Many local business owners understand the benefits of online marketing for their business, but don’t know how to start. There are many effective ways to market your business on the Internet that are free or inexpensive. The easiest way to get started is to hire an experienced marketing consultant to help. Even if you have some basic knowledge of Internet marketing, the consultant may be very useful if you are in a competitive niche and need some extra juice to push yourself above your competition. If you have no experience or knowledge about Internet marketing, a consultant can help you get started and will probably earn his fee just in the amount of time and aggravation that he saves for you.
The key to hiring an Internet consultant is to find one that you can work with as well as one that knows what he’s doing. The field is brand-new and completely unregulated, so anyone can call himself an Internet marketer. A lot of people who build websites say that they are Internet marketers as well, but being able to design a nice looking site is only the first step. They must then be able to position your site so that people who are looking for your product or service will find it. There are also many other methods of finding new customers over the Internet that have nothing to do with your website. Most website designers have never even heard of these methods.
You must find someone who has actual Internet marketing experience, as opposed to experience in website design or experience in traditional marketing. A lot of advertising agencies say that they can help you get customers from the Internet. You must interview them in depth to make sure that they know what they’re talking about. The reason Internet marketing experience is so important is that there are many methods that can be instituted for any given business. There are also a lot of methods that are good for one business but not good for another. An experienced consultant will know the difference, and will not waste your time or money trying things out that just won’t work for your business.
Experienced marketing consultants are very much in demand right now. They tend to command fairly high fees. If you can afford those fees, it is probably worthwhile to hire an experienced person. However, there are a lot of inexperienced consultants who could still do a good job for you at a much reduced fee. The key is to interview the person and find out what his background is. Maybe he has been working online for several years and is just now trying to start working with off-line businesses. Such a person, since he doesn’t have a long track record, will probably be more flexible as far as his fee is concerned. Since he does have online experience, he can still probably do quite a good job for you.
Once you have narrowed your list down to two or three candidates, have each of them draw up a possible marketing campaign for you. Go over each campaign with the person, find out what results you can expect to achieve from that campaign, and use your best judgment to pick the proper person to help you with your marketing. You must understand that a lot of Internet marketing methods do not work immediately. It sometimes takes weeks or months to see results. After the campaign has been active for a few months, you can determine what results you are achieving, and compare that with what you have been promised initially. It is only at this point that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your Internet marketing consultant.