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Every company needs an Internet presence and marketing plan. A company without these marketing strategies is a company that is missing out on valuable opportunities to reach a nation or world-wide customer base. Even for those businesses who only want to keep their customer base small or local, an Internet marketing plan gets them in touch with the perfect customer they may otherwise never have come across. A dynamic website design, the use of search engine optimization, social marketing, and even print media are all a part of making your presence known on the web.

Dynamic Website
The design of your website needs to be professional, which is why many businesses opt for a web designer. A professional designer knows the current trends for website design and can combine these trends with the image you want to portray. If you are a do-it-yourselfer, you can build your own website, but be sure to keep some design tips in mind:

• Keep it simple – most websites today are leaving a lot more white space around text and images and breaking up text into columns for readability purposes.
• Use large fonts – the larger your headline font, the more quickly customers will notice it. It should be noticeably larger than the rest of your text, including any subheadings.
• Include vivid, bold images – the more attractive your graphics, the more attractive your website will be. 3D graphics are very popular, as well as enhanced photographic images.
• Study your favorite websites – get inspiration for your website design from those that appeal to you the most. Not sure where to look? Check out these 16 Sites for Web Design Inspiration.
• Use tutorials – especially if you are a beginner with web design programs, using a web design tutorial will help you get the professional look you need.

Search Engine Optimization
Even if you design the most attractive website out there, no one will find you if you don’t show up in the first few pages of Google or Yahoo. Getting your website to meet SEO standards requires more than can be discussed in this article, so your best bet is to hire a professional. Or you could teach yourself some of the basics and at least get the ball rolling until you can afford to hire a professional. Many free SEO tutorials are available and provide both the information and tools you need to get started.

Social Marketing
Keeping up with your customers through social marketing sites builds strong loyalty. Social marketing helps your customers feel like you are there for them no matter the time of day. Posting regular articles through Facebook and Twitter updates customers regularly in regards to your company. Any relevant useful tips are also great posting material. Starting a blog and allowing customers to leave comments allows them to feel involved in your day-to-day operations, and builds a relationship with your customers.

Print Materials
What, exactly, do print materials have to do with Internet marketing? Everything, in a sense. Even if your business is solely Online, you have to have business cards to hand out at business conventions or to the prospect you meet at the grocery store. Even brochure printing, flyers, poster printing, or any other print media will help spread the word about your website. If you have an office or storefront, advertise this information on your website, and advertise your website on print media. This technique gets you more results for your marketing dollar.

In short, no online presence equals an old-fashioned appearance. Keeping your company image updated with current marketing trends will show that your business can handle your customers’ needs more efficiently than your competitor who barely has a working website.

I’m sure you know these days that to compete in the marketplace, you need a Web site. And not just any Web site, but one that is simple to navigate and visually appealing. Although there are some DIY Web sites that let you build your own, those are made of templates that about a thousand other businesses probably use too. Plus, they can be hard to customize.

If you don’t want to learn Web design, then you’ll need to hire a Web designer. Here are some hints and tips to help in your search.

What Do You Need?
This is the first question to ask. You need to know what you need or want out of your Web site so that you know how much help you’ll need. This will affect your budget because you might be able to hire just one person to do it all, or you might need to hire a team. To figure this out, ask yourself what kind of info you need on your site and how big you need your site to be. Also consider the size of your budget – that will be a big determining factor in who you choose.

Now It’s Time to Search
Referrals are a great way to get a good Web designer. If you don’t know of anyone who can give you a referral, be sure to do a thorough Web search. Obviously, if a Web designer doesn’t have a Web site, you don’t want that designer! So I wouldn’t go with anyone I couldn’t find on the ’Net! Be sure to check out forums and blogs for any bad reviews of a designer you are considering.

Don’t limit yourself to only local designers – they can work virtually and communicate to you through email and phone, if you don’t mind doing it that way.

Ask to see samples of Web sites or evaluate the design of the designer’s Web site, asking these questions:

1. Is info easy to find and do you know how to get back to the homepage?
2. Do you like the navigation system?
3. Are there any broken links?
4. Is the design consistent from page to page?
5. Is the text easy to read?
6. How fast do the pages load? (Slow loads will drive away potential customers at your Web site.)
7. Do the colors work well together? Are you generally pleased with the whole design scheme?

If you don’t like the designer’s Web site, you probably won’t like anything she creates for you. Check out the designer’s portfolio as well, to see his different styles. Pay attention to what kind of client the designer has in her portfolio – are any in your industry? If so, how well does the Web design reflect the industry and the company?

Ask for references and check out how the designer works – is she on time? Does she communicate well? Did she stay within budget?

Ask the designer what services are included in his Web design packaging. You want someone who will help you with Web design and development, graphics creation, Web hosting, database creation, content and maintenance at the very least. Many are also knowledgeable about online marketing and will help you get started with that.

Individual or Design Firm?
After you’ve narrowed down your choices of Web sites you like, you’ll probably need to choose between a freelance individual and a big design firm. Generally, an individual won’t charge as much as a design firm to create a Web site. Freelancers will probably be more flexible and it will be easier to achieve consistency with just one person designing the site. But working with a firm will give you more ideas because more people will be working on your project. Also, big firms probably have people that specialized in different technologies that an individual freelancer doesn’t specialize in. If you need fancy graphics or a shopping cart, a firm might be the way to go if your freelance candidate doesn’t know how to create these.

As long as you check references and feel comfortable with your designer, it doesn’t matter if you hire an individual or a design firm. Pick whoever can give you what you want at the price you want.

Social media directly influences how we make purchases, according to research conducted by Universal McCann, a global media planning company. In their report, “When did we start trusting strangers?” the company interviewed 17,000 people in 29 countries to see how social media impacts their buying decisions. The leader of the report, Tom Smith stated “This has huge impacts on the way that advertisers and brands have to think about social media – moving involvement from a ‘nice to have’ to an ‘essential to have.’”

Here are some of the stats from the report:

• The top channels for informing people about products and services were Instant Messenger and email, at 44.5 percent and 42 percent respectively.
• Over 29 percent of those polled have commented on a product or brand on a blog
• About 27 percent have posted an opinion about a product or brand on a social networking profile
• People gave their opinions about entertainment most often, with 60 percent having recommended a film and 52 percent recommending music
• Technology was also a big topic to blog about: 57 percent have recommended home technology and 54 percent have recommended some kind of portable technology or mobile phone service on a social media channel

This report shows that everyone that uses social media is an influencer to a certain degree. Of course, some more than others. Many blogs are dedicated purely to reviewing certain products. And, how many times have you recommended a book on Amazon.com or have written a bad review of a Web site that you didn’t get good service from? I know I’ve done both and I don’t consider myself a social marketing guru. That’s the point of social marketing – you don’t have to be a guru, you just have to have your own opinions. And other people will trust your opinion on social media sites.

Universal McCann is using this report to give their clients the following advice:

1. You must participate in social media. If you don’t have a social media presence, you’re toast. (I’m paraphrasing here, of course .) Basically, it’s no longer a choice because people are going to be talking about you anyway, so you might as well be proactive and join the discussions.
2. Be transparent. You must be honest and open about how your company works. If you made a mistake, own up to it and control the discussion. If you just ignore it you won’t be able to do any damage control.
3. Invest in your product. People review a product because they had a good experience with it. With the market now being driven by consumer recommendations, the good, responsive companies that have an online social media presence will stand out. 

If you don’t get involved in social media, you can’t influence anyone. Traditional advertising and marketing alone won’t do it; people don’t trust companies, but they do trust strangers.

I don’t know the future and I don’t know what will ultimately become of the print medium for advertising. Perhaps in enough years color printing truly will be a thing of the past that no worthwhile marketer will bother with.

I do know a few things about history though that would suggest it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. After all, radio ads didn’t put it to rest, nor did TV commercials topple print advertising as the king of marketing. Now online advertising is making a play for dominance over the world of marketing, but based on what I’ve seen in the past, I have a feeling that the print world is more than up to the challenge.

Why has traditional marketing survived this long to still stand proud in the world of marketing? Radio and TV didn’t topple it for the same reason that the internet isn’t going to right now.

Not everyone had access to a radio when it was first introduced, or not everyone really cared to listen to one. That meant anyone who didn’t have a radio was automatically not going to hear that ad, which meant you were cutting yourself off from a certain part of the population.

The same is true for TV. It took a lot of years before they spread to be in nearly every home, yet even now they aren’t really in every single home there is. And even in the homes that do have a TV, not everyone watches it that much, or pays attention to the commercials on it.

The same is true for the internet. While computers have spread rapidly over the past ten years, not everyone owns one, and even fewer people actually have an internet connection. I’d say that yes, the majority of homes probably have some form of the internet these days, but that still isn’t all of them, and that’s still a portion of the population you’d be cutting yourself off from.

Here’s the thing about print advertising: a person doesn’t need to have anything in order to be handed a flyer on the street. They don’t need to pay a single cent to buy a computer or TV in order to pick up a brochure. All of those other forms of marketing require a person to spend money in order to get the equipment needed to view the marketing.

With printing you’re footing the bill for all of it and simply handing a person the advertisement. You do all the work and they get to benefit from it by reading what you have to say. The world of print advertising requires the least amount of effort from a person, and that’s why it has stuck around for so long.

Maybe that will change, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

Despite the rough economy, digital marketing is still going strong and is actually growing. According to eMarketer data released in August 2008, advertisers will spend $25 billion online in 2008 in the United States alone. This is about 17.5 percent more than 2007. eMarketer projects that the recession will cause growth to slow a bit in 2009, with projected spending at “only” $28.5 billion.

eMarketer is expecting the economy to recover by 2011 coupled with an increase in online video advertising to push the online ad spending to more than $40 billion that year. They then expect online advertising to grow by about $10 billion each year after that to 2013. eMarketer gets its projections by benchmarking against the Interactive Advertising Bureau numbers.

Digital marketing doesn’t only include online advertising – it includes everything from online video ads to search media to in-game and mobile advertising. A report from analyst firm Parks Associates also forecasts growth in digital media advertising segments. Parks Associates gives a breakdown of everything from Internet display, rich media, search, DVR, mobile and in-game advertising. New categories, such as in-game ads and mobile ads will have the highest gains because they’re starting from lower bases than other forms of digital advertising like online ads.

Parks Associates projects digital media to compose 10 percent of overall ad spending or about $24 billion by 2010. eMarketer predicts a higher number for 2010 of about $33 billion.

Of course, these are all just predictions, and each research firm has its own numbers that tell a different story.

JupiterResearch, for instance, forecasts display ad spending to reach $7.2 billion by 2010, while Parks Associates forecasts display ad spending to reach only $2.4 billion.

JupiterResearch believes by 2010 search marketing will reach $7.5 billion in revenues. Parks Associates sees search marketing growing more than that – up to $9.7 billion. 

New categories like rich media, in-game and mobile advertising shows the most growth according to Parks Associates. Internet rich-media ads are projected to bring in an estimated $5.7 billion by 2010. In-game ads will grow at least 50 percent according to the study, bringing in about $430 million annually. Mobile advertising is expected to grow to $2 billion in the same time period.

Even though all the numbers are different, quite different, actually, they are all projecting an upward trend for digital marketing. The Parks Associates report says that media is moving from mass to niche, forcing advertisers to adapt to new content and ad formats. “We believe that advertising over the next five years will go through some changes,” said Parks Associates Research Analyst Harry Wang in a Webcast presentation of the report. “For content providers as well as media publishers, they have to provide content in a form that the audience prefers.”