In todays technological world, small business owners are beginning to fall behind. Here are the top 10 small business online marketing mistakes.

1. Domain Name! The most COMMON mistake is the companies URL! Most small business owners who do not consult a marketing consultant and end up choosing a very long url. Such as thisismyurlandyouwillneverrememberit.com. The shorter your URL the better! Having keywords in your URL is a very imperative thing as well. So you need to consult someone to find out what the best mix is. A URL means everything and can truly be the difference between making your website work or not.
2. Cheap Marketing! While it may be tempting to use your husbands friend’s kid to do your site cheap and dirty, I would stop and rethink that. Most business owners do not have the money to seek the expensive experts, which is understandable. However, again, your website is your store front, your MAIN piece of advertisement, your bread and butter. You NEED to make sure your website is unique, professional, and relays the correct message. By hiring someone cheap, whether a company or freelancer, 9/10 times you walk away with something you think is great, but ask a professional and they will probably think otherwise. A website can LOOK pretty (or look really bad) and still NOT give your customers the correct message, in return decreasing your conversion rate.
3. Only Paper Ads! There’s a large portion of small business owners who are still into the news paper ads and old school advertising (or not advertising at all!). BIG mistake. Those types of advertising are fine, however you need to also explore the web since that’s the first place people go now a days.
4. I Don’t Need a Website! Than you have the “I don’t need a website” population. These are the people who believe that they don’t need a website because either their business is doing well without it or they think that in their industry people don’t use the web to find people. First off, I don’t care what industry you are in! People STILL search the web! If anyone can tell me otherwise, please tell me! Also remember, always save for a rainy day. It’s better to be over busy than not busy at all. If you get busy HIRE people! Don’t not advertise if you have the income to spend it. Getting set up on the web takes time so if your business takes a nose dive you will not have a quick way or the money to get your website to the point where it will sell itself.
5. Templates! Another situation that occurs is when people go to one of those cheap $30/month sites like Vista Print and put up a template. The issue with that is, if they are selling you that template they can be selling that to EVERYONE. You want to be unique, not the same as Joe down the road.
6. No SEO! Most owners put up a website without actually utilizing it. It’s great to have a website up, but if your not getting traffic to your site, it’s pointless! It’s like having a store and not telling anyone it’s there. You can find an SEO company for $400.00/month. It may seem worthless in the beginning, but trust me, you are probably getting more business and you don’t even know it. You don’t need to ask every customer, “where did you find me?”, but I guarantee that if you did you’d be surprised how many say “the web”.
7. Coming Soon: I’m like the neighborhood watch dog. I am always scouting out what all the local company websites are doing just to be curious. You’d be surprised how many actually have “coming soon” for days, weeks, and months. Than if they get their site up, half the pages say “coming soon”. Don’t publish an incomplete website! If it’s not complete, finish it, than publish it. If you are building a new page, don’t display it until it’s complete. If you want to tell people you are putting a new page to get the buzz going, create a section on the homepage, put it in the news section, or blog about it!
8. Boring! One thing that people do that really urk’s me is how people put up their website and than don’t update it for MONTHS. Believe it or not, it really does make a difference! By not putting anything new on your website you aren’t giving people a reason to come back. By publishing new content you are not only giving the search engines another reason to come spider your site, getting new potential users with new keywords, but you are also giving your current customers a reason to come back to your site.
9. Browser Check: I can’t tell you how many sites (even BIG companies!) I have seen that look great in one browser  but awful in another. It doesn’t always have to look 100% identical, but make sure it at least looks good! This is another reason why hiring a cheap designer will not do a small business any justice. To master IE 6,7,8,9 Firefiox 2,3,4, Chrome, Safari 2,3,4, and now the mobile web is a talent!
10. Web Hosting: One major issue people have is that they always choose the cheap or free hosting. This is not the right solution! The reason is because most of the time these cheap hosting companies have a reason why they are cheap. I have had clients sites go down and than ask me, “why is my site down”. And my answer is “you chose a cheap hosting company”.

So to be honest I could probably come up with 5-10 more mistakes small business owners make when creating their online presence. But I think you all get the point. The moral of the story is you get what you pay for!

Branding … What exactly is branding? Can Branding really make a difference in my company? These are all questions that new companies ask. Branding has a various number of different definitions, however our definition of branding is: to define your company’s value to your target market and give your company the premium value that your customers will continue to adore. When you think of the word Branding, what do you think of?  Consumers tend to rarely think about the importance of branding and how it affects their lives.  When it comes to one’s company, however, branding is THE most important factor between failure and success. But Why, How?  Lets look at some popular companies.  Apple (huge Apple fans here) – The name doesn’t really make sense at first, nevertheless there are a lot of important key points to their branding strategy.

1. The name represents an object that is extremely simple and to the point
2. Their logo is extremely simple as well (a white apple)
3. Apple chooses White to be their main color
4. Their website is simple and easy to use

Why Is this all important? Apple’s main theme is simplicity and easy use of their products. By making their image simple they are only representing what they’re selling. Apple is also one of the biggest companies. Yes their products are amazing, but they’re also really expensive. But people will buy them because their branding and image is so well thought out that people associate the words, simple, easy to use, and quality to their products. Branding includes a number of steps including:

• Mission Statement and your Companies Purpose
• Define which target market you want to go after
• Your companies unique value to your customers
• Create your logo and tag line

These are just a few of the steps that are necessary in branding. Branding has been proven to increase companies profits. Branding is your image and presence to your target market and you want it to represent your company. Anyone have anything to add or say please feel free to post.