Michael Business Blog

Going beyond traditional business marketing strategies in this online world is important for the success of your company. Whether you are trying to sell yourself or a product effective marketing means increased profits for your business. How so, you ask? Well, there are a number of factors that will help you succeed.

Begin by evaluating yourself, company, product or services. What exactly is your area of expertise, or niche? This is what you know how to do best. It’s the item or service that you are most comfortable doing or selling. Ask yourself how you are different from the rest of your competition. This does not mean giving yourself super human capabilities, but realistically evaluating your skills and adding a little flair.

This finesse is about owning your product or service. You are a cultural consultant because you know how to bridge gaps between two different peoples. You can not professionally consult on taxes because this is not your niche, nor your special area of expertise. Recognizing what you know best is the first step in creating an effective marketing plan.

Not only should you be knowledgeable about your niche, but also care about it as well. When you are marketing yourself, market the person you want to be as well. Do not limit yourself to where you are now. Think about where you want to be with your business. This will help erase any self-doubt when choosing your marketing language.

Being an expert about something can be potentially daunting. Not for you, maybe, but for your consumers. Speaking from a position of authority in a snobbish tone can be a major turn off for potential clients or customers. Mingle with the crowd with your choice of words instead of giving a lecture from the podium.

This translates into using simple language. Avoid jargon phrases that mean nothing to your listeners. Keep your tone friendly and approachable; give your audience the respect they deserve. After all, you are trying to get into their pockets by giving them a service or product they will benefit from.

Simplifying your product or service is important. The general public will probably not care about special trade language you use within your field. Another secret to effective marketing is showing up. The more people see you, whether online or off the more you can effectively publicize yourself. If you are unfamiliar with using social media, this may be the appropriate time to learn! If there are community events that you can participate in, go for it. Always incorporate yourself and service into your public appearances. This will give your product or service a familiar face to think of the next time a potential customer needs your brand.

Raw business is no longer in. Adding a personal touch to your business marketing is now essential. This means letting your audience know you care about them, that you want to help make their lives a little easier or happier with your product or service. This extends beyond flyers, but to the atmosphere you create for your company.

On the web, your name can (and is) your reality. However naming yourself online isn’t that simple. Choosing a domain name for a business web presence is one of the most critical items in your promotional venture: your domain name will be the nexus of your business for months, years, or even decades.

There are a list of things you should consider before embarking down your online venture:

1) Define your brand. It is more than words, but will be flavored by them. Your business brand is an image of who you are. Ask your friends, family, and peers what your ideas inspire when the words are read.

2) The idea of a business brand is to be memorable, yet effective in communicating the purpose of your business. It is usually more effective to focus on communicating your purpose, rather than just developing your widget as a term.

3) If you can’t get a com extension, choose again. There are plenty of other extension like net and info, but whatever case that is: you will need to also have the com extension or risk losing your brand before it has ever been established. (Businesses should register the com, net, info extensions for a business)

4) If you think of related names in the process, register them today. $10 today is a lot cheaper than the impossibility of getting it tomorrow.

5) Keep it short. A good domain name should be one to three words long. It should not include hyphens or any other characters that are out of place. Shorter domains are generally better for two basic reasons: they are easier to spell and remember.

6) Don’t be scared of going long. Yes, I just said “keep it short”, but having a long domain name has the benefit of saying exactly what you do. Long domains also pull some weight in keyword search results, so having “real estate” in a real estate domain helps a site rank for those terms.

7) Multiple Domains are Okay! So many businesses lock on to the idea of having one site to send readers to. While having focus is good, multiple domains and sites allows a company to have different presentations for different audiences. Multiple domains and sites can also allow a single business to have multiple results in search engines, which allows them to conquest the first page of search results on terms that drive results.

Recognize how you can misspell your own domain. If you have any words that do not carry clearly when spoken or are easy to misspell, register the misspelled version of the keywords. $10 for a misspelled version of your own site name is a very affordable way of preventing client loss or competitive problems in the future.

9) Buy alternate domain names today. At less that $10 a piece, alternate domain names can provide a very reliable way to promote your business and help protect your reputation. If you have any public figures in the business, make sure to spend the $10 to buy personal name domains (firstnamelastname) and any slogans or catch phrases.

10) Realize that your domains are being promoted to both humans and search robots. They each like slightly different things and you should create a strategy for having multiple domains and how they coordinate relevant traffic to your business.

Bonus point: If you are trying to use a new domain for competitive search engine ranking, register the domain for five years. Search engines give credit to the length of a registration to help identify if a new site is a spam site being used to manipulate the search results. By committing to a longer stay, you help establish your virtual reputation in the eyes of engines like Google and Yahoo.

Do not jump the gun! Remember that a domain choice has many different angles to it. It can easily be compared to choosing a real world location for your business: where will it be? what does the neighborhood say? who will see it? how long will you be using it?

If you are a small business, then $50 to $100 to secure a domain name for a few years may seem like a major investment. For larger companies, spending $500 to $1000 for a larger competitive search optimization and brand protection effort is a good investment (for instance, do you own yoursitesucks?)

Understanding that a good domain may mean the difference between five visitors a month or five thousand, greatly changes how your business functions online. With a well organized strategy behind multiple domains, different niche streams of visitors become easier to reach and increase the chance that they will convert into business results.