You’ll never be able to talk about a bird “tweeting” without thinking of social media ever again.

Twitter, technically, is a micro-blogging platform. Users write 140 character blog posts, or “tweets,” and can also share photos, videos, and web links. The service has gained a quick following and companies do best to jump on board.

Ways Twitter Serves as a Great Marketing Tool:

-      Encourages Dialogue

-      Broadens Promotions

-      Raises Awareness

Dialogue

Many companies use their Twitter accounts to respond to questions and ask questions of their followers. It’s a great way to establish a personal connection between you and your potential customers.

This dialogue is effective, but what may be even more effective, is when a figurehead of the company is the one with the Twitter account. The personalization that this allows is a far greater use of Twitter as a tool, because the more a consumer feels they can trust the people behind a brand, the more likely they are to trust the brand. Bill Gates is an example of this.

Another clever way to reach customers is by using a company’s character. These characters are typically followed because the content, if well written, is highly entertaining, like Geico’s Gecko.

Promotions

A great way to further your outreach via Twitter is to use Twitter as a format for promotions.  Say you have 800 followers. To increase your followers to 1,000, you could offer a special discount code for your online site if you reach 1,000 by a certain time period.

Not only will this help you build a stronger consumer base, it will also encourage people to make that “first-time buy” which will hopefully lead to many more purchases.

Awareness

There are many avenues you can take to increase awareness of your business using Twitter. The more interesting the better. For another idea, encourage fans to tweet pictures using your products or services. If a follower of theirs sees their tweet, they may not only follow your company – but also may be prompted to use your products or services as well.

The most important things to remember with a Twitter account is to keep it active and keep it interesting. A Twitter that is rarely updated or updated with mundane Tweets (such as, “Writing grant proposals today”) will not help the company. In fact, it may reflect poorly on the brand.

Marketing for any business must include:

-      Determining your marketing goals

-      Identifying your key demographic

-      Developing a plan to reach this demographic

-      Implementing this plan

When it comes to marketing for small businesses versus large businesses, the principles are the same. The difference lies in selectivity. Large businesses can afford to spread their marketing initiatives over a variety of mediums, small businesses have to choose the avenues that will be the most beneficial.

Dreamscape has a lot of experience improving the marketing efforts of small businesses. Here are some important aspects for you to consider:

Power of the Internet

It’s very important that all businesses have an online presence. This should start with a well written, attractive, and easily navigable website.  But to further your outreach, consider creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account for your business. Both services are free, and if you use them well, you will see a positive return on your time investment.

Some quick rules of thumb: enter at least one Tweet a day, post somewhere between 1-4 items on your Facebook page a week, and always respond to people that reach out to you on both mediums. Your customers want to be valued, starting and continuing a dialogue online is an easy (and, once again, free) way to show them they are appreciated.

Budget Marketing

Beyond free social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, most other marketing initiatives will cost you money. However, there are some actions you can take to reduce marketing expenses.

Budget-Conscious Marketing Ideas:

-      Piggy-Back

• Have a booth set up at an event, such as a charity walk or run, or partner with another business to send out mutual mailings and increase your customer base.

-      Barter

• Offer some of your products or services for advertising space.

-       Always be “On”

• Take every opportunity to promote your business. When you send out mail, toss in a brochure. At the end of your emails, list your web address and a very brief pitch.

It’s important to remember that any marketing effort, no matter how expensive or cheap, will do you no good if you’re reaching out to the wrong demographic. Always take the time to determine your demographic.

If you do this, chances are your “small business” won’t stay small for very long.

The best choice for your domain name is the name of your website.

These days, most companies register the same domain name as their company name. So, when people look up your company, they will type in www.yourcompany.com. If instead another site pops up, or worse yet, your competitor’s website pops up, you run a great risk of losing a sale.

Don’t expect a potential (or even current) customer to remember a strange or difficult URL. You want to make finding your company online as easy as possible.

If the domain name you would like is already taken, you have three options:

1.     Consider changing your company’s name. This really applies only to businesses that have yet to establish any sort of presence.

2.     Buy the domain name from the current owner.

3.     Tweak your domain name slightly, by adding a “the,” for example.

If you’d like to go with option two, use a WHOIS service to determine who currently owns the domain. Chances are whoever owns it well sell it to you, but at a higher fee than you would initially purchase it for.

SEO

It’s also important to consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization) when registering your domain. If your site is selling used cars, you may choose to use the keywords “used cars” within your domain name. It will be easier for search engines to find and list your businesses’ website this way.

.Com or .Net?

If .Com is taken but .Net (or another domain location, such as .Org) is not, should you use it? It depends. The first thought must always be the potential customer.

If you think it would be easier to increase traffic with a .Net domain that actually uses your business name, then do so. If you’d rather run the risk of skewing your business name for the .Com, then do so. .Com is searched first over .Net by search engine algorithms, so it will help for SEO. However, if your site is a .Com with a name other than your business name, it may hurt your SEO campaign anyway.

Whatever domain location you choose, if it does not allow for thenameofyourcompany.com, make sure you constantly promote the full URL of your website. This is the best way to avoid any potential domain name pitfalls.

Dreamscape Marketing offers competitive plans and pricing on many different web hosting services with the best features.  We can tailor a web hosting package that meets the needs of your business – large or small.

Many different web hosting companies offer plans that are cheap, but unfortunately the low cost means low quality service and little reliability.  In today’s competitive marketplace, your business can’t afford to lose time and money due to poor website hosting and support.  At Dreamscape Marketing, we offer strong web hosting solutions that are affordable, effective, and reliable.  In addition, each one of our state-of-the-art hosting plans come complete with FREE 24/7 technical support to ensure your business stays online and connected.

In today’s digital age, the internet has become a market place to the world, a valued source of information, and a community where people meet and connect. As of 2008, there are over 1.5 Billion people using the internet worldwide (InternetWorldStatistics.com), and each individual has the potential to learn about what your company can offer them.

With such a wide reaching audience, it is important to make a memorable impression, and Dreamscape Marketing can help you do just that! With our experienced web development team we have the professional capabilities to make your company’s website stand out. Our unique approach to web development creates powerful web solutions that are tailored to your company’s specific needs. We have a three step process to website design that ensures your custom website solution fulfills all of your needs and expectations.

Step One:

Gather Website Requirements: We work with your company to develop a comprehensive listing of the different needs you have for your website. We also provide different design concepts that will ensure that your new website looks as professional as the company it represents.

Step Two:

Implement Design Concept: We have an experienced web development team that uses the latest web design tools to construct a website that exceeds all of your expectations. We can also offer innovative web hosting solutions that ensure that your site will always be up and running on even the busiest of days.

Step Three:

Website Maintenance and Support: With the experience and resources of a full marketing agency supporting your company’s website, you can be assured your site will stay current with the latest content and technologies.

E-Commerce Development

Each and every day billions of dollars in goods and services purchased over the Internet. Millions of consumers use the Internet to buy everything from antiques and collectables to houses and cars. The Internet has created multi-billion dollar companies out of start-ups. Internet provides a low cost channel to market and sell products to a truly global audience available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Features

At Dreamscape Marketing, we have an experienced team of eCommerce developers who have the skills to build a custom eCommerce solution for your company. We have the capabilities to do everything from inventory databases, secure checkouts, shopping carts, and a host of other features. We also have strategic business partnerships with third-party eCommerce developers to ensure the capacity to handle any project, large or small.

E-Commerce Search Engine Optimization

Creating E-Commerce SEO is critical to the success of your site. To ensure you will be bringing in a large number of visitors to ultimately purchase your products, your site needs to be readily available on the search engines results page. Having a significant number of products and offerings can make the SEO process rather complicated, but that is why we are here to help! Learn more about SEO *Links to SEO page*.

Maintaining & Managing your E-Commerce Site

Dreamscape can implement a simple to follow management system that will allow you to easily update the site with new content including orders, products, promotions, and more. See below for a list of some of our management capabilities:

• Upload Product Images
• Setup specials and promotions – Categorize/Organize your products
• Add free shipping/exact shipping prices
• Add or Cancel certain products
• Obtain statistics on each product
• Edit On-Screen help and instructions

• Feature certain products
• Calculate sales tax per state on a per item basis (incorporate live carrier rates)
• Ability to insert comments to each product (publicly and privately)
• Send HTML newsletters/emails

List of Features

See below for a more detailed list of our standard features. Of course every client is unique and we are able to offer customization and special applications for your individual needs.

• An unlimited number of categories, sub-categories, products and options
• Order discounts and promotional codes
• Digital Downloads
• Support for product Ratings & Reviews – Support for product suppliers & manufacturers per Product

• Item discounts based on quantity ordered
• Have your shipping cost calculations take into account the weight of the product
• Feature Certain products on your homepage
• Maintain inventory levels

Consumer Options

• Product selection by brand
• See shipping costs before checkout
• Full order history and detail available for customer
• Customer can view modify personal information on account
• “Save Cart” functionability
• Selectable Currency and Language

• “Share with a Friend” functionality allows customer to send a link to a product via email
• Convenient Print Order Function
• Customer recieves email confirmation
• Customer can save a list of favorite products

Security

• SSL support
• Encryption of Passwords, Credit Card numbers, and other private information
• Main database kept separate from private information

Payment Options

• Support for offline payments (i.e. Mail, Fax, etc.)
• 2CheckOut.Com Auto-Update
• Authorize.Net
• World Pay
• Google Checkout
• Verisign PayFlow Link and Pro
• LinkPoint
• Accept up to 9 different acceptable Credit Cards

Analytics

• Get to know who visited your site – who, when, if they purchased anything
• Look at a certain time period
• View the top landing pages and exiting pages
• Integration with Google Analytics

Social media websites have revolutionized the Internet and changed the way many people interact on a daily basis.  Social media sites are used to connect with friends, stay current with news, and engage with the world around us.  These new Internet destinations attract millions of users every day.  The two most popular sites, Facebook.com and Myspace.com, have a combined user base of over 200 million people (TechCrunch.com).

Effective promotion on social media sites can improve the following:

• Primary Traffic: Primary traffic is comprised of the visitors who come directly from the social media sites.  Access to this large network has a remarkably low barrier for entry, and results can be instantaneous.
• Secondary Traffic: Secondary traffic is generated through referral from social websites that link to your website, and refer visitors after they have viewed your advertisement on the social network site.
• Quality Links: Popularity on these websites will lead to a high number of referral links.  When a website is generating a high number of hits on trusted sites, you can guarantee that your site will become more readily available on the search engine results page.  Additionally, your company will establish a level of credibility from your visitors as they are exposed to content on your website.

Creating the right promotional tools for your business on these social media websites can be complicated, but the team at Dreamscape Marketing is here to help.  We offer a wide range of social media marketing (SMM) solutions that offer the opportunity to interact with customers in innovative ways.

In addition to the techniques above, we utilize a host of other tools including directory submissions, data feed optimization, landing page development and more.  Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo are continuously updating their search algorithms, so our developers are constantly researching new techniques to ensure we are always delivering the most efficient and cost-effective results.  Our SEO service includes an overall analysis of your website’s structure and content.  Many SEO consultants can guarantee increased traffic, but at Dreamscape Marketing, we guarantee increased traffic from the RIGHT customers.

All internet search engines have their own proprietary search algorithms that sort through millions of pages of information in order to find websites with the most relevance to the original query.  Although these search algorithms are closely held trade secrets, several proven techniques can be utilized to improve a website’s search ranking.  At Dreamscape Marketing, we focus on using the most effective and legitimate SEO methods to maximize your website’s search results.

Website Design and Layout: One of the most important elements of a successful SEO campaign is optimizing the way in which a site is constructed.  Websites are often built with an architecture that makes it challenging for search engines to index them accurately.  Information is often buried under non-descript headings.  The site may have too many sub-sections.  Sometimes the programming code (often HTML) does not include Meta-tags, which are essential for site indexing.  We ensure that the most relevant words describing your competitive advantage are located in the places most reviewed by search engines.  Our company can perform a full SEO site analysis and work to ensure your site is optimized to perform in all areas.

Keyword Targeting: All search engines utilize key words to link the requested information with the websites provided in the search results.  Dreamscape Marketing will perform an extensive key word analysis of your web content and provide you with the specific search words that customers use to find your site.  With the key words established, we ensure that both the content on your site, and the code that works behind your content, are optimized to return a result when those key words are entered into a search engine.  Our continued success with increasing website traffic through SEO design and optimization gives us an ethical and comprehensive understanding of how major sites such as Google, Yahoo and others perform their search requests.

In-Bound Link Development: If a new movie comes out and a friend tells you it was good, would you consider seeing it? What if five or ten of your friends all gave the same positive review?  You would probably be more inclined to see it after hearing different positive reviews from more than one source.  On the Internet, search engines work the same way.  When an established website posts a link to your website on their page, they are providing a stamp of approval that search engines use to rank pages. The more in-bound links that others post, the higher your page is ranked amongst similar pages.  At Dreamscape Marketing, we leverage an extensive network of relationships to develop multiple in-bound links to your page.  These in-bound links are a powerful tool that can improve your website’s search results.  We can help you establish these connections, because at Dreamscape, we realize the importance of knowing the right websites.

The science of understanding who comprises your target audience is critical in determining how to effectively reach them.  Analyzing information such as gender, age, occupation, and income level can indicate the direction your company needs to take in order to create interest and appeal for your product or services.  As mentioned on our blog, marketing in unfavorable economic conditions is essential to demonstrating your commitment to customers, as well as remaining competitive.  Changing economic times can create unique buying patterns from your consumer audience.  Dreamscape Marketing can help you understand the necessary steps in addressing these constant changes.

Where does your business stand relative to the competition?  Can you identify their strengths and weaknesses?  Why should a potential customer choose your business or product over the similar ones available?

Having a clear comprehension of how your competitors operate and perform gives your business the opportunity to position itself both offensively and defensively.  You can identify potential threats and seize available opportunities.  Important aspects to consider are:

• Price
• Quality
• Distribution
• Packaging
• Servicing (Sales, Customer support, Repair support, etc.)

Dreamscape can provide your business with background information on your competitors and help you to define your own strengths and weaknesses.  This allows you to find a better position for your business and establish a stronger share in the marketplace.