Very few small business owners understand the importance of their website in Internet Marketing. A website is a sales and lead generation tool that most businesses fail to recognize as such. Entreprenuers are not alone. Most of their larger competitors haven’t figured it out yet either.

Small business owners are wary of taking on their larger competitors because they believe correctly that they could be out spent in advertising dollars. With more and more of their customers going online, they can „out spend“ their competitors by using time instead of money. Larger companies can’t move as quickly as a small business because they generally have a chain of command that screens out much of the needed information unintentionally. Any entrepreneur today would be wise to spend the time necessary to learn the basics of Internet Marketing to reap big benefits in the future.

Email marketing may be a good way for small business owners to develop a strategy that uses time effectively to offset their larger competitors advertising money. Small business owners have a rapport with their clients that most large businesses don’t have and they should capitalize on that. Because email is more familiar, it should be the place to start. Learning one tactic at a time helps eliminate being overwhelmed by all the possibilities that exist for online marketing efforts.

Small business owners should realize, however, that email is just the beginning. There is much more to marketing goods and services online. Some of those methods would be:

* Banner ads on other complementary business sites

* Optimize the website for specific keywords

* Maintain a presence on consumer forums

* As mentioned in the above paragraph, email is still a very effective way to build communication with prospects and other businesses.

* Forums are expected to become even bigger than they are today. Business owners should consider starting their own forums on one of the free tools available.

* Write articles on their industry, business, or area and post them online

There are many more ways to promote a business online but all of them require a relationship with clients and a demonstration of expertise in a given field. My advice is to take just one of these recommendations and perfect it.

For more information on this topic see: http://www.getwebwired.com/internet-marketing.htm