippet of information about your website, or they go to Google Search and type a keyword search term that hopefully your business is showing up for that particular term for which the keyword is related to your company’s products sold or the services provided by your company. The person first reads an online snippet of information on the Google Search results page, and this effectively, or for many businesses the case may be — ineffectively tells about a particular business page or website. Businesses sometimes spend thousands of dollars with graphic designers to design a beautiful website, and think wow that looks great! But as is the case the majority of the time, very little thought went into the sales and marketing presentation from the Google Search home page perspective. Words are key for search branding, and not necessarily the words displayed in a graphic image format, but the actual body text written in the web site.

How boring the graphic designers say. “You mean I can’t have the pretty font, that sweeps up on the tips of the letters? You mean I have to worry about people resizing the body text in the browser? You mean I can’t build an all Flash website and force people to read the text in small print? But I’m a graphic artist, and this is how it looks the best. I can’t let people mess with perfection!,” exclaimed the graphic designer.

Well folks, let me tell you the truth. You can spend thousands of dollars on a B2B or B2C website design and get very few buyers or consumers, let alone Web site visitors, because you broke the number one cardinal rule for website design online. You did not make the decision to go with a search engine friendly website design. Anyone in business that takes this extreme view of thinking that the graphic design for a website is the most important aspect for a website, is cutting their business throat from a search perspective. There needs to be a balance between graphic design and search engine friendliness.

While the search perspective is certainly key for the sales and marketing aspect of the business’s success, there is another very important brand image implication that must be taken into account too. In fact, the brand image may be one of the most important aspects to long term online and offline success for your business. Brand awareness is the process of when people start recognizing your business as you. This can be both good or bad, depending on your brand image; but having the brand association of customers and potential customers recognizing your products or services as provided by your business, are keys to implementing long term sales and marketing strategies for sustainable business growth.

The process of building up a quality brand image online begins with the website structure and the words used throughout. This means not only the words of the text seen, but also the words in the Titles and Description tags of your website HTML coding. The foundation of the website doesn’t stop there. The pictures you use, how you name them, and even the Alt tags (Picture Description Tags) are keys to your brand image online. Many of the tags are seen only by the search engine robots. These robots record the underlying information and assign a value to each particular foundation item. Note: These items are only a small fraction of what needs to be taken into account when designing the website and expanding upon what has already been established, in the case of an older website.

Good Internet Marketing Means Not Walking Away From Your Website Design

Don’t think that you can put a website together and then walk away from it after you are finished with the design. First off, a website is never finished. You might think it is, but believe me when I tell you that it should always be in a state of improvement. It’s not like you have a Pablo Picasso masterpiece hung up in a art museum and all you need to do is sign your name at the bottom, and say, “I have a masterpiece, now come and see it for yourself.” No no, that is the wrong marketing attitude. Online marketing and the website itself is all about the art of revision. Revision of both the writing and the foundation of the website needs to be an ongoing work of art. Everything from the brand images displayed to the words used behind the front page scenes needs to be taken into account for properly developing the total online brand image.

When a business understands the interaction between marketing, advertising, and branding online, and develops their website taking into account all aspects; then your business will start to see much more success and sales online.

Are you curious about how your business looks online? Act now, and get a free online branding report today.

Contact Professional Web Services today. Start gaining new customers with Internet marketing services that will get your B2B or B2C business found online in the search engine results pages.

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Online Branding Matters

Social Bookmarks Internet Marketing 101 Strategically Applied

Learn how to maximize Social Network Marketing “SMM” for your business today.Marketing Online marketing comes in all shapes and sizes.

Internet marketing information on how to use social bookmarking for businesses today. Find out how you can help yourself in your own marketing efforts, for free.

The Web is a web of links that cross back and forth from all corners of the globe. Businesses need to think in terms of having an online global presence that is continually on an outreach ministries mentality. The days of placing a website online and just sitting back, and thinking that since we have built it, they will come in the form of new customers, is long past. Years have gone by with millions of websites being created that are all competing with you and your business. Yes, I do mean millions of websites are competing with your website whether you realize it or not. These millions of websites believe it or not, are using your words, that are used thorough out the World Wide Web. You do not own the words used. OK, some words are owned in the form of trademarks, but even with that, there are proper usages for trademarks in all types of written works, as well as properly displayed online in websites, blogs, news releases, email messages, ezines, newsletters, online news articles, and online videos. The truth of the matter is that every time a word is used on the Internet, it dilutes the entire pool of search results.

Whether you use Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Microsoft Bing Search, or any of the other smaller search engines, the fact remains that information is being generated at a astronomical rate and the search engines continually increase their total pool of information, and must try to pull the best results possible from the data mix. Yes, our searches are getting smarter. Instead of looking for just the word “widgets,” people are starting to use more natural language identifiers for improving their search results. Now they are starting to type “red widgets” or “purchase red widgets” or “buy red widgets” or “sell red widgets”, or you get the point. But, even those identifier words which help in the world of search from both a website perspective of including them in the pages, and the searcher’s perspective of being able to help improve their search engine results pages, it is not the complete answer to getting a page to show up in the search engine results pages.

Business Must be Proactive in their Online Marketing Approach

Taking a proactive Internet marketing approach is absolutely necessary today for businesses to compete in their respective market places. Yes, building a quality website, with information that is useful, informative, and effectively optimized for both the reader and the search engines is a requirement for good search results, but is not the only key to online marketing success. Another area is quality link building from outside sources. Yes, businesses must target their horizontal and vertical markets in the form of getting listed in directories and other online sources (many of which might cost an annual fee for a business to be listed), but that is not the only source for link building.

Free Link Building For Your Business With Social Bookmark Network Marketing

Everyone today has heard the term social websites. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace fall into this category. FYI; LinkedIn is a great way to expand your business contacts, and even a link back to your website, through what many business professionals are using today. However, I want to go into the category of Social Bookmarking.

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.

Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.

Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.

Source from Wikipedia, online encyclopedia.

With social bookmarks you get an added power advantage from other users bookmarking your website online, and thus improving the Internet exposure of your website online and to a certain degree of improving the performance of the business website within the search engines themselves. Don’t think that just because social bookmarks reminds you of services that are personal in nature, that this doesn’t apply to B2B and B2C businesses on the Web.

So, how can you help yourself, with your own website, without having to go to your webmaster to do it? Simple to start by just signing up for a free social bookmark networking account, and bookmark your business website online. If you aren’t sure which one to use, try some of the more popular ones to begin with. Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon are some of the more popular ones. I suggest you get an account and try it out for yourself. Hey, what have you got to loose? There free. Share with your employees too. Have them get an account so you and your employees can collaborate on all your business bookmarks for your industry.

List of Social Bookmarks:

Favorites Google Bookmarks
Delicious Digg
MySpace Facebook
Furl Yahoo MyWeb
StumbleUpon Reddit
NewsvineWindows Live Favorites
Technorati Twitter
Yahoo Bookmarks myAOL
Ask Fark
Slashdot Propeller (Netscape)
Mixx Multiply
Simpy Blogmarks
Diigo Faves (Bluedot)
Spurl Link-a-Gogo
Mister Wong FeedMeLinks
Backflip Magnolia
Seganlo Netvouz
Tailrank Blinklist

Social bookmarks list above courtesy of AddThis.com

Another list of social bookmarking links widget for your website.

Social Bookmarks Creator

Make it easy for others to bookmark your website or blog.

As the Internet becomes more popular, if you can imagine that, online applications will continue to become much more pronounced. Make it easy on your users to bookmark your website or blog using some of the free online bookmarking services by including another free online service that provides a free application that can be embedded in a website to either popup or provide a drop down menu for adding a bookmark using the users’ favorite online bookmarking applications. For example, AddThis.com provides a small snippet of javascript code that can be inserted into the website, that will automatically take the title of the page viewed and prepare the online form for adding the specific page to your bookmark files online. Also, by having an AddThis account yourself, you can keep track of the number of people that actually bookmarked your page using that particular online bookmarking application. So, if you have a blog or a business website, include a social bookmark for your customers to add it to their favorite websites today.

Most of the bookmarking programs provide a means for cataloging and compartmentalizing the various different types of bookmarks that you might want to collect. The nice thing about online bookmarks is they can go with you where ever you go. So, don’t forget, start bookmarking for social marketing today.

Do you need help with your online marketing efforts? Professional Web Services can provide webmaster support for your business now. Contact us for a free Internet marketing analysis of your small business, mid size businesses, or large corporate websites.

What are you waiting for? Now is the time to get started with professional Internet marketing by Professional Web Services.

Proactive Internet Marketing for Your Business

SEO Marketing ServicesInternet Search

Almost all of us do it; with many doing it everyday. Many more do it several times a day. We are all searching the Internet for something. We use Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Bing Search, Ask, or any number of the other search engines available online.

Are you taking your business for granted online?

Many businesses are simply placing a website online and thinking that is all they need to do for their online presence. But, think about how everyone is using search today to find the things, information, products, services, locations, directions, videos, instructions, helps, tips, and other business related information all at the tips of our fingers. If you are forgetting these search points, then you are probably loosing market share in your business.

That is why, you need to be proactive in your B2B and B2C business approach to Internet marketing. There are a number of major on-site optimization items that can really help your business out online. Don’t just simply sit back and do nothing about improving the performance of your business website. Most businesses have some advertising budget, but devote very little in the way of funding their online marketing efforts. Advertising is viewed as something that can be turned on and off, with quick results. However, advertising is not the best answer for a good Internet marketing plan. Nor is advertising, without a top Internet marketing plan, going to provide you with the best return on investment, and provide the best sales and marketing conversions of turning web browsers in to web buyers.

Developing your Internet Marketing Plan

A good Internet marketing plan begins at the very foundation of the website design structure, information architecture, and Web branding architecture. Graphic designers are good at putting pictures and designing Flash websites that definitely show flashy to the eyes, but do very little in the way of promoting the business online, due to most designers having very little training in good marketing concepts. My personal opinion is most graphic designers probably use only the right side brain approach to designing their websites. Right Minded MarketingIn today’s online marketing landscape, you must use both left brain and right brain when promoting the website, and not always waiting to the end of the website design to do it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking a pretty website is going to be the ticket to your online sales and marketing success. Many B2B and B2C companies over the years have made that mistake with very little sales to show for it.

So take this right minded marketing tip to your business heart. Don’t sit on your online business laurels. Get more bang for your marketing dollars with Professional Web Services’ Internet marketing services.

Contact us today for an internet marketing evaluation of your business website. Find out what needs to be done to improve your online exposure. Learn how your business can become a bright Internet star.

Online Marketing Means Knowing Your Customers Semantically

Do you know your B2C customers or B2B buyers intimately on the Internet? If you don’t know your customers, you are probably not talking their semantic language online and your website is probably not being found in the search engine results either.

Professional Web Marketing

When it comes to online marketing, a close working relationship is a must between those that take care of your website and the products or services you provide. Simply having a website online, with just a sprinkling of your keywords throughout the site, is not good enough to getting a business found in the search engine results pages. Most of all, quality content is required, and that content better stand on its own merits. Sure, you can publish on your business website a list of things that you sell, but how is that going to hold up to the hundreds, or thousands, or even millions of websites that use those same keywords as yourself.

Think about the difficultly of reaching the right customer on the Internet. There are not an infinite amount of words in the English language. The most common words are used by everyone. With that being said though, the search algorithms have gotten much better at evaluating what a web page, and for that matter, what a website subject matter (the website theme) is all about. In the future, search algorithms will be using a form of artificial intelligence, where not only will they learn from you, but they will improve themselves with constant AI tweaking, and self learning to improve the search results.

So, how does this affect your business on the Web? What does artificial intelligence have to do with your business website, and how will artificial intelligence play out in the real world of Internet marketing in the future? The answers can be found in the actual copy writing that is on your website.

Semantic Text Analysis

Get Your Business Discovered OnlineNot only are the words you use important, but the writing style, the proper grammar usage, the syntax, word capitalization, alternative word meanings, and even the titles, headings, and the included pictures can all be relevant factors in determining what the main subject is all about. Prior to the use of computers, people would read an article and be able to point out what type of writing style was being used. For example: English professors would be able to tell if a style of writing was; Argumentative – the speaker involves himself, argues, explains or analyzes in order to try to convince the interlocutor; Narrative – a narrator states a series of events, happening at a given time, and in a given place; Enunciative – the speaker and the interlocutor establish a mutual relation of influence, make their standpoints known; or Descriptive – a narrator describes, identifies or classifies something or somebody. Source: Semantic Knowledge

Writing analysis has much to do with the way the words are interconnected to one another. There are classes (direct relations) between using certain keywords with those of others in sentence structures. Text analysis programs take into account these keyword relationships and produce sets of references between various keyword categories, which can identify what the main subject is about. It can also be used to give an indication of the frequencies of words used and the meanings of the ambiguous words used throughout a written document in order to give a better analysis of the theme topic being discussed.

Words have different meanings depending on where and how they are being used in the body text. Also, there are times within the body text, where the same words are used as nouns in some instances, and at other times as verbs; with many times the verb noun word usage is switched even in the same document. It is said that one in four words used in a document could be deemed as ambiguous. As computer algorithms are improved, the word usage ambiguity is broken down with mathematical formulas, by evaluating all the given factors to determine with a high degree of certainty what the written document is all about.

Semantic Text Analysis Example

Business Keyword Reference Field
Business Keyword Star Graph

The Star graph above displays the relations between references, or in this case, between the “business” word category and other references. The figures shown on the graph give the number of relations (co-occurrence frequency) existing between the various references in this document. This graph shows the relations between those references. They are oriented: the references on the left of the central reference are its predecessors, those on the right are its successors. Reference Semantic Knowledge Tropes

This is a prime example of showing the relationships between the word business, and the words prior to and after business. While most of the word associations make sense from a logical perspective, however you will notice that a few of the word associations seem out of context. For example: the water_travel successor represents a usage of the words “sprinkling of your keywords” used near the top of this article. However, when this article is taken in its entirety, it is obvious that this article is not about H2O travel, but how business and the Internet have a direct success relationship together along with a host of other keyword associations.

The Semantic Web

With the aid of powerful computer programs, search engine companies can now build search algorithms that are quite smart. We generally think in terms of Search as being something we do, or a place we go online to shop, look for products and services, read the local news, or the quest for information for our business or personal use. However, Search from the standpoint of the search engines is simply a program or group of programs all designed to take and catalog the library of information online, and provide the best results possible. But, it is wise to understand the end result, in that Search is not just one particular result or even one style of results for a select search phrase. What I mean by this is, the top search engines such as Google, I believe, builds a collection of results that try to cover as broad a range of information area as possible, while keeping the results as narrow to the search terms that are practical. I’m not referring to Universal Search with the inclusion of various types of vertical search content from picture images, videos, directories, book searches, or local news data sources into one universal search output, but more as it relates to the basic search database of website results.

I’ll give you an example: Let’s say we are looking for information on how to replace the cabin filter on a 2000 Honda Accord. If you were to do a simple search query using Google Search for 2000 Honda Accord Cabin Filter, you would likely find information on the parts, prices, replacement procedures, and associated automotive areas that are directly related to the search query. While the given search query example was not placed in the form of a question like, “How to, how can, what is, or where is;” never the less, the results are given in the form of an answer by answering as broad a range of probable questions as practical, while being constrained to the topic at hand. Take a look at the results from the above search. It is interesting to note, as people become more adept at searching, they will begin to constrain their own search queries with using more sentence like structures to search and find the information they are looking for.

So, how can you apply this semantic knowledge for online marketing?

Market Segmentation

Internet Marketing StandoutFind a hole and fill it! You need to ask yourself some business related questions. What is missing in your particular Web market segment? What horizontal or vertical marketing information is lacking? What products or services that your business supplies, produces, or could produce need filling online? What other market segments can be penetrated?

Research and analysis is 90% of the marketing effort required. Doing due diligence, studying the competition, and keyword analysis are some of the major factors right off the bat that need to be researched, analyzed, and evaluated for the Web opportunities that are present. Then by structuring an online marketing strategy plan that can take your business’s strengths, and apply this to the business opportunities present on the Web, will help produce a sales and marketing impact success for your business. Read about strategic marketing from an Internet perspective to understand the relationships between your business, your competition, and how by including a website SWOT analysis, which includes analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your business online, can bring to light various marketing and advertising strategies that can be substantially applied for a sustainable competitive market edge.

The Top Ten Percent

To take advantage of your 90% effort requires the last 10% commitment. Think of it this way, you’ve done the research, you’ve identified the hole to be filled, you know what information is missing; now go do it. That might be easier said than done. Someone, either yourself or others, needs to take the next step and write the information down. Then, the information needs to get published online either in the form of a web page or pages of a website, or even in the form of a blog. The more proficient and succinct your copy writing is; using the best grammar that you can muster, taking into account the style of writing that is missing in the search engine results pages, the more likely you will be successful in your Web marketing strategy. Be aware, online marketing success is an ongoing process; it doesn’t happen overnight. Simply writing one or two articles in your particular field is probably not going to get you in the top ten percent of the search results, unless very few others have written and published about the same topical information.

Reaching Your Customers and Buyers Online Marketing Tip

Here’s an important marketing tip to remember when getting intimate with Web prospects. Reaching your customers and buyers online requires you to talk their language. When writing articles for your BtoB or BtoC business, in which you are planning for it to be used as promotional pieces to target potential customers; what good is it if you habitually only use keywords in your articles that are never searched for on the Web? Sure, you can use your own keywords or trademark phrases, but those trademark phrases also better include references to keywords used online by perspective Web customers. If there is a customer information barrier present between the way you talk and the way your customers talk, you are more than likely missing the sales and marketing boat. If there are synonyms for the various keyword terms, it is wise to also include these synonyms where appropriate, in the article too.

Natural Language Writing

KISS your prospective customers and buyers now! For those that don’t know the KISS principle (acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid”) states that design simplicity should be a key goal and unnecessary complexity avoided. It serves as a useful principle in a wide array of disciplines, such as software development, animation, engineering, strategic planning, Internet marketing, and online advertising. Read more about the KISS principle at Wikipedia.

Set Your Business Apart

Be different. Do it to the best of your abilities; learn, improve, and perform to a level of excellence that sets your brand apart online. Remember, everything is linked together on the Web. Your sales, marketing, advertising, and branding architectures are all inner related to each other through the information architecture(s) of the website(s). Read about marketing strategies for your B2B or B2C business. Don’t settle for mediocrity for your company. Start making a difference for your business and your future customers. Professional Web Services, can help set your business apart on the Internet. Contact us now for the business solution, to help you reach new prospects today while turning those new prospects and sales leads into customers tomorrow. I invite you to take the next step now into gaining more sales for your business. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Ask for your free Internet marketing SEO website evaluation today.

Now is the time to get your business discovered online. Contact Professional Web Services today.

Get Your Business Discovered Online

Internet Marketing Website Advice For All

Marketing StandoutInternet marketing website advice is running rampant on the Net.

People come up with all sorts of linking schemes, website keyword packing suggestions, and advice that is at best just a guess and at other times dangerous for anyone and any business that follows.

Website Contents: Thesis

I have always felt the most important item a website has to share is the content. I still firmly believe that this still has the highest value in any search algorithm. People talk about getting inbound and outbound links. Others offer advice that has not been tested and in fact gets themselves or their clients in trouble when they try it themselves.

This site is designed with lots of wild looking stuff, with a number of quality outbound links, but at its core is content. Content that is original and carefully thought out.

Marketers Keys To Online Success

  1. One of the aspects of online marketing is keeping browsing fun for a company and your audience, and at the same time getting your point across. To accomplish this goal requires some creativity.
  2. Impacting an audience on the Internet can be accomplished in the form of special graphics mixed in with creative copywriting.
  3. Another is to have the site interact with your audience by providing additional information that would be helpful to those that wish to gain more in-depth information.

So consider carefully the advice you find online because following the wrong path could drop you at the end of the search line.

Reach Professional Web Services Internet marketing and online advertising help desk today.

Live from California, Internet marketing and branding to the world.

Creative Marketing With Style!

Sales Oriented Internet Marketing for More Business Growth

Internet Marketing Services

Is your online marketing and business website sales oriented?

With much online talk about having information for the search engines to find, and information from a marketing and advertising standpoint, many times the overlooked area for Internet marketing are the call to action items or lack thereof.

Information is certainly one of the prerequisites for any website to have today. But, it is important to consider that while a web page can be an information provider, it should also have a call to sales oriented action item.

Call to action items as the name implies requires something for the reader to do. For example, having a web page and not giving a link to provide more information is leaving your reader hanging. If a visitor reads a page and finds it interesting, then provide a call to action that is creative, engaging, and highlights the topic at hand. Simply saying contact us is not the best way to do it. Having a hyper link to a contact page is good, but an even better solution is to engage the reader to interact with the page topic itself. If you are talking about your product or service then provide a colorful means of enticement to click a link. Consider using the words of the product or service in the call to action item.

If you are offering a free consultation then hyperlink the words free consultation.

With billions of web pages on the Internet, a business needs to get a little more creative in their marketing approach to Internet marketing. Engineers, buyers, and consumers are tired of the same approach. Give them something different, something that is of perceived value, and the contact conversions will occur much more frequently.

This also factors into another topic of online advertising. Online advertising in the form of Pay-per-click (PPC) and Pay-per-thousand views (PPM) are two of the more common types today. Each of these forms of advertising require some form of landing pages. Even banner ads, when clicked on take a web surfer to a landing page. If your landing pages are not sales oriented, it is likely that your business will not have very good sales conversions. Each click of the mouse is a step in a potential customer becoming a true customer. Don’t leave them hanging on a page with them saying to themselves, “that’s nice but now what?” Don’t make them scroll to the top of the page in order to contact the sales department. This is especially true for the B2B Business to business buyer, because chances are they are ready to get more information if they clicked on your ad in the first place.

So, before you spend a ton of money on an online advertising campaign, make sure your website is properly set up with call to action items, with hyperlinks in the copy of the pages, and engaging text that is sales oriented.

For your B2B and B2C business solution, contact Professional Web Services for your free Internet marketing evaluation.

B2B Marketing Strategies – Teamwork Corporate Marketing

Strategic marketing a business-to-business “B2B”  company involves teamwork from the president on down.

Getting everyone on the same page for B2B marketing strategies can sometimes be the toughest part of a president’s job. As Internet marketing specialists, Professional Web Services needs to get the feedback from our business customers, concerning their customers through the sales and marketing personnel of what is happening with online advertising campaigns, website landing pages, information requests, referral leads, and current and future products or services. In addition to this direct information from sales and marketing, there is a need from the engineering department to provide the nuts and bolts information of what is being designed, manufactured, or fabricated for their business customers. All of this information must be taken into account when maintaining a website.

As technology changes, or improvements are made in the manufacturing processes, it is important to share the information in a way that does not directly divulge intellectual property rights of either the business being served, nor of the company processes themselves. Simply staying quiet is no longer an option for businesses today. B2B Businesses jump ship as quickly as they can do a search online for the next manufacturer, fabricator, or the technology expert that can solve a problem with a (Wow I didn’t know I could do that!) new solution.

In addition to the competitive nature of just about every industry on the planet today, there is an international competitiveness, that the Internet has made our planet into a very small world indeed. China for one example has become a powerhouse. With their low overhead in labor rates, along with their relatively week adherence to pollution controls, companies in the developed sectors are having their products, OEM parts, and components built in China at a fraction of the cost of what any of the developed countries in the world can build them for.

Take for example, the PCB industry. As recently as ten years ago, the United States was king in the manufacturing of printed circuit boards. However, the Internet has made the United States a past performance item for PCB manufacturing. I have visited many printed circuit shops and can tell you that the United States can’t build a circuit board at the prices that are quoted from China. The raw materials, laminate prices, copper costs, and carbide drills alone are more than what many of the boards can be built here in the USA.

The Internet has also made it easy to transfer information at light speed from one end of the globe to the other. Computers process the data in a fraction of a second. Software programs are used in India to generate the circuit board data from Gerber files. Drill and rout programs can automatically be generated and then transferred to a Chinese manufacturing plant where labor rates are a fraction of anywhere else in the world.

Businesses have squeezed their suppliers so much, that many of them have simply gone out of business. Is there any doubt, in anyone’s mind that we are living in a very competitive landscape? For this reason alone, it is important to maximize a business’s exposure online.

The Online Landscape

But, that brings us back to the teamwork scenario. A B2B business has to work as a team from all facets, in order to maximize the marketing potential available through the online landscape. The online landscape is ripe for opportunities. To take advantage of the situation is like playing a baseball game. Everyone must work together in order for the team to be successful. Take for example of managing an online advertising campaign. Web metrics can only do so much. Sure a person can figure out the conversion from impressions to clicks, but can a person tell with Web metrics alone, how many of these clicks became actual customers? No way. Web metrics can give you an idea of what percentage of people that click on an online Ad go to a specific page, or sign up for a specific item, but Web metrics alone can not tell you for sure if they became a customer later on down the line. The only way to get exact details is to ask.

Why is the Concept of People Metrics so Foreign?

This goes to the first contact principal. When dealing with a customer for the first time, does anyone ask the simple question how they found your business? So, a person says they found your business on the Internet. Great, but did they click on an Ad, did they click on the website in the search results, did they come from an online directory, did they already know your name and search for your company using the search engines, or what was the keyword, keywords, or key phrases were typed into the search bar at Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft Live Search to find your company on the Internet?

The importance of feedback can not be overstated. Without feedback, a company has no way of knowing of how successful anything is. This requires the first or second contact person asking the simple question, and documenting that information for upper management, sales and marketing, and the person or group in charge of Internet marketing and online advertising campaigns.

With solid marketing information, the Internet marketing specialists can make adjustments to online advertising campaigns and improvements to the website design for better overall customer conversions.

Engineers Need To Tell Stories

Many of the businesses that are looking for solutions for manufacturing of their products, or technology solutions to a particular software or hardware issue, often converse with the resident engineers of many of the manufacturing, fabrication, or software technology companies in the world. How often are these stories being shared between what an engineer has talked about with a customer and the sales and marketing staff, or the Internet marketing team? If everyone is just doing their own job mode, your business is missing a wonderful sales and marketing opportunity.

Internet marketing experts do not magically know the inside scoop from each and every business in the world. Every market sector has its own unique set of keywords used. The only way online marketing personnel can learn about that information is for it to be shared with an individual or the Internet marketing team. Companies that supply technology services, or various OEM products to a wide variety of fields, will have a different communications language with the engineers from those market sectors. That is why, it is important to share that information with the team.

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Teamwork is your B2B key to success.

Make Professional Web Services part of your marketing team and we will go above and beyond what your expectations are with Internet marketing services designed to produce results for your company. It’s all a matter of Results Oriented Internet Marketing Services.

Marketing Strategies for Business-to-Business – B2B Websites

Website information is required to get found in the search engines.

The number one thing required in a business to business website is to provide pertinent information for customers and future customers to find via the search engines online.

While e-commerce B2B websites must be focused on providing an easy means of order taking and checkout, and also secure shopping carts, there are large numbers of businesses that sell to other businesses in which true e-commerce is not a factor. These business websites that are structured for information, marketing, and advertising purposes, are really about how well the information is marketed online.

Are you a good story teller?

Marketing a B2B business today, especially online, requires good story telling to bring a marketing message alive on the Internet. When marketing online, creativity is a must. Sure, it is wise to keep a message simple, but keeping a message simple from a search engine standpoint simply will not do. There are some things that can be done from a best practices approach for both the graphics presented and the website text copy that can help in this area.

Here is one question that is important to consider. How many businesses compete in your market sector; five, ten, fifteen, or more? How many of these businesses have websites that look like the others. Does your business website look like the competition? If the website looks like all the others, what will set it apart? More than likely, it will get lost in the search results.

Having a website online forces you to write down the key points about your business, and this is good. If you are going to have a web presence, then you should try to make it all it can be. Don’t skimp on what is said. Don’t dismiss the importance of a website either. The old ways of doing business with just advertising in the Yellow Pages, simply will not produce the same results that it did fifteen or twenty years ago. You must have a web presence to compete in most markets today.

Everyone is searching online. Businesses are no different than the rest of us. Engineers and buyers are using the Internet and specifically the search engines as the new B2B Exchanges. Tell me, why would any company want to be left out in the cold. Maybe you are thinking, “my business is such a specialty market, and everyone knows me throughout the whole market place, there is no need to have a web presence.” These types of thoughts are not very logical today. Even if you are correct in your analysis (which I highly doubt), don’t you think existing customers would want to find your phone number or email contact information online?

OK, now your thoughts say, “I am convinced that a website presence is required. Where do we start?” you might ask. Well, I’ll bet that you probably have brochures or something in writing that talks about what it is that your company does. That certainly can be a good starting point for prompting you into writing some items down. Once these thoughts are written out, a good copywriter can come up with the essence of what to say in a website. Writing something down in an idea form has been some of the toughest hurdles to overcome for many businesses. Years ago, where “word of mouth” was everything for many businesses to promote themselves, will not necessarily work the same way as before. There is too much competition, from the local markets and the international markets in which price seems to have more of an impact today than ever before in all lines of business.

Having a website published is not the end. Don’t make this mistake into thinking that you never have to update your website. Your competition will surely not sit idle with their websites, and more importantly their marketing efforts online. Evaluating the impact of every marketing strategy, will be important for the next move to be made. Just like in a chess game, where competitors are looking five or more moves ahead, so to must a business evaluate the next moves ahead.

It is important to note that many of the marketing moves online will not have an immediate impact on a businesses bottom-line. There are however a couple of things that can make an immediate impact. Search engine marketing, also known as online advertising is a quick way to get a business started. This is because keywords can be bid on through the search engines themselves. If you bid high enough for your keywords then you can get your ad to show up in the search results pages on the right or top side of many of the search engines. These results are paid for through this bidding action. The natural search results generally take more time and Internet marketing efforts to establish a website in the general population of search results. This is due to search algorithms making an automated calculation of the website’s importance through a multitude of variables which each search engine keeps tight lipped about.

Search Engine Optimization, SEO is another one of those words that has many meanings, depending on who you talk to. The basic idea is to fine tune a website, optimizing the pages, to have the website rank better in the natural search results. Many individuals will say this is a one time process. I don’t believe this to be correct. Search engine optimization must be ongoing. Much like an article written, there is usually more than one draft as time goes on. Even the simple things in a website much be updated annually. For example, copyright dates should be updated to reflect at least the attention to a website details. This can quite possibly make a bad first impression. A potential customer that comes to a website, with old copyright dates, tends to think that maybe the business does not pay particular attention to details. Even though they might not say it, the question is now in the back of their minds.

There are many other factors that also must be addressed for a business website on a regular basis. But, you need to take the initiative, and start today with a website presence if you do not have one, or develop and improve what you already have online.

Contact Professional Web Services today to find out how our Internet marketing services can make a difference in your business’s bottom-line.

Developing a Business Brand Online

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Online Branding Matters

Smart branding means developing your business brand online.
by: Jim Warholic

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B2B and B2C companies need to take a concerted effort online to establish their brands in the market place.

Branding begins at all levels, from the logo to the words written on a website and the information released in the public market place. Branding efforts should never stop. Just like in sports, teams need to get better in order to compete at or above the level of their competitors, so to in the matters of establishing a good brand image in the minds of the consumer.

Brands can quickly become tarnished with even the smallest of issues. Sometimes, a company can bring it on themselves by aggressively trying too hard to market themselves through negative aspects instead of promoting the positive attributes. In recent times, legal issues can even become a spoiling of a brand image. Take for instance a company the size of Microsoft, that has a market capitalization of $300 billion dollars, has recently tried to flex its legal muscles by claiming patent infringement of the open source community. Never mind the fact, that they have not filed a lawsuit, nor have they stated what the patent infringements are. While these are legal issues, it is wise to take a look at the impact from a brand image.

I would venture to say that Microsoft probably did not think this latest publicity move out. By bringing up an unsupported claim that the open source community is using patents taken from Microsoft has the air of a big company trying to put the squeeze on the free open source software companies. This reminds me of the neighborhood bully, demanding money from the locals for just being at the community center. Microsoft is not endearing itself to businesses or consumers by their latest patent saber rattling. While Microsoft’s brand is known for all the softwares and operating systems that are provided, they have not considered the long term aspect for what they are doing and saying.

Microsoft has tried to sound very open to various partnership arrangements for developing software in the open source communities. One such collaboration effort was Microsoft proposing a group working with and sharing information about the Firefox Mozilla open source software. See the following article: Microsoft invites Firefox development team to Redmond

Microsoft wants to help aid in the development of Firefox. It sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? If you’re still here, let me tell you that it’s not as bad as it seems. Sam Ramji, Director of Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab, has extended an invitation to the Firefox and Thunderbird developers asking them if they’d like to visit the company’s open source research center. Microsoft’s hopes are that, in a four-day span, the company can provide the open source developers with enough information to get the popular web browser running smoothly on Windows Vista.

Now, if I am involved in some type of open-source software company, would I trust the Microsoft brand? I can’t imagine, after this latest incident, that any company would be inclined to work in a partnership or collaborative development effort. In addition, the consumer will question if they really want to trust Microsoft. Right now, consumers might be thinking that Microsoft is the only game in town. But, that simply is not the case. Apple has shown a brand staying power that has made some inroads into the Microsoft territory. Now with the open-source software Linux being able to run on just about every type of computer built, (including Apple hardware) and other open-source software programs that are being developed that provide a means of running Microsoft only applications on a PC machine running Linux has opened the door for many to at least try out a new software other than Windows.

So it is most apparent from everything that has happened with Microsoft, that their brand image has become tarnished. Businesses and consumers will not likely jump ship immediately, but people have a long memory. If you push the buttons hard enough and tick the world off, it is likely that people will give something else a try. Once a new brand image of a product or service is out of the box, people will remember. This will result in the building up of one brand and the diminishing of another.

Be careful on playing that legal card, your brand image could become tarnished if you haven’t carefully thought it out.

Jim the online marketer.

B2B vs B2C Marketing

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Folks, it doesn’t really matter whether your business is Business 2 business or Business 2 consumer centered, the important ingredient between the two is marketing.

Sure, there are some key differences between B2B vs B2C but for a company to be successful in the long run today, all companies need to have a good Internet marketing plan established to get their message out on the Internet. Because as stated in the link, “More Sales For You” should be a prime motivator behind establishing a greater online presence. With a greater online presence, your business message will have greater penetration into the various online market places.

Everyone is searching online. Is that statement debatable anymore? I would think not, considering all the research by Internet media sources that show significant increases in the number of searches online annually. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are still the key players in the world of search, but new search engines are coming on the horizon, that are building up niche markets for themselves. While these new search engines are developing new technologies for searching, it is highly likely that one of the big search engines will buy out some of the new startups that offer new looks into the Web. This directly affects the B2B and B2C market places for all types of commerce. Forget the traditional definitions for B2B or B2C being that of businesses operating in an eCommerce mode, because that traditional definition is no longer restricted to eCommerce alone.

B2B and B2C represent just about all companies on this planet. Granted, there are some in the C2C classification for Consumer to consumer, but that is limited to a very small minority of businesses operating on the Internet today.

Many businesses that are local for their areas think that an Internet presence is not necessary, because they are thinking that they only serve the local markets. This reasoning is no longer valid. Local markets are driven more and more by the power of local search. Yellow pages are being thrown out or never opened and both buyers and consumers are frequenting the Web in order to find a local phone number or get directions off the Internet.

Every business needs to develop their Internet presence because the competition is surely Creating A Web On The Internet for themselves in more ways than one.

Get your B2B or B2C business on the fast track to success. Professional Web Services provider of Internet marketing services, online advertising strategies, ethical search engine optimization and Web branding solutions. Contact us for a free Internet marketing evaluation today.