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!

When it comes to Main Street, finding a strip mall without two or three “For Rent” signs along it, is a rare occasion lately.   Sure, the sour economy has taken its toll on everyone from the local mom and pop shop to the Fortune 500s.  We know that unregulated big business brought down Wall Street.  But what broke the backbone of the US small business market? Why are small businesses everywhere continuing to fail?

I started to think about this after passing my town’s local pizza joint that recently became one of the many, “here today gone tomorrows” of our time.  Nonni’s had just revamped itself in hopes of generating more business – new flat screen TVs, a decorative paint job that put you right in the middle of southern Italy while indulging in your pie, and some fancy new furniture.  Unfortunately, the owner invested too much of his time and money in the wrong place.

Unless your over the age of 65 or just plain behind, you don’t use paper publications like the Yellow Pages to find what your looking for today.  Instead, we Google, Yahoo and Bing.  We use search engines that give us exactly what we are looking for (and more) in just seconds.  The problem, for many small businesses lining the sidewalks of Main Street, is that their products and services are not being captured by these search engines.  It’s surprising to see how businesses, from general stores to hair salons, don’t have websites (their most important store front and tool for moving up on the search engine ranks).

I understand they are called “small businesses” for a reason.  Localized, smaller centers of commerce and capitalism – plain and simple.  But today, thanks to technology and globalization, there’s really no such thing as being localized, especially if you want people to know you exist.  Bottom line, the small businesses who have remained too small (i.e., no websites or other forms of online advertising) well their time to get up to speed with the rest of the world has come.  Whether your a one man accounting firm or a 30 person nail salon – you need to advertise your services on the web.  The old pen and paper way of managing and publicizing your trade is out.

Let’s revisit poor Nonni’s to try and zone in on how this establishment could have potentially survived the technology tsunami and the recession.

1. If Nonni’s would have invested the $1,000 to $2,000 that originally went to flat screen TVs on a new website, they would have been able to establish a web presence, making it easier for customers to search for their services, order online and look up the shop’s phone number, address, menu, etc.

2. Having a website Nonni’s could have also hired or performed SEO on their website to help increase traffic to their site and essentially generate more business.

3. After getting more business/ revenue from their website, Nonni’s then could have gauged whether or not to invest in TVs and a new paint job based on whether their clients were coming in for pizza or ordering out.

4. After expanding and hiring a larger staff to deal with increased business, Nonni’s could have had a CRM or Customer Relationship Management designed to help more efficiently run their business.  CRM systems could be used to keep better track of inventory, staffing and employment needs like hours and payroll, as well as manage a client and customer list of emails and other contact info to email blast their customers about promotions, new events at the store, etc.

Lesson of the day: small businesses need to focus on their digital store front in order to keep their actual store front up and running in today’s day, age and economic times.

It feels like people from my generation are the last of a dying breed – those who still use or make use of print.  Those of us who can still find “ink on our fingers,” so to speak. From news and advertising to everyday communication and commerce, it’s no secret that we have become a digitalized world of bloggers, e-vendors, and online media socialites.  For those of us that started out that way and who were born into the World Wide Web, well, the issue of what to do with all that paper that adds up over the years doesn’t even come about. So what about those people, whose livelihoods relied upon and were surrounded by the world of print?  How are they fairing in a world that runs along the digital highway and waits for no one?

The sad but true reality of the state of the print world is dismal. We’ve all read about the folding of major newspapers, magazines, and the demise of various other facets of the print world that have existed for almost a century. While many companies and technical savvy individuals have been able to keep up with the times and adopt the ways of the digital world or make that transition to the web, a small, yet important demographic still lags behind – that of the small business.

Small businesses, particularly successful, small businesses that have been around for years seem to have the most trouble with transitioning from print or pen and paper to the web.

Having worked with a number of clients that are small businesses looking to make this important transition, the following are just a few suggestions on how to properly make the leap from print to the web:

1. Setup a blog, a website or both. Whether you’re selling shoes are publicizing your latest book – creating a blog or website is key. For blogs, we suggest using Word Press. It’s much more flexible, you won’t have to advertise (like you have to advertise with blogger). With Word Press, you also have the option of setting up a content management system, which allows you to create multiple pages and an actual website with other pages. Making a website for your company allows for an endless amount of possibilities. You can start with a simple, 5 page web  site just to get your name out there, what you do and communicate with your target market faster and easier. Eventually, you can put more work into your site’s SEO and SEM for web advertising or setup e-commerce to start selling your products or services via the web.
2. Plan your Design. If you plan to use current publications or text there are a couple of things to consider when it comes to typography and images. When it comes to designing your website or blog, these two aspects of your web publication are the most important things to be aware of. The way something looks on paper will appear different on the computer screen. For this reason, you should familiarize yourself with how font type and size differentiate from print to digital. Also take into consideration various font colors and how they will appear best on whichever background you are looking to use on the web. Print best practices normally use a 10 or 11 point font. This size font is not legible on the web and should be increased to either 12 or 14 when using text on the web. Also consider using a sans-serif font as opposed to serif fonts – they are known to have a much higher readability level for most people viewing the text on a screen.It is also important to consider color and contrast of the text and its background when publishing on the web. For example – it is important to be careful to steer away from grey or light colored fonts that will be hard to read on a white background.Common problems with design transitions from print to web also include image size and dimension after compression. Things to consider are your images dpi (dots per inch), the document/image format – we recommend using either a JPEG or PNG.
3. Educate yourself on the best ways to market and advertise your website or blog. Things to consider are SEO, email marketing, RSS feeds or visitor/user subscriptions to any publications you might be offering the public.

The above are just a few of the significant things you should take into consideration when transitioning from print to web. While there is a great deal of information and things to watch out for during this process it has proven to be one that is well worth it. The best suggestion we can offer those of you looking to take the leap is to make use of the internet and all of the other information out there regarding this process.