Let me tell you something. It’s just not that easy. I hear it all the time. The salesman walks in or catches me on my phone and proceeds to tell me “You can dominate Google for only the cost of a cup of coffee a day.” This person doesn’t even know what profession that I am in. He or she just wants to get me to sign the contract. Then we can sit down the first couple of months and look at the great stats the web site is getting while I wonder “Why haven’t I seen an increase in sales?”

I can tell you why this scenario happens almost every day somewhere in Denver and across the United States. It happens because most sales people don’t really understand Internet Marketing. They are in sales for a reason. They can sell.

Think about it. If you call your mechanic and say “My car’s making all kinds of noise in the engine compartment” and he says “I can fix it for 50 bucks. Bring it in.” Isn’t that weird? In the real world the mechanic is going to inspect it and give you a price based on the work that needs to be done. That’s the way Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google AdWords (PPC) Management, and Internet Marketing should work when you are dealing with a reputable company.

When you hear the “one size fits all solution” for your Internet Marketing Strategy turn and run the other way. Every case is different. Some businesses can rank quite well because they have less competition. Some of the more competitive industries take a whole lot more. I have run some AdWords Campaigns that were costing me pennies a click and I have had others that cost me eight dollars a click. The difference in price had to do with the competition.

It works the same with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If there is more competition then it will take more time and money. The site must be optimized to attract the search engines not the other way around. The way to accomplish this is to do solid research on the product or service that you are selling as well as on your competition.

Less reputable Internet Marketing companies bank on the fact that they can get a small amount of cash from you and then deliver mediocre results. All they have to do is get a couple thousand people to do this and then it’s party time for them and their cohorts. They figure that you don’t really understand what is going on, that you will think that there has been a small amount of improvement, and after all, it’s really not that expensive.

There are simple rules that you can follow that will increase your web presence. If you follow them you will do better than half the sites out there. The art of SEO, PPC, and Internet Marketing will get you the rest of the way but don’t buy into the “We Guarantee First Page Rankings Yesterday” mantra. They haven’t seen your site or looked at the competition. They have only seen their prey.

The company that I spoke of claimed that it relied on repeat customers and it will do ok when times are good. The same customers will come back and spend a certain amount every year. But when times are bad that company and others like it will be toast. They are guaranteeing themselves 30%-50% loss in any given economic downturn. It’s just the way it is. When their repeat customers don’t have the cash to spend they won’t be repeat customers as frequently and that spells disaster.

Once the repeat customers have jumped ship then the existence of the business rests solely on word of mouth. But how many “word of mouths” are you going to get if you have had a decrease in business? Will the word of mouth strategy make up for your loss of “repeat customers”?

Properly marketing your company takes a steady commitment from you and from the gross profit of your company. Many owners think about marketing but it never sees the light of day once the numbers are run. Let me explain it a bit further. A small to medium size business (SMB) should be spending approximately 10% of its revenue on marketing. Some companies will spend more and some will spend less depending on many factors including the type and size of the business. 10% is a good starting point because it is not too high or too low for an SMB. If you are a giant like Coca Cola or Wal-Mart then 10% is too high. If you are a company with 50 employees then 10% may be too low.

It is better to spend a little more on marketing than a little less. Spending a little more can still provide good exposure, good information through research, and help you gain more customers. Spending too little will only hurt you and may keep your business from achieving a satisfactory profit. A solid plan should include a diverse combination of marketing techniques. Direct mail, search engine optimization, social media, print advertising, door hangers, phone calls, market research, and special events that are hosted by your company are just some examples of what you can do to gain exposure and thus make your company more profitable.

It seems scary to many business owners to sink 10% of their income into the unknown world of marketing but the more they educate themselves, the more they will see the effectiveness of a smart marketing strategy. Most companies that maintain a steady marketing budget in a tougher economy do well and don’t go out of business. For many others that make the mistake of cutting back their marketing budget, they tend to fail. Marketing is oddly enough less important in the good times than in the bad times. Marketing your company aggressively in a sluggish economy may be the only difference between you prospering and you closing the doors.

Although organic search results are important, they often take longer to materialize than do Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine results that are found on Google and Yahoo. These paid listings have a direct relationship with many other search engines that will take the paid results from Google or Yahoo and use them in their own results. You see, you are getting much more than just paid listings on Google. You are feeding other engines that will eventually increase your web presence and ranking.

For example, while Google supplies Netscape and AOL with primary unpaid search results as well as paid search results, it also supplies paid search results to IWON.com and ASK.com. Pay Per Click is generating twice the exposure and that exposure will lead to an increase in organic rankings.

Now let us take a look at Yahoo. It feeds paid and organic results to alltheweb.com, Lycos, and AltaVista. Although it would seem logical that Google would merit a large chunk of a web sites PPC budget due to the fact that Google supplies paid results to twice the search engines than it does organic results, that is not the only reason. Google represents over 80% of all search engine traffic and this alone should warrant doing business with them but this in way means using Google instead of Yahoo.

Yahoo has 2.4 billion searches conducted on its web site every month and 47 million people use Yahoo every day. This is no small number and even though it is not as strong a competitor as Google, it should be receive a portion of your marketing budget. As a general rule of thumb, ad dollars that are spent on Pay Per Click Advertising should be divided between Google with 60% going toward Google AdWords and 40% toward Yahoo Search Marketing.

A strategy for success should include PPC as well as organic SEO. The idea is to generate leads and convert those leads to sales. As business men and women, we must leave no stone unturned.

Many of these technologies are driven by a young demographic but to ignore them would be foolish. Increasing the exposure of your web site should be a consistent ongoing campaign. Many of these teenagers and 20-somethings will eventually grow up and require a service or product that your company provides.

Creating a MySpace page for your company can help you gain an entirely different audience. This page can still be professional due to the flexibility of the MySpace Administrator Interface which allows nearly complete customization. Having this page can generate more links to your page as well as more traffic.

Creating a 30 second video advertisement can be placed on YouTube and also help gain exposure. This advertisement can explain exactly what services your company provides. YouTube is currently free and has had more than 59 million visits from web surfers. A successful featured video on YouTube can generate substantial traffic to your site as well as put a face on your company. Your site can link to this video and increase it exposure by attracting search engines that pickup on the fact that your site features video.

An About Us page on the wiki-based web site aboutus.org can help get your company name and web site out there as well as adding a link back to your site. LinkedIn.com can also be a valuable way to promote your company’s site and is also a wonderful way to network with other professionals.

• Analyze the current web site and determine what needs to be added or modified.
• Determine what keywords and phrases people search for that relate to your company and that would lead them to your web site.
• Analyze your top 10 competitor’s web sites and use that information to improve your web marketing strategy.
• Make adjustments based on analytical information provided by the initial analysis as well as using specific, traffic generating keywords from your competitor’s analysis.

Depending upon how much your company has to budget for PPC per month, high ranking on Google can be almost instantaneous. The Pay Per Click system works allows companies to bid on the amount of money they are willing to spend per click. The higher your bid, the higher your web site is placed when searching for a particular keyword or phrase.

Analyzing the data from your web site will allow us to adjust and modify, in real time, your web site which will increase its visibility on search engines like Google and Yahoo. Observing where customers go and how long they stay on a particular page can help market your web site more effectively. Finding out what works and what doesn’t work will ultimately lead to a higher search engine ranking as well as more exposure thus leading to more leads and increased sales.

Monitoring how a potential customer arrives at your site will allow us to determine what marketing campaign, targeted keywords, search phrases are effective. There is no more wasting time and money hoping customers will come to your site because of particular keywords or Pay Per Click (PPC) ad campaigns. All information is reviewed daily, weekly, and monthly and changes are made to your campaign accordingly.