Welcome to the new frontier. Now that you have made the decision to make the leap to the web, what is the next step?

It seems daunting. Instead of just marketing your products or services to locally or even across the country, you now have a global audience to deal with. This can present a set of problems that many small businesses are not sure they are ready to handle.

Fear not. Although Internet marketing can encompasses the world wide web, e-mail, wireless digital media,  management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management you can ease your way into it with just a few enhancements of existing business standards.

Just like with your existing offline marketing, branding is the most important thing you can do to differentiate your business online. Everything starts with your logo.

A well designed logo will help you stand out against your competition and help augment the position of your products or services in the global marketplace. But an identifiable mark is is only the beginning. The cornerstone of any good brand is the differentiation of your product. You need to explain to people what makes your company unique and this is when you begin to realize that when it comes to internet marketing content is king.

Once you have made your mark and identified your strengths, its time to tell people about it.

Like with the offline marketing collateral you have always used for sales support, you will want those same materials for online. But when you place them online they can now take on new and exciting forms. Not just as downloadable versions of the existing materials (although those are good), but as new interactive versions that help you truly differentiate yourself from the competition.

The most common interactive form of these materials is a website. Here you can extend your offline identity into a more complete online experience for potential customers. Instead of a flat boring experience that talks about a single product or service, you have the ability to bring your entire business right to your customers in a way that can service them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But just putting the information out there is not enough, in order for it to be useful, it needs to be seen.

Once you have your brand and online identity set up, the real work begins. Cutting through the clutter.

Stay tuned to learn different ways to enhance your online marketing efforts with topics including logos, branding, websites, search engine optimization, social networking and more.