Many people ask me, like I am sure they do you, “what do you do for a living?”

My answer is that I am an internet marketing consultant. That almost invariably results in a quizzical expression, and the reply of “what’s that?”

Well, simply what I do is,”I help local businesses get more customers and make more money online.”

Everybody wants to make more money. If you are a business owner, you need to ask yourself the following questions;
1. Do you have a website?
2. Do you know the potential value of a customer that comes to you from the internet?
3. Do you know who your ideal customer is and what their buying habits are?
4. Do you have a mailing list or email list and do you keep in contact with your customers?
5 .Do you advertise or have promotional activities to market your business?

If you cannot answer these questions then you are missing the mark with your marketing. And you are missing out on getting more customers and making more money.

For more information and articles on how to successfully market your business online, visit my blog at http://webmarketinglocal.com/blog/.

Whether your business is online or off, the most important number you need to know is how much is a new customer worth to you?

If you spend X amount of money on marketing…PayPerClick, SEO Consulting, PayPerClick, radio or TV time, etc. you simply can’t base your decision for spending the marketing dollars on how many initial sales come in.

Here’s what I mean:

Say you have an ice cream shop and you spend $500 on a marketing campaign one month. The campaign brings in a new set of 100 customers who each spend an average of $3.00. That’s $300 earned on the $500 marketing investment.

A short-sighted business owner sees a “loss” of $200. But in reality,
25 of those 100 new customers will return…over and over again in the coming year(s). The lifetime value of each of those 25 new customers could be many hundreds of dollars!

The short-sighted owner vows never again to “waste” his money like that.

Imagine the money being left on the table with that type of thinking.

If the market was large enough, just think of the profits that shop owner could be reaping in a few years if they consistently had those types of returns on $500 marketing investments! I for one would be HAPPY to “lose” $200 in trade for those new, long-term customers!

Now think about your own business and what the real value is for gaining a new customer. Only then can you make effective decisions about how and where to spend your marketing dollars.

The way your customers find you has changed dramatically in just the past few years thanks to the Internet. If you are a local business owner trying to increase your business and you are not using the Internet, you are making a huge mistake.

Here are 4 ways for you to gain customers, increase revenues, and cut costs.

1. You need your own website where you can be found. This all starts with purchasing a memorable domain name and setting up hosting for your website. LinkLocal can do that for you.

2. You will need to build your site or hire it done. LinkLocal can help you with this too.

3. Use an Autoresponder. An important step most local businesses do not take is setting up an auotresponder and capturing their visitor’s name and email address for future follow-up. This is critical if you want to get back with your prospects and customers in the future.

The key point to remember is everyone who comes to your website will leave. If you do not get their name and email address they may never hear from you or come back to your site again.

Again, I cannot stress how important this is to increasing your business in the future. Being able to email your mailing list at any time is not hard to do and the benefits are unbelievable.

4. Promote your business online. There are many ways you can advertise your business on the Internet once you have your website and autoresponder setup. LinkLocal can help you with all of these.

• Search Engine Optimization which is also known as SEO. This is best long-term
  strategy for driving traffic to your business on a local level. It is generally less expensive
  for long term repeat traffic than other forms of Internet advertising.
  SEO can be incorporated into your web pages, blog, and marketing strategies.
• Pay Per Click advertising using search engines such as Google Adwords, Yahoo
  Marketing and Bing. The primary advantage to PPC advertising is you can be up and
  running very quickly.
• Social Media such as video, audio, blogging, social bookmarking, social networking
  and so on. This can be time consuming to do on a consistent basis.
  However, more people are interacting with each other online via social media sites such
  as Facebook and You Tube, so you do not want to miss out on this potential traffic.
• Article marketing with a goal of getting backlinks and creating search engine bait.
  Most customers will not be accessing information on a local business in an article
  directory. However the benefits of getting backlinks and ranking your website high for targeted
  keyword phrases in articles are many. For this reason having an article marketing
  campaign for your local business is important.
• Email marketing lets you announce a sale you are having or introducing a new product
  your business is offering. This is why we talked about setting up an autoresponder in step
  three above. The more people you have on your mailing list the more potential customers
  it can be to you.

Social media is a gold mine. It has enormous potential, but only under certain conditions. A recent study showed that over 80% of businesses are trying to use social media to market their business. The harsh reality is that most of them are wasting their time and not making any money. However, a minority are making a killing using social media.

Why? What determines success and failure in the social media market?

First off, most people spread themselves too thin. They try to market into all areas of social media instead of concentrating on the fastest growing segment of the social media market. And what area is that you might ask?

Facebook

Google recently declared that Facebook is the only competitor that they fear. On March 13, 2010 Facebook overtook Google and became the most trafficked website in the USA.

What does that mean to you as a business owner? On the internet, as in any business, traffic is king. You have to get people to look at you before they can even consider buying from you. Facebook has over 400 million users. 400 million! Over 54% of internet users are on Facebook. Their average user logs in for 55 minutes a day. Their users create profiles, and now Facebook allows them to instantly indicate and record in their profile their likes and dislikes for almost any particular item.

Watch for future posts for tips on using Facebook advertising.