The first step of your SEO (after you have optimised your website for customers) is to make the best keyword list possible. A keyword is a word or a phrase people who are looking for products type in Google. For example, one of your keywords may be “your”.

However, it is better to focus on specific key phrases that will get more highly targeted people to your site. That means, do not use just “your”, as there are many people searching for this word, but many of them might be actually looking for a job in your, for example. Also, the competition is usually much stronger with these words, so it will take more time to get ranked on the first page.

Instead, go for longer keyword phrases and combinations such as “your [YourTown]”, “your company” etc.

Moreover, I would advise you to apply the following methodology to choose the right key words:

1. Organize a brainstorming with your co-workers, business partners, friends, relatives or even customers to find keywords relevant to your your business. Focus on the needs of customers, what they would type in when looking for products.
2. Check out your competitors’ websites for ideas. View the source HTML code and take a look at keywords in their meta tags (you will learn below how to do this). They could be a good tip for yours!
3. Try to make a list of 100 keywords minimum. It’s recommended to use a search term suggestion tool (such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool). It will give you an idea what your phrases have been searched for recently. Just make sure that you pick the appropriate location.

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Your marketing plan is a document that clearly states why you are in business, what you have to offer your customers, how to retain existing customers, how to price your products competitively and profitably and provides a plan of action to follow to retain and grow your existing customer base.

Bearing in mind that you are a small business, the strategies outlined here are practical and take into account the importance of obtaining a measurable return on effort and money expended on any marketing activities.

Today the marketplace is very competitive and changes constantly; that is why you need to update your marketing plan regularly, at least once a year.

Unless you set appropriate marketing measures and track them, you won’t see the direction you are going and foresee the future you are approaching.

By analysing what you have done, and how your team measures marketing success, you will have the foundation of a truly effective your marketing plan, which means you can ensure sales can then bring in more revenue. You probably don’t want to miss the chance.

It is good practice to have a sheet, which you keep on hand and update as you go along.

This makes it easier to budget effectively the following year, since you track the results of your marketing spend. You should track each individual marketing campaign, so that when it comes to next year’s budget, you will know what works, and what to ditch.

In order to run
smoothly a wheel needs to be balanced. In order to have a stream of qualified
leads coming in to the business, you need to ensure that your marketing wheel
is smooth and continually turning

Extensive
research has shown that for marketing to be effective you need to have at least
7 distinct strands to any campaign over a period of time.

3R™ has created a small
business marketing strategy called ADSPORT™. In this article we have outlined the brief details
of ADSPORT, and given some examples of 
each of the seven strands as way of explanation.

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