There are many ways to market your business on the internet, and although their degree of effectiveness depends on many different variables, some of them tend to work far better than others on a consistent basis for the vast majority of businesses. These internet marketing strategies can be used to help grow every size of business, from sole proprietorship’s, to small local businesses, to the biggest companies in the world. All these organizations basically require the same marketing techniques to succeed – the only major difference is the size of their budgets dictating how much marketing they can actually do and what strategies they choose.
Luckily the internet is one of the greatest business equalizers of all time! It’s where a small company or even just an individual with a simple website can compete against huge corporations with massive marketing budgets as long as they choose their strategies wisely. Here are 5 relatively cheap and highly effective ways to market your business online…
1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Getting your website ranked highly in search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo for the keywords people are searching for when trying to find the products or services you provide is undoubtedly one of the best marketing tactics in this day and age! Achieving high rankings through legitimate SEO will bring in targeted traffic and hot leads on a consistent basis for years to come.
There are few, if any, marketing strategies that can bring a better return on investment for a business these days than search engine optimization can. As a business owner you are truly doing your company a disservice if you haven’t hired an SEO consultant yet. It is vital if you want to stay competitive in this new digital world we live in!
2) Social Media Marketing (SMM) – It’s really no secret that social media can be used as a very effective marketing strategy. Almost everyone has a profile on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and several other social sites. They are a major part of our daily lives now and will probably only grow more into the future.
Promoting your business through these sites typically takes quite a bit more time than other methods and usually takes longer to see a true return on investment, but they can be a great long term marketing plan. This is especially true considering it’s a completely free way to market your business online.
There are few strategies that can jumpstart a viral marketing campaign and spread brand awareness faster than SMM. However, it must be done correctly, consistently, and very methodically to work unless you get lucky, which is very rare as can imagine. So hiring an expert is probably a good idea!
3) Email Marketing – When done correctly these campaigns can give you a huge ROI and do so many times over. Building a responsive list takes a lot of time and effort, but it can pay off big time for years to come. For quicker results, you can also purchase advertising in email marketing campaigns from people in your industry with quality lists. This is a great way to not only get new sales but also keep customers coming back for more.
4) Pay Per Click (PPC) – You have probably heard of Google Adwords but there is also Bing Ads, Bidvertiser, 7search, and others. They are all basically the same in that you pay for targeted ads on search engines and related websites that are served up by these PPC networks. You only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad, so that helps to ensure you get more potential leads for the money you spend.
This can be a very effective internet marketing solution but it can also get to be quite expensive if the ads aren’t converting and the cost per click is high, so you do need to be extra careful with this one. Don’t go diving in head first without consulting a professional ahead of time.
5) Free Giveaways – Everybody loves getting something for free, so this is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website. Put together some sort of contest, giveaway, promotion, or whatever else you want to call it. There are few things that spread faster on the internet (or anywhere else) then freebies do, especially if they are actually of value.
Of course, you will need something to spread the word about your freebie, so this isn’t really a marketing tactic all in itself. It works best with a combination of content syndication, social media, email, word of mouth, blogging, videos, and other potentially viral marketing techniques.
* Very Important Sidenote:
In order for any internet marketing strategy to be effective the website design must be set up for converting traffic into buyers! When the traffic does hit your site, they need to like what they see, be able to find what they are looking for, and be able to contact you immediately. Nothing will lose you more potential clients than a hard to navigate, cluttered site, without a defined call to action. Since all the traffic will be coming to your site, web design plays a very important role in your online marketing success.
So, there you have it, five of the best internet marketing strategies that virtually every business owner can use to help grow their companies. No matter how big or small your business is, you can surely benefit from any, or all, of these techniques. Just stay consistent, have patience, and get professional help wherever needed. You can do it!