7 Internet Marketing Strategies which Work

Once you are convinced about online marketing and are ready to start your efforts in that direction, below are some of the online marketing strategies which have worked for many brands. Of course, you will need to tweak your strategy based on your offering, target audience and target geography. But these can help you get started and establish a strong base.

#1 Website Design, Development and Analysis

The first and most important item in your online marketing efforts is a ‘good’ website. By ‘good’ website I mean a website which boasts of quality content, has clear navigation, is easy to follow and gives relevant information – quickly. Implement tracking mechanism in your website so that you know details like who is visiting your site, which all pages are being viewed the most, how much time users are spending on your site and so on. These details will help you enhance the website and offer better experience to the visitors.

#2 Search Engine

Get your website ranked in major search engines through search engine optimization (SEO). For SEO to be effective, you need great website content. So invest time and efforts in creating good content.

#3 Social Media Marketing

You cannot shy away from social media. Get yourself on relevant social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Communities), build a steady fan following, educate and engage the audience. This can take you a very long way in terms of both qualitative as well as quantitative ROI.

#4 Email Marketing

Learn to use email marketing effectively. Define your email marketing objective, design a good email campaign, build an opt-in list to which you can send the campaign, track the campaign and analyze the results for better targeting next time.

#5 Online Press Releases

Write and publish online press releases. These press releases help you promote your brand, establish a strong online presence for your brand and also help in your search engine optimization efforts.

#6 Article Marketing

Invest serious time, efforts and talent in writing great articles. Make these articles educative, thought provoking and interesting. Publish these articles on article websites which will help you establish your thought leadership in your area of business.

#7 Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Once you are conformable with your online presence, you can invest in PPC campaigns (like Google AdWords, Facebook Ads or LinkedIn ads) to bring in quality visitors/ leads to your website. Remember though that running PPC campaigns is a specialized skill, so do get some expert help for this.

Why Should Small and Medium Sized Businesses Care About Online Marketing?

Online marketing has become the most talked about but least implemented phenomenon. Most of the small and medium size businesses talk about it but then lot of apprehensions start creeping in: "Do I really need the online brand?", "I don’t have time for this, I am busy selling", "I don’t think I am yet ready for my marketing plan / strategy", "Which mediums are effective for my business", "social media, SEO, website optimization, newsletter - I don’t know how it can be used in marketing".

Rather than concentrating on the apprehensions, let’s start looking beyond that and identify the value which online marketing can bring in such as: cost effectiveness, can be done from any corner of the world, ability to address the audience worldwide, very effective, huge spread and so on.

Once we are convinced about the value, then it gets into the “how” part. Obviously it is not rocket science. The key is to identify the right sequence of right medium to start with. Identify your audience and then decide on the medium. For example: When your business demands reaching a wide audience, then social media is the way to go. Whereas while addressing a very niche audience, probably a good email campaign with right collateral material will do the trick.

It’s already year 2010, no matter which business you are in, if you have envisioned spreading it and going global, then you NEED to have an online presence. If your business is targeting the young generation, then you need online presence now! Sooner you start the better lead you have. So for me, the right time to go online is "NOW".

What are your views? Have you implemented online marketing in your business? Any success stories to share?