Marketing Your Business Online

In business the big challenge has always been to determine the best return for the money you spend to get customers. That challenge is no different on the internet, just more complex. So how do you find the right marketing strategy for your business? Lets look at a few segments of online marketing to see which might be the best fit for your business.

PPC or Pay Per Click advertising. This is probably the quickest way to go broke since the carnival huckster. Anybody can play as long as the money lasts.

SEO, Search Engine Optimizing, which could be described as reverse engineering the mathematical equation used by the Search Engine, while the formula is changing. Search Engines work very hard at not being fooled by websites attempting to falsely manipulate search results. The Search Optimizer works to present his client websites to be relevant in the appropriate places so the business can be found when prospective customers are searching.

Social Marketing. Again, anyone can play but most will never grasp the power of a free tool. Like giving out a complete set of carpenters tools to anyone who asks for it doesn’t mean any houses will get built.

And finally Viral Marketing. If you thought SEO was tough try this on for size. Creating content that spreads all by itself online is what we call viral. Usually the things that take on a life of their own like this have nothing to do with business. However if you are really good at knowing how to get peoples attention and have enough creative ideas to keep pounding out the hits viral marketing just might be your ticket to fame.

Determining which tactics are going to be best for your product or service is critical for search marketers. PPC, SEO, Social and Viral all have their advantages, but depending on the marketplace you're in, some strategies may be much more cost effective and sustainable than others.

As you might expect, the results you get with a given strategy is directly proportional to the dollars being spent and focus given it. As you may have discovered on your own, Pay Per Click becomes an extremely difficult tactic to implement effectively in any sort of competitive market. Social Media on the other hand can be leveraged to great advantage with little difficulty even in highly competitive verticals. As reported by Forrester Research in their 2009 US Interactive Marketing Forecast: The Projected money spent on Pay Per Click advertising in 2009 will be $12,937mm, on SEO will be $2,456mm and $716mm on Social Media marketing.

PPC gets the lion's share of search dollars, often thirteen times higher than second place SEO, with Social being the section where the least amount of money is spent. The degree to which you can be effective in these areas depends a good deal on how big of a fish you can be in the portion of that pond dedicated to your corner of the web.

How do you determine which area is best for your business? You have to carefully weigh your goals, and resources. If you have a lot of money to throw at promoting your business, Pay Per Click will be the fastest way to get noticed. But it is not a good long term strategy in a tough economy.

SEO is not as fast to get going but the results are solid and can get recognition for your business in any relevant search. Long term you’ll spend a lot less for good SEO than PPC and get a lot more business too.

Social media marketing is free to be involved in but it takes a certain finesse to keep people interested without being annoying. If you make a plan of treating your social marketing like you would a weekly or daily special or promotion you’re more likely to gain a loyal following.

All areas of online marketing are experiencing massive growth. As shoppers have shifted from the yellowpages and print advertising to searching online for the products and services they want the marketing dollars spent on SEO and PPC will likely double in the next five years.