How to advertise your business to your target markets
Advertising Your Business On The Internet

Emarketing Workshops developed a new one day workshop, Online Advertising Strategies, to show you how you can target your markets effectively with Internet advertising while saving on costs.

The Online Advertising Strategies Workshop will show you

• how to advertise your business 24/7 at a fraction of the cost you currently pay
• how to advertise your business FREE
• how to target your market effectively to get the right people to your web site
• how even a few hundred advertising Rands can get enough visitors to your web site to build your business
• and more

Over the last number of years the Internet has shown that, for many industries, promoting one's business on the Internet can be effective and very profitable.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious. Here's a few:

• The Internet targets a literate and normally educated community
• The Internet generally targets a community in the upper income groups
• The Internet community is growing as more and more computer and Internet literate people become economically active
• As ecommerce comes of age, more and more people are happy to use the online ordering and purchasing systems available
• Small and medium sized businesses become more Internet active as they find that they can easily compete with larger companies with larger advertising and marketing budgets
• Small and medium sized businesses can access the more lucrative markets through their web sites, affordable advertising and search engine optimisation

Some of our members generate in excess of R500,000 in fees from their web sites and one of our directories generated in excess of R1 Billion in leads to its members last year.

Why then are so many businesses not really making it on the Internet?

A number of factors play a role in this, including:

• Poor search engine optimisation of web sites, with the result that the web sites are not found on the major local and global search engines like Google and Yahoo (global) and MWeb, Ananzi and Aardvark (local). Get a tool such as WebCEO to improve your search engine optimisation.
• Even with reasonable SEO the competition for popular keywords is high and with only 10 Top 10 positions available, it is very difficult to rank well.
• Web sites are often designed for "LOOKS" and not "SALES". While looks are important, it is more important that visitors be converted into prospects or customers.
• Very few web site owners make use of alternative advertising to generate targeted traffic to their web sites. Often these alternatives are free, although sometimes a fee has to be paid.

Advertising and marketing your business on the Internet is not just about having a web site!

As more and more web sites come online every day and the competition for search engine postions get more competitive you have to look at alternative way to get more qualified people to your web site!

What are the alternatives?

Some advertising alternatives as opposed to marketing strategies are:

• List on niche market directories even if it costs you a bit of money. These directories already target your market so make use of their traffic to get targeted traffic to your web site. Some of these listing are free, others are paid. Balance your free listings and paid listing to get as much exposure as possible.
• Spend some money on Pay Per Click advertising such as Google Adwords. These adverts are keyword targeted which means the traffic they generate are also targeted.
• Search for and cultivate link exchanges with related web sites. Exchanging links with non related web sites tend to be meaningless.
• Wherever you can advertise on your industry and/or association web sites. People visiting these sites often are looking for suppliers.
• Advertise in industry an/or association email newsletters.