By: Jerry Chautin, SCORE volunteer, business columnist

SCOREing small-business

Online marketing mystic is uncloaked at SCORE workshop

“Marketing on the Internet” workshop

April 14, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m

SCORE Atlanta, 233 Peachtree Street, Ste. 1900

Details: Online at tinyurl.com/cydufq or call,
404 331 0121

Here is bad advice: Build a Web site and the world will buy your products and services.

Here is good advice: Build a Web site that sells benefits and solves problems. Furthermore, practice the mystical art of search engine optimization and you will substantially increase your sales.

Online marketing is a cost-effective way of reaching customers from coast-to-coast and around the world. But building and online presence and getting your Web site top priority on search engines is not a game for neophytes. SCORE’s workshop will help you implement an online strategy to increase your business.

Before you start designing your Web site, Bill Cooey says, “It is crucial that during the initial planning stages the competition be researched for price, for ideas on product development, and for existing market penetration.” He is a volunteer business counselor with SCORE, “Counselors to America’s small business,” and also the principal owner of e3datasolutions, LLC. “There is a huge amount of marketing intelligence that companies used to pay millions of dollars for that can now be had for free.”

Cooey’s company designs Web sites and software to connect you with your customers, vendors, employees and stakeholders. You can learn more about the company at e3datasolutions.com.

A manual published by Inc Magazine and distributed by SCORE called "How to Really Market on the Internet," outlines five essentials.

■ Your Web site must deliver what it promises or your company will lose credibly.

■ The site should load quickly because shoppers will go elsewhere if they can't quickly find what they want. Avoid using large photos, sound and video clips.

■ Contact information should be easy to find. Include your physical location, phone number and fax to reassure visitors that you exist in more than just cyberspace.

■ Provide customer interaction with contests, games and instant feedback. Allow them to request information and post comments.

■ Update your site frequently if you want visitors to return.

Even if you design the perfect Web site, it is important to get high priority from search engines. Search engine optimization requires additional skills. SEO is the art of using keywords and understanding the algorithms and methodology used by Google, Yahoo and other search engines to place you near the top of page one.

Alan Zell recommends wilsonweb.com and searchengine.com for information on SEO. He is a SCORE volunteer in Portland, Oregon. But he stresses the need to combine traditional sales and marketing techniques with SEO. “The further one gets away from their prospective clients the costs go up with less results.”

Cooey agrees. “SEO is not the panacea that many are led to believe,” he says. “The resources spent on SEO in most cases can be better used by attending networking events or replying to posts at relevant industry blogs.”

SCORE Atlanta’s workshop will discuss the various approaches to marketing on the Internet so that you can decide what is best for your business.

www.score.org

Note to media: Photos of the SCORE counselors quoted and interviews are available upon request. You may use this article in part or in its entirety and distribute copies. Please credit SCORE Atlanta scoreatlanta.org