Marketing Your Business on the Internet

About This Course

Find out how to market your business on the Internet, even if you have little or no money to spend! In this practical, hands-on course, you'll discover proven methods that will help you establish an Internet presence and build an online brand identity. You'll learn how search engine optimization (SEO) works and how to track your site's performance using Web analytics. You'll understand how to use online advertising, email marketing, and social media (including blogs) to drive business to your Web site. Finally, you'll learn how to keep your visitors coming back again and again!

Throughout the course, you'll learn to think strategically about marketing your website, products, and services using Internet technologies. You'll explore how to use an Internet marketing checklist and other tools and materials to develop a sound online business strategy. Before you know it, you'll have the skills and knowledge you need to develop a winning Internet marketing plan for your own business.

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Lisa Adams.

Lisa Adams is a Web development expert specializing in marketing, user experience, and e-commerce. In addition to building and maintaining hundreds of Web sites, Lisa has helped a wide variety of clients and students to create their own sites and modify existing ones to make them more attractive and user-friendly.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

With millions of pages already on the Web and more posted online every day, getting your Web site noticed isn’t easy. When students ask me what they can do to increase traffic to their sites, I encourage them to learn all they can about Internet marketing. In this lesson, you’ll receive a brief introduction to the Internet, learn the difference between e-commerce and e-business, and explore different types of business sites on the Web.

Friday - Lesson 02

The terms "Web site" and "Web presence" can be used interchangeably, but there's a subtle difference. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to establish a Web presence. In order to do that, you’ll need to understand your goals and your customers’ needs and interests, accurately identify your target audience, and establish a market position that makes you stand out from the crowd. We'll go over how to do all of that in this lesson.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

In today's lesson, you’ll discover the importance of selecting the right domain name for your site. You’ll also find out how search engines work. And you’ll understand how you can use what you learn to drive visitors to your Web site.

Friday - Lesson 04

High-quality content will keep visitors at your site longer and encourage them to return more often. In this lesson, you’ll learn the importance of helpful, informative, educational, entertaining, or useful content. You’ll also discover how search engines use the following factors to determine ranking in response to a query—text viewable on the screen, code not viewable on the screen, and external factors.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

In this lesson, you’ll discover the elements that make up "The Marketing Mix"—the four Ps. You’ll learn how the elements of product, price, place, and promotion relate to each other and to your target audience.

Friday - Lesson 06

Today, you’ll learn how to develop a message that will cause the members of your target audience to take the action you want. And you’ll become acquainted with online strategies you can use to advertise your Web site, products, and services.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Today you'll learn how to develop ads that inspire your target audience to take the action you want. And you'll understand how to advertise your web site using search engine (PPC) advertising, banner advertising, and more.

Friday - Lesson 08

In spite of the growing number of junk e-mail messages filling in-boxes, e-mail is a thriving medium. So it’s important to understand how you can use e-mail marketing to keep current customers and acquire new ones. In today's lesson, we’ll examine ways that you can use e-mail to promote your business.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

If you want visitors to spend more than 30 seconds at your Web site, you'll need to make it interesting, entertaining, and informative. The factor that causes visitors to spend more time at your site is called "stickiness." In this lesson, you’ll learn the advantages of building a sticky site. You’ll also learn how to use content to make your Web site sticky.

Friday - Lesson 10

In the previous lesson, you learned to build site stickiness through the use of content. In this lesson, you’ll learn to build site stickiness through community. You’ll also become acquainted with synchronous and asynchronous tools you can use to develop a community experience for your visitors.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

The last element you can use to build site stickiness is commerce—in this case, e-commerce. You’ll learn how to use commerce to keep visitors at your site longer and return more often. In this lesson, you’ll become acquainted with technology you can use to create an online store, including online catalogs, shopping cart software, and online payment systems.

Friday - Lesson 12

In our final lesson, you’ll have the opportunity to pull together all of the information you gathered during this course to complete an Internet marketing plan. To help you do this, I’ll provide you with an Internet marketing plan checklist and samples of the following documents: Internet marketing plan outline, a calendar, and a budget spreadsheet. You'll want to use this opportunity to complete an Internet marketing plan that you can use to promote your business.

Requirements

Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).

Completion of Richard Blum's Designing Effective Websites online course (or equivalent experience) and Craig Power's Creating Web Pages online course (or equivalent experience) is helpful but not required.