However the skills necessary to plan, manage and execute digital campaigns can often be beyond the in-house capabilities of small and medium-sized businesses.

LS Digital Media can work as your outsourced Internet Marketing Manager. A role that would be too costly to fill with a full-time employee and yet a position that you can barely afford to be without if you are serious about internet marketing. Our goal is always the same. We work with our clients to create results driven strategies that not only pay for themselves, but do so efficiently and effectively – in as timely a manner as possible. For us the ROI and the success of a digital campaign are inseparable. And delivery is everything.

1.  Get listed in Local Business Directories

These listings will improve your visibility in the Google Local search results, and provide valuable signals as to the location of your businesss.  They also help with general link building.  We’re only looking for high quality directories, with links that are indexed by Google.  As a word of warning, many of these will result in telephone sales calls (just say No).

http://www.touchlocal.com
http://www.thomsonlocal.com/
http://www.bizwiki.co.uk/
http://www.hotfroguk.co.uk/
http://www.shoplocally.co.uk
http://www.freeindex.co.uk/
http://www.uk-local-search.co.uk/
http://www.local.co.uk
http://www.yell.co.uk
http://www.thebestof.co.uk

2.  Get Testimonials.

So easy, this one. Think of all the suppliers you use who have a website, who you would recommend to others. Offer them a testimonial and ask that they link to your website, so that their visitors will know it’s a genuine testimonial.

3.  Run a Competition

Why not run a competition to link to your site? Offer a reasonable prize and a time limit on entries, then promote it to relevant websites, forums and blogs. It’s a good idea to post about the competition on your blog too, so people can leave comments with links to their pages when they’ve entered. Remember to state who the winner is when it’s over, otherwise you’ll get lots of emails!

4.  Offer Your Product or Service for Review.

This requires a bit of research first, as you will need to find websites who will review the type of product or service you offer. Assuming you can find some, why not ask them to review it in return for a free product/service? They will link to your site as part of the review.

5.  Get Links from Other Regional Businesses.

Whilst reciprocal links are, in the main, pretty useless for SEO, reciprocal links from other businesses just like yours will still carry weight. Why? Because they’re about exactly the same subject! Google expects sites about the same topics to be linked together, so these links still count. If you only operate within a particular geographic area (locally, nationally or internationally), why not search out companies doing the same thing in non-competing areas and ask to swap links? It’s a win-win, you just have to explain the importance of links to SEO, if they don’t already know.

Ian also talked about a number of other tips, including asking for links on your website (best done if you incentivise people through a free gift or money off coupon), writing guest posts or articles for other peoples’ websites and creating useful resources related to your business, which you can then promote and get links to.

For some, the thought of keeping track of all that may seem overwhelming, but thankfully, there is good news.  There are software programs that automatically keep track of all customer information.  This software is referred to as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.  In addition to keeping up with every customer’s details, CRM software can also administer partners, employees, vendors, and more.

There are three key features dealing with CRM:

•         Analytical CRM – investigates and extracts customer information for a variety of different reasons.

•         Collaborative CRM  – is used to communicate with clients directly without including any sales pitches.

•         Operational CRM – completely provides marketing and sales support to the front office.

All three of these, together, can be done with CRM software, which makes things easier for online business owners.

All customer communication history is recorded and added to the database for future reference.  This information can be retrieved at any time.  Not only does CRM software help keep track of clientele, but it also makes it easier to get them to buy more in the future.  Keeping track of customers means that a business can keep up with their needs and wants, which means, of course, that it will be easier to sell to them!

The technology involved with CRM can be confusing.  A novice small business owner can receive help and training.  To start out with, he or she needs to practice with the basic tools, such as customer support and interaction software, statistical analysis, automated phone support, etc.  As the company grows, the online business owner can then move on to more advanced features of a good CRM solution.

Keeping up with all the latest e-commerce trends is also important.  CRM software is programmed to do that, also.  It’s highly essential for the growth of an internet business to understand changes and developments in the market.  Ultimately, in order to achieve access, an internet entrepreneur needs to give customers what they want, and using CRM solutions is the best method for doing that.

Well, fear not – help is at hand. It turns out that the solution is in fact a very simple one. This allows you to disable comments on pages on an individual basis. And even if your site has quite a few pages, there is no need for it to take very long.

What you do is simply click on the Pages list in the menu on the left, under ‘Pages’ obviously. Then hover over the page name you wish to remover the comments for until the small horizontal menu appears. Click on ‘Quick Edit’. Now all you need to do is to untick the box that says ‘allow comments’. Save/Apply.

The comment box will instantly disappear from the page in question and your problem is solved.

The site design is deliberately quite ‘out there’. It certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste but for now we’re enjoying and we’re going to have some fun with it. One of the great things about the way the site is built is that any element can be changed very quickly and efficiently so we are constantly playing around with different ideas. For this reason the LSDM site is a continual ‘work in progress’. Enjoy.