As small businessmen ourselves, we know how busy you are and how little time you may have to devote to an online marketing effort. For that reason, we are trying to "net it down" for you here at ChaChing Marketing.

Like the 3 legs of a milking stool, there are just 3 main functions that you must have in place before any online marketing campaign will be at all effective. You should not devote much time to anything else until you have these components in place and functioning! They are:

1.) A Website You must have a presence on the Internet from which to operate. It may be a simple as a lead capture page or it may be a blog or a comprehensive, multi-page website. Of course, to do this, you will need to have acquired a domain name and a hosting account and to have published your page, blog or site to that account. Whatever your site looks like, it will need to employ a Call to Action to attract the site visitor to take a desired action! These things may sound overwhelming if you are not familiar, but we will walk you through, step-by-step, how to get your presence set up.

2.) Traffic It may come from any number of sources, which may include Pay-Per-Click, organic traffic, banner ads, email campaigns, etc. The better targeted your traffic is to the particular business specialty of your company, the better results you will enjoy. To locate and attract visitors who are interested in your topic, you will need to do some basic keyword research. We concentrate on traffic sources which cost no money and produce steady, predictable results.

3.) Conversion Once you have a site and traffic is arriving, you must get those visitors to respond to your Call to Action! If they don't purchase something, take a survey or poll or at least leave their contact information, the value of their visit to you is minimal at best. Your website needs a strong Call to Action and you will need the ability to capture and track the information collected in an Autoresponder system as well as statistics on your rate of "conversion"(where a visitor has taken the desired action).

To fully support the activities of most offline businesses, these three primary ingredients are a must! They are NOT EXPENSIVE and are relatively easy to incorporate, even for non-technicians. All of this can be implemented for less than $50 upfront and $20 per month!

If your business cannot afford this level of investment to gain a productive Internet marketing presence, then perhaps you should find another activity that will provide more enjoyment and less frustration for you.

The articles and videos below are specifically oriented toward assembling your "3 Legged Stool of Small Business Internet Marketing".