Web Site Marketing Services - What's the Ideal Online Marketing Mix for My Business?

Web site marketing services are completely new services for most people - including individuals with a marketing background.

To put things in perspective, the Internet only saw widespread commercial adoption start to spread with the creation of some of the more widely used search engines in Yahoo! (1995) and Google (1998). If you were one of the early adopters of Internet technology and services, you would have about a decade of real familiarity with the Internet - and some exposure to online marketing. Most people, however, weren't early adopters of the Internet and its related benefits applied to marketing.

Online marketing has also evolved tremendously in the last decade, migrating from simple banner advertising and online directory placement to more sophisticated web site promotion services such as search engine optimization (SEO), affiliate marketing, strategic email marketing and social media optimization/marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc).

With web site marketing services reaching new levels of sophistication - and with more web site marketing services constantly available to consumers, how do you decide on which internet business advertising methods to incorporate in your campaign? Which web lead generation methods are ultimately good for your business?

The following guidelines provide would-be online marketers with some basic rules of thumb on which web site marketing services are most suitable for their particular business:

Search Engine Marketing Consulting: Most effective with a very niche focused keyword selection approach and strategy and strong overall market demand and potential for your product or service. A sustained focus and commitment to organic SEO can often provide you with a tremendous overall return on investment over time assuming a well orchestrated strategy is implemented.

Email Marketing Consulting: Cultivating a large opt-in email marketing list and developing loyalty in your subscribers through providing them with valuable information, resources and unbiased recommendations. A large enough opt-in list can be a powerful asset for Internet marketers, which will allow your company to stay front-of-mind with your customers and prospects.

Affiliate Marketing Consulting: In the case that your product/service contains a high enough margin to allow for affiliate commissions to be taken from your final sales price - even better if your product or service can be offered on a subscription basis - you will want to experiment with affiliate marketing services. Some companies have used affiliates (commission based salespeople in the online world) to enormous success.

Social Media Marketing Services: Creating a presence within popular social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIN and Twitter. The key is to create loyal followings within the various social media platforms, and carefully transition your loyal following into either opt-in email subscribers through a giveaway of high perceived value, or simply sell your products or services directly from social media platforms. The key will be to drive the requisite amount of traffic to your social media pages - an artform in and of itself. Social media marketing is generally less effective for business that sell to other business, as social media sites tend to be very end-consumer focused.

Pay Per Click Strategy Services: Pay per click campaigns will work best if your product or service is relatively high margin and has a high enough price point to be able to still maintain a decent profit when fees are paid. The key in pay per click services is to synch up your keyword - advertisement - landing page very closely and make your campaigns hyper targeted. If you do a good job, your Google quality score will be high, and you'll find your rates decrease dramatically vs. competitor's rates over time. (This is a little known fact).