A recent survey taken in the United States by a technology consulting firm gives some very interesting figures about the use of internet marketing among small business owners. Based on the results, the majority (close to 80%) of small business owners had a website for their business. Of those that didn’t the majority were planning to create one in the coming year. This result is really not something that is surprising. It has been said time and time again that creating a website is beneficial for any business owner, even those that run a very small local enterprise. It makes them easier to find by their prospective clients, many of who exclusively use the internet in order to locate a business that they want to use.

While this first statistic was not especially surprising to anyone, what followed next may raise a few eyebrows. Of all business owners that had an online presence, nearly 40% were not entirely satisfied with the results that it was bringing them. Some were not happy with the way their website looked and wanted one that was more professional and more attractive to customers. Some others had a website and were quite happy with the way it looked and worked, but they were not convinced that it was doing them any good, as they did not see their website bringing them the amount of customers that they needed. It has also been said that small business owners (outside of the technology or marketing sectors) did not have much knowledge of how internet marketing worked and only a minority of them (14%) wanted to spend some time studying techniques to make their site better and to figure out how to deploy betting marketing efforts such as SEO and other internet advertising, in order to get more visitors to their website.

Ok, this maybe news and it is always nice to know some stats… but what does this mean to internet marketers? The bottom line is that there is a wide open market of local business owners who would want to use your services. Some of them want better websites. Some want to do some SEO on their site to get a better ranking on search engines. Others would want to use internet advertising in order to bring in more customers but are not sure which kind to use and are hesitant to buy ads on their own.

For those of you who are just learning internet marketing, or who are doing something else (CPA, Clickbank, eBay sales, affiliate stuff, etc.) and don’t get the results you want, this is a great opportunity. What you need to do is simple: learn how to create simple, yet functional websites. Learn how to optimize pages for SEO and build backlinks. Learn about the different kinds of online ads (business directories, classified ads sites, PPC, etc) and how they work. Compile a list of tutorials and learning materials (there are hundreds of videos, articles and blog posts on these topics, all free) and study them for about 2 weeks. Then you can start targeting local business owners and providing them your services as an internet marketer.

Advertising on social media has been a topic that is widely discussed in internet marketing circles. Given the fact that social networks are receiving millions of visitors daily and have hundreds of millions of active users around the globe, it is no wonder that internet marketers are trying various ways to make profit from them. It is, of course, possible to create a page for your business on social networks and have people add you to their profiles. While it can be quite effective if you run a local business, such as a bar or restaurant, or otherwise provide a very unique and interesting product, this may not always be the best choice when trying to market something on social networks.

There is an alternative, however. Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have an advertising platform in place where you can pay for ads on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis. The way that these advertising networks operate are similar to the Google Adwords content network, but with a few differences. First, your ads are only distributed on pages in the respective social network’s site and not on third party sites. You also have the opportunity to include a small graphic next to your ad text.

One of the main things that makes buying social media advertising attractive to internet marketers is that you get the ability to targeted various groups of users with your ads. You are not limited to simply targeting people based on their location. You can choose things such as gender, age, relationship status and interests in order to better target your ads.

But one question remains and is subject to a lot of debate among internet marketers: is it really possible to make a profit when using paid social media advertising? Well the answer is yes. It actually HAS to be. You see, if no one was profiting from these ads, advertisers wouldn’t pay for them and social do networks would lose their source of funding.

The main consideration for an internet marketer using social media ads would be what type of offers you would be running. Remember that those visiting social networks are usually not currently on the lookout for things to buy. Check out the social networks for yourself and see what kinds of ads are being served on their pages. You will notice that most of them are offers that do not require the user to buy anything, such as ads for survey sites, dating sites, coupons, credit card applications, insurance quotes, etc. These are the types of offers that typically are the most successful when promoting via social networking ads. A good strategy would be to check out the ads that you get served with while browsing the site. Ads that stay there for longer than a week or so are usually the ones that are bringing in some profit for the advertisers.

Setting up a Facebook fan page can be a great way to generate traffic for your website, but it takes a lot of time and effort. If you don’t have the spare time to work on a fan page, but you do have some room in your advertising budget, you might want to think about using Facebook ads.

Facebook has over 500 million users, and they fall into every age group and demographic you can think of. When you’re setting up your Facebook ad campaign, Facebook gives you all the tools you need to reach out to your target audience. You can use parameters like age, gender, hobbies, and interests to target your ads at the people most likely to click them. If you know who your audience is, you can reach them on Facebook with these tools.

The results of using highly targeted advertising like this are generally pretty good. The odds that each person seeing your ad will click on it are pretty good, and once they make their way to your site, they’re likely to come back as long as your content is compelling.

If you’re familiar with internet marketing and advertising, you’re probably wondering how Facebook ads stack up against Google Adwords. Well, Facebook gives you more direct control over who sees your ads. With all of the options you have at your disposal you can really narrow it down, and make the most of your ad campaign. Google Adwords still has one key advantage, your ads show up in search results. In other words, your ads show up for people who are searching terms directly related to your site. Neither service is “better” than the other, they just work differently. Keep that in mind before spending your advertising budget on either service.

With over 500 million users, Facebook is a great place to reach out to your audience. The results of a Facebook advertising campaign will depend directly on your site, it’s content, and how well you know your target audience. If you have a site with compelling content, and you know your target audience, you can get a high yield for your investment in Facebook ads.