Before we start getting you going online, we need to make sure your message is clear and targetted. Positioning is all about communicating what makes you special. Before you do that, you need to clearly identify who you are selling to. Here, we help you get focused on your target market.

Download the PDF below "How To Identify A Target Market" which is a worksheet for you to help you identify your target market in great detail.

Let's get specific on what your USP is because we're going to use it ALL THE TIME with online marketing. We give some tips on developing a good USP to make sure your business stands out from the crowd.

Take your USP and hone your message into an education-based pitch that will persuade your entire target market to take a look at your product/service. Here we give examples of getting started on a stadium pitch and step by step instructions using the AIDA method to craft your story.

As a local business, you still need a web site of your own. We don't go into specifics of actually setting up a web site in this course, just review what options are available (we recommend using a CMS). We also discuss where to use your USP and Core Story on your web site.

Email marketing is not dead - it is VERY effective when done right. In his lecture, we show you step by step how to set up an automated, permission-based email machine that will keep your core story top of mind for your target market.

Blogs are a great way to communicate whats going on with your business and get your core story and USP out to fans and potential clients.

Be consistent (post at least once a week) and make sure you use keywords that your target audience would be looking for both in the content and the metadata.

We've talked about keywords in the course, but now we give a more formal definition and show how you can do some research to find out what the best keywords are for your local business.

The keywords you find in this lecture will be used throughout the rest of the course.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making sure your web site if being found by people who look for your products and services.

In this lecture, we're giving an overview of on-page techniques you can use to make sure your website is being properly indexed by Google and other search engines.

Submitting a sitemap to Google and Bing is the best way to get your website indexed properly on search engines. If you're using a CMS (Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal), it's easy to submit your sitemap.

We review how to get a sitemap for your site and how to submit it to Google and Bing through their Webmaster Tools

Press releases can be a huge boon to a local business. Submitting them online is free and easy and you can promote it using social media, blogs, email and to local news/media outlets.

We discuss how to craft a proper press release and how to submit online using PR.com.

Adding your business to Google Places (now Google My Business) is a great free way to get listed near the top of search results for your community.

In this lecture, we show how to get your business listed on Google Places and what the Google Local results look like.

The easiest way to get off-page optimization and build quality links is to add your local business to as many local business directories as possible.

We give an example of how to find these local directories for your city and community.

Use the links below to get started.

Facebook is the largest social media platform. Have a business presence here is a must.

With Facebook, you can engage in conversations with your clients and attract more business if you do things in a certain way, which we discuss in this lecture. We'll show how to set up a company page, make sure it is optimized for being found and we'll also discuss how to make the most of your Facebook exposure.

Twitter has a very large and devoted fan-base. Having a presence on Twitter is a key part of your social media presence and mix.

Don't get worried that you are biting off more than you can chew - we're going to tie together all of your social media with Hootsuite later. Go ahead and set up a company profile on Twitter if you don't already have one.

LinkedIn is another great social media platform, but not only to setup and company profile and become more discoverable... LinkedIn provides an excellent way for you to directly grow your business by connecting with other professionals that you might not otherwise be able to reach.

We review how to setup your company and how to find and make contacts with other professionals for B2B type business growth.

Hootsuite is a must for businesses using social media. It's a way to aggregate your social media networks together into a single interface, allowing you to write a message once and cross-post it to all of your social media platforms.

You'll find Hootsuite can also help you stay focused since frequent visits to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can end up being major time-wasters. Hootsuite allows you to manage all of your social media interactions without the distractions.

In this lecture, we show how to connect your social media accounts and how to schedule posts to make your time spent on social media as effective and efficient as possible.

YouTube is the number 2 search engine in the world and nearly everyone is watching videos these days. There just something about reality TV type videos that resonate with people. It's like we have a short glimpse into other's lives.

You can create and upload short videos that don't cost any money at all and can really help people feel connected with you and your business.

In this lecture, we show an example of the type of video you can create that cost nothing and work well. We also show how to upload the video and make sure your YouTube channel is set up. Finally, we show how to promote your video by optimizing the keywords used and sharing the video link on social media.

Advertising online is a laser-targetted way to get your message to those who have already expressed interest in your topic area.

Pay-per-click advertising is even better because you don't pay anything unless someone actually expresses interest by clicking on your ad.

In this lecture, we give an overview of how PPC advertising differs from traditional advertising and why PPC is the best model for a local business.

Landing pages are deep, focused pages that are not your home page. Advertisements will link to a landing page which should be a focused page related to what the ad was talking about. Remember, you are paying for each click on an ad, make sure that click has a high chance of converting the browser into a customer by creating high quality landing pages based on your USP and Core Story.

You can have many landing pages, each for a different topic - and maybe several for the same topic if you want to experiment and see which landing page performs best.

Google Adwords is the premier pay-per-click (PPC) system and they've made it easy for you to get started. There are a lot of options, but don't be intimidated by the interface - you can ignore many of the small settings and still have success with PPC advertising - and you can spend only what you want to.

In this lecture we show how to create your first PPC campaign on Google Adwords and review how to monitor the stats that will come once you ad is running.

Advertising on Facebook is similar to Google Adwords, except I recommend that your advertisement be aimed at gaining more likes for your Facebook business page. The greater audience you can get on your Facebook page, they more opportunities you'll have over time to get your message out to prospective clients.

In this lecture we show how to create a PPC campaign aimed at gaining more likes for your business page and review some of the stats that will be gathered so you can effectively manage your campaign.

Although we've focused on online marketing in this course - this is just a quick reminder that online isn't everything. Offline factors matter too - so just keep proper perspective and don't put all your marketing eggs in one basket.

Do it yourself, or get some "On-demand" help. Finally, connect with me on social media using the links provided.