The most effective Online Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses.

December 13, 2010

If you’re just getting started in business, or you’re just beginning to advertise your small business online, here are the four most effective online marketing strategies that, in general, pay the highest dividends:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Email Marketing
Pay-Per-Click (PPC aka. SEM or Search Engine Marketing)
Social Media

I like to break these online marketing strategies into two types of strategies – Prospecting and Re-marketing. SEO and PPC are very effective at finding new customers, so I like to think of them as primarily Prospecting strategies. To get the most from Email and Social Media, you really need a list of customers to contact – so these are mostly effective at ‘Re-marketing’ to your existing customers. While yes, SEO and PPC can help re-market to existing customers and Email and Social Media can help attract new customers, but that’s really not their respective primary focus.

You should also understand that these four online marketing strategies synergize with one another, they do not compete. As you develop one online marketing strategy, make sure your other strategies, including your off-line marketing, assist one another for maximum effectiveness. How? Ask for an email address in your Social Media efforts, make your links from your Social Media pages agree with your SEO efforts, try pointing your PPC ads at your Facebook site, create your offline ads to drive people to your Social Media pages, email and/or your Google Places page.

There are certain Pros and Cons to each of these online marketing strategies as well:

SEO – Pros:

Once your website is optimized, the traffic is virtually free.
Minimal ongoing effort to maintain.
Very high click-through rate when you’re on Page One.

SEO – Cons:

It’s difficult to optimize a website for more than a few phrases.
It takes time to get to Page One – make sure you get it right.
It can be expensive to hire a professional to do it correctly.
Most of your traffic may not be in your target geography.

PPC with Third Marble – Pros:

You will be on Page One for hundreds of phrases.
The traffic will be highly targeted geographically.
It takes only a few days to be on Page One, so you get results fast.
You can stop and start the service as your business needs change.
We do all the work, so you can concentrate on serving your new customers.

PPC with Third Marble – Cons:

There is an ongoing monthly cost.

Email Marketing – Pros:

Very high conversion rates.
Very targeted audience.
Results usually occur the day you send the email.
The cost is very low.

Email Marketing – Cons:

It takes a long time to grow a list of email addresses that want your emails.
If done incorrectly, it may alienate your customers.
You have to constantly create new email messages.

Social Media – Pros:

Very good way to identify your true Fans.
Good way to announce new events, trends, news, and specials.

Social Media – Cons:

It takes time and energy to create a large base of fans.
It takes a lot of time and energy to create and publish frequent marketing messages.

If you’re like most small business owners and you want to try something online that takes very little of your time, is easy to change at a moments notice, doesn’t cost too much and you don’t have to wait months to see results – try Pay-per-Click. We can get you on Page One in a few days plus we make it easy and affordable to try – read about our Three Step Process and give us a call.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply below, or click the “Like” button below.

The post The most effective Online Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses. appeared first on Third Marble Marketing.

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