For some business owners, the definition of an Internet marketing strategy is merely having a website.
While that may have worked ten years ago, trying to compete with 8 billion other web pages today will simply be ineffective. Without defining your key strategies, your site will have no power to bring in any leads, and ultimately no additional revenue.
Creating a strong Internet marketing strategy can be accomplished by working on four tasks.
1. Defining your target market. Just like in your traditional marketing, your online marketing clientele must be identified.
Start with your current clientele. Every business has one type of client that serves them best. Think about that person, and take a few minutes to define their likes and interests. How are you reaching them in your traditional marketing?
2. Discovering where they exist online.
Once you have a clear definition of who your target is, realize that those same people exist all around the world. What works for you in your local environment will transfer easily into the online world.
Look around for similar resources online.
If you target new moms, and use a local parenting magazine to generate leads, look into the online parenting sites. Many of them have online classified sections, or will allow you to place banner ads in their newsletters or on the site itself.
If you’re a local service provider, and have a client base within 30 miles of your office, concentrate on finding resources that are targeting people in your local area. Many of today’s search and research tools will help you discover resources that apply to geographical locations.
3. Writing website copy to reach out to them.
People typically write copy for their website in the same manner as a brochure. Yet a website is so much more.
Your website is your sales team. It’s standing in for you 24 hours a day, 7 days of the week. What you say to your prospects in person should be conveyed into your website.
Your website copy is what motivates your visitors to want to take the next step. Whether your next step is to sign up for a free report, or purchase a product or service, your goal is to lead your visitor by the hand, and make them want to move to the next step.
The better you can direct your visitors, the more successful your site will be.
4. Working with your website weekly.
The most important step to every Internet marketing strategy is to work on it again and again. If you use direct mailings in your business, do you mail just once and hope for the best? You wouldn’t be in business very long if you marketed in that fashion.
Your website is a very similar marketing tool. If you create it once and leave it sit, you’ll never reach a successful level. But if you work with it weekly, you’ll see some amazing things happen quickly.
Websites are meant to have new pages added; new content created; and become resources for other businesses and consumers. And the only way to do this is to have a plan that you stick with every week. Whether its adding a new section, or linking to other sites, working your site just a few hours a week can have tremendous results over the life of your business.
Lori Osterberg helps business owners build a successful Internet marketing strategy. She consults with owners to show them how to develop a strong Internet presence, and provides many services such as paid search, search optimization, and online copywriting services for websites, press releases, articles and other online marketing tools. Receive her FREE ezine at VisionOfSuccess.com and GetKnownMarketing.com. Article on,
Organizing
The major factors affecting how a business is organized are usually:
- The size and scope of the business, and its anticipated management and ownership. Generally a smaller business is more flexible, while larger businesses, or those with wider ownership or more formal structures, will usually tend to be organized as partnerships or (more commonly) corporations. In addition a business which wishes to raise money on a stock market or to be owned by a wide range of people will often be required to adopt a specific legal form to do so.
- The sector and country. Private profit making businesses are different from government owned bodies. In some countries, certain businesses are legally obliged to be organized certain ways.
- Limited liability. Corporations, limited liability partnerships, and other specific types of business organizations protect their owners from business failure by doing business under a separate legal entity with certain legal protections. In contrast, unincorporated businesses or persons working on their own are usually not so protected.
- Tax advantages. Different structures are treated differently in tax law, and may have advantages for this reason.
- Disclosure and compliance requirements. Different business structures may be required to make more or less information public (or reported to relevant authorities), and may be bound to comply with different rules and regulations.
Many businesses are operated through a separate entity such as a corporation, limited partnership or limited liability company. Most legal jurisdictions allow people to organize such an entity by filing certain charter documents with the relevant Secretary of State or equivalent and complying with certain other ongoing obligations. The relationships and legal rights of shareholders, limited partners, or members are governed partly by the charter documents and partly by the law of the jurisdiction where the entity is organized. Generally speaking, shareholders in a corporation, limited partners in a limited partnership, and members in a limited liability company are shielded from personal liability for the debts and obligations of the entity, which is legally treated as a separate "person." This means that unless there is misconduct, the owner's own possessions are strongly protected in law, if the business does not succeed.
Where two or more individuals own a business together but have failed to organize a more specialized form of vehicle, they will be treated as a general partnership. The terms of a partnership are partly governed by a partnership agreement if one is created, and partly by the law of the jurisdiction where the partnership is located. No paperwork or filing is necessary to create a partnership, and without an agreement, the relationships and legal rights of the partners will be entirely governed by the law of the jurisdiction where the partnership is located.
A single person who owns and runs a business is commonly known as a sole proprietor, whether he or she owns it directly or through a formally organized entity.
A few relevant factors to consider in deciding how to operate a business include:
- General partners in a partnership (other than a limited liability partnership), plus anyone who personally owns and operates a business without creating a separate legal entity, are personally liable for the debts and obligations of the business.
- Generally, corporations are required to pay tax just like "real" people. In some tax systems, this can give rise to so-called double taxation, because first the corporation pays tax on the profit, and then when the corporation distributes its profits to its owners, individuals have to include dividends in their income when they complete their personal tax returns, at which point a second layer of income tax is imposed.
- In most countries, there are laws which treat small corporations differently than large ones. They may be exempt from certain legal filing requirements or labor laws, have simplified procedures in specialized areas, and have simplified, advantageous, or slightly different tax treatment.
- To "go public" (sometimes called IPO) -- which basically means to allow a part of the business to be owned by a wider range of investors or the public in general—you must organize a separate entity, which is usually required to comply with a tighter set of laws and procedures. Most public entities are corporations that have sold shares, but increasingly there are also public LLCs that sell units (sometimes also called shares), and other more exotic entities as well (for example, REITs in the USA, Unit Trusts in the UK). However, you cannot take a general partnership "public."
Commercial law
Most commercial transactions are governed by a very detailed and well-established body of rules that have evolved over a very long period of time, it being the case that governing trade and commerce was a strong driving force in the creation of law and courts in Western civilization.
As for other laws that regulate or impact businesses, in many countries it is all but impossible to chronicle them all in a single reference source. There are laws governing treatment of labor and generally relations with employees, safety and protection issues (OSHA or Health and Safety), anti-discrimination laws (age, gender, disabilities, race, and in some jurisdictions, sexual orientation), minimum wage laws, union laws, workers compensation laws, and annual vacation or working hours time.
In some specialized businesses, there may also be licenses required, either due to special laws that govern entry into certain trades, occupations or professions, which may require special education, or by local governments. Professions that require special licenses range from law and medicine to flying airplanes to selling liquor to radio broadcasting to selling investment securities to selling used cars to roofing. Local jurisdictions may also require special licenses and taxes just to operate a business without regard to the type of business involved.
Some businesses are subject to ongoing special regulation. These industries include, for example, public utilities, investment securities, banking, insurance, broadcasting, aviation, and health care providers. Environmental regulations are also very complex and can impact many kinds of businesses in unexpected ways.
Capital
When businesses need to raise money (called 'capital'), more laws come into play. A highly complex set of laws and regulations govern the offer and sale of investment securities (the means of raising money) in most Western countries. These regulations can require disclosure of a lot of specific financial and other information about the business and give buyers certain remedies. Because "securities" is a very broad term, most investment transactions will be potentially subject to these laws, unless a special exemption is available.
Capital may be raised through private means, by public offer (IPO) on a stock exchange, or in many other ways. Major stock exchanges include the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Singapore Exchange, Hong Kong Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq (USA), the London Stock Exchange (UK), the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Japan), and so on. Most countries with capital markets have at least one.
Business that have gone "public" are subject to extremely detailed and complicated regulation about their internal governance (such as how executive officers' compensation is determined) and when and how information is disclosed to the public and their shareholders. In the United States, these regulations are primarily implemented and enforced by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Other Western nations have comparable regulatory bodies. The regulations are implemented and enforced by the China Securities Regulation Commission (CSRC), in China. In Singapore, the regulation authority is Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and in Hong Kong, it is Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).
As noted at the beginning, it is impossible to enumerate all of the types of laws and regulations that impact on business today. In fact, these laws have become so numerous and complex, that no business lawyer can learn them all, forcing increasing specialization among corporate attorneys. It is not unheard of for teams of 5 to 10 attorneys to be required to handle certain kinds of corporate transactions, due to the sprawling nature of modern regulation. Commercial law spans general corporate law, employment and labor law, healthcare law, securities law, M&A law (who specialize in acquisitions), tax law, ERISA law (ERISA in the United States governs employee benefit plans), food and drug regulatory law, intellectual property law (specializing in copyrights, patents, trademarks and such), telecommunications law, and more.
In Thailand, for example, it is necessary to register a particular amount of capital for each employee, and pay a fee to the government for the amount of capital registered. There is no legal requirement to prove that this capital actually exists, the only requirement is to pay the fee. Overall, processes like this are detrimental to the development and GDP of a country, but often exist in "feudal" developing countries.
Intellectual property
Businesses often have important "intellectual property" that needs protection from competitors for the company to stay profitable. This could require patents or copyrights or preservation of trade secrets. Most businesses have names, logos and similar branding techniques that could benefit from trademarking. Patents and copyrights in the United States are largely governed by federal law, while trade secrets and trademarking are mostly a matter of state law. Because of the nature of intellectual property, a business needs protection in every jurisdiction in which they are concerned about competitors. Many countries are signatories to international treaties concerning intellectual property, and thus companies registered in these countries are subject to national laws bound by these treaties.
