Remember your "elevator speech"? The quick, to-the-point explanation of what you do and why it's beneficial? If you can't explain the value of your products/services in a few sentences or less, your customer's attention may go elsewhere.

Now, boil this pitch down to 140 characters and you have your basic search engine text ad. Challenging? Yes. Rewarding? Definitely. People will be interested in your products/services, or they won't. They will let you know with their actions. It's a highly efficient use of your time and resources, and a highly efficient way for customers to find the products/services they're looking for. Everybody wins.

With search engine marketing, you can reach people at the very moments they're looking for your products/services. True, you could reach a wide audience of baseball enthusiasts by advertising in publications like Baseball America. But when they read the issue containing your ad, how do you know if they're in the market for the bats and gloves you're selling? Maybe they bought new equipment right before they picked up that issue. In this case, your ad dollars were wasted on that particular reader. You'll still attract some customers who need new equipment, but you've paid for the other readers, too - the ones who won't become customers. Online, you're only paying to reach the people who specifically click on your ads. Continuing our example: they're looking for bats and gloves and you've met their needs at the precise moment they're looking. Everybody wins.

Boil your message down even further, and you can also reach people on their mobile devices. An iPhone isn't a phone, it's a handheld computer with an Internet browser. This is the new frontier for advertising and marketing - and you can't reach this audience through print or broadcast advertising. If customers show interest in your products/services by clicking on your ads from a home computer, doesn't this interest increase exponentially when they're on the way to the mall, wallet and credit card in hand? OK, this is an extreme simplification of consumer behavior, but I hope you'll agree about the impacts of well-placed online advertising. It's the perfect merger of customer intentions and your products/services. Everybody wins.

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Tags: Search Engine Marketing, text ad, Efficiency, mobile devices, online advertising

Since it's the only blog entry so far, I guess there isn't much of a choice. But you're here, so I'll assume you have some interest in Internet marketing for your business. First and foremost, thanks for visiting to see what we have to offer!

Internet marketing can include MANY things. The options and new technologies can be overwhelming, and so is the amount of data that comes with it. For example, if you're advertising your business through search engine marketing, you can test and tweak your keywords, ad copy, landing pages, messaging, offers, web site copy, contact forms, site design, colors, graphics, images, navigation and more - to see what your customers respond to. And you can break down the results of these campaigns into detailed reports showing every possible angle. Adding social media to your marketing mix creates another layer of results to be analyzed.

I can't honestly say I was always a "numbers guy," but I'm a huge believer in doing business efficiently. Today's technology allows everyone a chance to be more efficient. You can figure out how to spend less to acquire new customers, by taking time to study how they became your customers. I believe that Internet marketing is the best way of doing this, with detailed tracking available at nearly every level of the sales process.

As you read this, I hope you are considering what brought you here. What is your organization trying to accomplish? More merchandise sales? More season ticket sales leads? Better, more qualified season ticket sales leads? More participants for your marathon, triathlon or tournament? The data available from an Internet marketing campaign may answer the questions that other advertising missed.

I could go on all day. We're new here, and ready to grow with you. We'd love to share more thoughts and ideas (seriously, I could go on all day. You've been warned!). Please do get in touch or download our list of Internet marketing ideas for sports businesses. They'll be more later and I wish you the best of luck with your marketing efforts!

Thanks for reading.

- Jeremy

Tags: Internet marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Data, Efficiency, Campaigns, Ideas for Sports Business