The Basics of Market Presence Building

By Ashley Lichty

In today's competitive business world, small companies often get swallowed up. Making your presence known can be tough, but the Internet has changed all that. With the web, small business can now get their services out there and build a strong online reputation. It's call market presence building and more companies need to be doing it!

Market presence building online is all about getting your company name out there in as many ways as possible. The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to the Internet. First and foremost of course is having an awesome website that people love to visit. In the Web 2.0 world of today, an interactive website is a must.

You website should have a blog relating to your industry, and several employees blogging several times a week. Blog posts are often circulated all over the web, and really creative or informative posts can often go a long way to market presence building. A forum or chat of some sort can often do the same thing, so having some combination of the three is a good bet.

It's important to think about the kind of things people find when they search for you online. Go ahead and do a test. When you Google your own company, do you see a long line of complaints and Rip-Off Reports? Or do you see your website, news stories, press releases and blog posts as far as the eye can see? Market presence building is really about manipulating your company's online reputation.

By taking an active role in your market presence building, you can help control some of the Web publicity your company gets. For example, you can easily become known as an expert in your field online by having your company author 1-2 articles per week on your industry and submitting them to the thousands of free article directories across the web. This alone can change the search results for your company's name.

Start writing your own market presence building plan. Include article writing, as well as blogging and press releases to build your reputation. A strong market presence on the web will lead to higher top of mind awareness and lead generation for your business.

Another way of market presence building in the search engines is through pay per click advertising (or search marketing) and search engine optimization. Pay per click advertising allows you to pay money for your text ads to pop up in the sponsored listings of major search engines whenever someone types in the keywords you paid for. This is an amazing tool for really targeting your marketing.

SEO is more in-depth and a longer process. It involves optimizing your website for certain keywords, building good content, and getting tons of links back to your site. This will help you show up in organic listings for certain search terms. It's more of a long-term aspect of market presence building.

It's simple: if you want a strong web presence and more leads, develop and implement a strong market presence-building plan. By including several factors like articles, press releases, SEO and blogs, you can get a great reputation going in no time. While not a short-term process, market presence building is like snowball effect - get the ball rolling and see where it goes!