Internet Marketing in the Denver Area is exploding.  Frankly, it’s catching on throughout the world but Denver is particularly tech savvy and understands the benefits that internet marketing can provide.  But you may run a small business in Denver and even consider yourself to be pretty savvy but it’s hard to keep up.  You probably already have a web site but you may not fully understand the options for marketing on the Internet.  Here’s a quick run-down of some of the most popular techniques for promoting your Denver business on the web.

With thousands of competitors just in the Denver area, your Internet Marketing efforts need to be taken seriously.  You can’t just give it a shot and try to tweak one or two things.  Those types of efforts may more your site up from page 33 on Google to page 32 but that won’t do you a bit of good.  Of course if you’re selling something that’s pretty obscure and there aren’t any competitors in the Denver area, then maybe your Internet Marketing efforts won’t need to be as intense.  It’s all relative to the level of competition.

So where do you start?  Keyword research is the cornerstone for any Internet Marketing campaign.  You have to know which words people are searching for.  If you own a flower shop on Colorado Blvd. then you might think people are looking for “flower shops in Denver.”  That seems logical.  But what if there are more people looking for “flower delivery in Denver?”  If you focused all of your efforts on the wrong term, you may be missing out on the majority of your audience.  So before you begin doing any legwork, you have to go to Google and determine how many people are searching for your keywords.

Go after the phrases that are getting the most traffic, if you don’t think they’re too competitive.  Another strategy is to pick up the crumbs.   If 20,000 people per month are looking for “Flower delivery in Denver” that’s a great term.   It’s also hard to get the top position because all of the flower shops in Denver are fighting for the top spot.  On the other hand, if you went after all of the people who are looking for less popular phrases like “dozen roses Denver” or “fresh flowers delivered in Denver” you may be able to get a lot more traffic, for a lot less effort.

Next, as part of your Internet Marketing efforts, you have to determine if you want to work on being in the free listings on Google or in the paid listings.  Obviously the free ones sound better, but it takes longer.  If it’s a couple weeks before Valentine’s Day and you want your Denver flower shop to be found, you’d better think about Google’s paid listings.  On the other hand, if you want to think about your long-term strategy, then you can focus on the free (sometimes called the organic listings) listings and reap the real rewards of Internet Marketing.

To get your ads posted right away, just go to adwords.google.com and set up an account.  Follow the simple steps to set up your ads and within 30 minutes you can begin getting traffic to your site.  It doesn’t matter if you’re driving traffic to your local Denver flower shop or if you want to reach a global audience, either way, Google’s Adwords program is awesome!  Just beware that it can eat up your profits if you don’t manage your budget and make sure that your site is converting visitors into customers.

Tomorrow, we’re going to continue talking about Internet Marketing in Denver and we’ll hit on the organic listings on Google.

Until then,

Chadd Bryant

Red Rocket