If you run a business coaching service, it is your job to coach new and struggling business owners to make the right choices. You are just similar to a football coach. You give your clients plays and encourage them to run the plays properly. One aspect of business that you should cover is marketing, namely internet marketing. Even storefront businesses can benefit from internet marketing. Many just do not know why they should invest time and money into the effort or how to get started. It is your job to give them ideas.

In terms of internet marketing, there are many options. Internet marketing presents much opportunity, both large and small. All businesses can and should use the internet. As previously stated, some just don’t know how to. So, make a game plan for your clients or their advertising department to follow. What could that plan comprise?

Blogging. Many individuals make the mistake of believing blogs are for personal use only. They are not. Blogs can also be utilized as successful Internet marketing tools. Blogs rely on content, so your client or one of their workers will need to do this task, but it must only take less than 30 minutes a day. They can write content related to the products or services they sell. For instance, someone running a dog grooming business can write articles on anything pet related, including care and health. That blog can and should lead back to their business website.

Hosting contests. People love complimentary stuff and contests give them the chance to win. It is, however, important to proceed with caution. If your client posts a contest on their website, they will acquire those who fill out the entry form a leave. Use a blog and have a monthly newsletter or RSS feed available. Instruct your client to allow for an extra entry for anyone who subscribes to these. They obtain daily or weekly updates, always reminding them about the business and the goods or services offered.

Online business directories. In terms of internet marketing, one of the first places business owners should head to is online business directories, but most make it their last stop. Fewer Americans turn to their phone books to get a business. They do standard Internet searches and use online business directories, such as the one offered under the “Local,” heading at Yahoo.com. If your client is not listed in these directories, encourage them to do so and right away. The process should only take a few minutes.

Online message boards. For most business owners, online message boards are nothing but a waste of time. They don’t want to see their workers socializing online while on the clock. Yes, this is good, but encourage your client to see the marketing aspect. For example, companies who sell pet related products and services should participate in discussions on pet related forums. Incorporate a link back to the company website in all allowable signatures and profiles. When posting, the name and link will appear. Pet owners are this company’s targeted market. They aren’t waiting for the customers to come to them. Instead, they are going directly to the source.

Banner and link exchanges. Online networking is just as important as internet marketing. There are many connections to be made online and these connections can lead to increased advertising. To get started, encourage your client to network with those in related fields. They can set up link and banner exchanges. For example, if your client sells pet products, coach them through finding pet services, such as dog grooming or dog sitting. Instruct them to contact the owner of the website and offer a banner or link exchange. In these aspects, both companies benefit and advertising is complimentary.

As you can see, there are many ways to market a business online. Your job is to coach your clients through the process. Cautiously monitor each step and offer feedback.

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The only real reason that online businesses pour so many resources into article marketing is to get more traffic.  That’s why the better Internet writing services never lack business, and it’s why the top article directories never lack fresh content.

Our syndicated article help us in this way in two potential ways.  On the one hand, we can receive visitors directly from those articles when the readers click a link in our resource (or author’s) box, and, second, search engine spiders will find our link and assign greater import to the linked page within our site, thereby eventually providing us with visitors who come from searches. 

Unfortunately those two ways of achieving our single objective are not always complimentary.  The pages that we want to optimize in the search engines may not be the same pages to which we would ideally send our article readers.  Let me explain this problem in a little more detail.

Often we pay the most SEO attention to pages that generate revenue directly.  We are optimizing, in those cases, for searchers who are in a buying state of mind. 

On the other hand, the readers of our syndicated articles are, typically, at a much earlier stage in the decision making process.  They are usually at a stage of beginning information gathering.  Indeed, it is because they are gathering information that they found our article in the first place.

Now, hang onto those two competing states of mind for a moment, while we consider how we construct pages on a business website.  A basic marketing principle of good website design for a business is that each page within our site should be constructed in a way that contributes to creating only one action on the part of the prospect.  That action might be buying or it might be signing up for our mailing list in order to receive additional information.  So, if we absolutely obey the marketing rule, we can’t possibly optimize our most important pages and satisfy the human reader–can we?

That is the dilemma we face.  Should we focus our article marketing efforts on search engine optimization or on sending our readers to a page that will give them what they actually want at this stage?  Should we abide by the simple, common sense marketing rule, or should we magically try to successfully incorporate two disparate objectives within this single site of the page?

As we develop our overall article syndication strategy and the tactics of writing a single article, we must be attentive to these competing options.