When formulating the online marketing plan for your small business, you want to brainstorm and make a list of your four closest competitors. Review their websites, their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Foursquare, and blog. Try and identify the keywords that they are using, then search for these keywords on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. How are they ranked? This will then help you to decide if you want to use the same keywords, a variation of those keywords, or competely different keywords. Try out variations for the keywords using the Google Keyword Tool. Try and determine which keywords are best. Also identify how much competition there is. You may want to hit niche keywords if a broader category has too much competiton. For example, instead of using "restaurant" you may want to use "italian restaurant". Also, identify variations of the keywords that are searched more often. Do users search "NY" or "New York" more often? Take the keywords on the sites of your competitors, plug them into the keyword tool, and you can get tons of information.
This is not telling you to copy exactly what your competitors are doing, but anybody that is going to be successful in any walk of life has to understand their competiton. Think of sports as an example. We hear all the time about atheltes watching tape of the teams they are about to play. They are not doing this to copy the moves and run the same plays, but doing it so they can better compete with the people they are going up against. The same goes for small businesses and their online marketing plan. You have to understand what your competition is doing so that you can compete against them.
You can also learn a lot from the promotions they are using as part of their online marketing plans. Internet marketing has to draw customers to your pages. How are your competitors doing this? Do they offer discounts? Are they giving something away for free? Are there contests on their websites? Do they offer invaluable content? How up to date is their content? How many Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ Followers do they have? How many likes are they getting? These are all questions that can give you insight to the online marketing plans of your competition.
After gathering the facts you can then analyze what was successful and what was not successful. This information can be taken into account when implementing the next step of your small business online marketing plan.
With online marketing, nobody is an expert. I say this because the information is constantly changing. One of my favorite quotes is from a world renowned economist, John Maynard Keynes who said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" This quote was meant in regards to investing, another industry that is constantly changing. However, it can also be applied to online marketing. With all of the technology we have, and with search engines constantly changing their search algorithims, we need to be able to adapt. We need to constantly be learning new things. Even in respect to your industry, if the content provided through your online marketing plan provides your customers with cutting edge information, you will have a leg up on the competition. If you don't, then you can bet they will find another business that is on the cutting edge.
Our "Small Business Online Marketing Starter Package" carefully studies what your competitors are doing, as well as provides a full online marketing plan for your small business. Check it out as it is very affordable and if you like the Facebook page for Innovative Ad Solutions LLC we will give you $50 off the already low price of $567! But even if you don't want to use our services right away, I urge you to check out our Free Online Marketing Tips for Small Businesses or Email Us with any questions you might have if you plan on doing this yourself. Innovative Ad Solutions LLC will be more than happy to provide you any assistance you may need, at no cost!
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