Devising A Sound Internet Marketing Strategy

From our experiments in Internet marketing, a sound Internet marketing plan should include the following types of online marketing sites. If you are trying to determine the percentage of time to be spent on each, a good rule thumb is to spend the most time on Number 1, and then work your way down. This theory is based on our experience of which sites produce the best ROI. Keep in mind that we are only focusing on online marketing; there are offline methods that should probably be employed also.

1. Niche Advertising Directories
By far the most successful online marketing sites for us have been directories where we can advertise our services. For example, we offer piano lessons in Central NJ. We located directories in that niche - designed specifically to promote piano studios and teachers in that area. These directories are specifically targeted to the niche in our particular location.

Our recommendation: Spend the majority of time and money advertising here.

2. Freelance B2B Sites
Sites like Elance, oDesk and Guru are also effective. These sites exist primarily to connect businesses to consumers in specific markets. We've found that these types of sites are the second most effective means of generating prospects for new business.

3. PPC Advertising
PPC advertising is the third most effective medium for generating leads and business. By far the most effective is Google AdWords, as it commands the largest percentage of market share in the Internet advertising industry. Also, Google advertises on other minor search engines such as a Ask and AltaVista.

Following Google would be Yahoo's and MSN's ad services.

4. Social Media Sites
We advise spending the least amount of time on social Media marketing. It is the least effective marketing medium and is so hit or miss that investing much time and money into is isn't economically viable. Of all social media sites, we think that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are probably the most viable.

But even these sites are hit or miss. Facebook's purpose is predominantly social and not commercial, and its ad platform is rather crude and delivers relatively poor ClickThru rates. Also, the analytics are not detailed enough to really take seriously.

With all the hype out there about how Twitter is generating sales, we've personally yet to see it. Though Twitter marketing holds some promise, we think it's a long way off from being strategically reliable in generating new business.

Of the three, LinkedIn seems to be most effective in generating hot prospects. As we explained in the previous blog post, this is probably largely due to its professional style and its appeal to serious business owners. Though we wouldn't bank on LinkedIn as a new business incubator, our recommendation would be to spend the majority of your social Media marketing time and budget on LinkedIn as opposed to the other two.