Diversify Your Online Marketing: 10 Steps

Online marketing is not enough to get your business message to your target audience. As online consumption continues to grow and channels multiply, your local business must incorporate a wide variety of online tactics to reach consumers in the many places they search, surf, and socialise online. Here are 10 easy ways to diversify your online marketing in order to optimize your presence across the Web.

1. Combine search advertising with SEO

Running paid-search engine advertising alongside a search engine optimization strategy can increase clicks to your site. So if you’re just using one of these search engine marketing tactics, you’re missing out on visits to your site from potential customers.

2. Create a YouTube channel and add videos

Creating and uploading videos to YouTube is an easy way to increase your ability to be found in search. Since YouTube is a Google product, YouTube videos get great real estate in its search results. With over 4 billion videos being viewed on the site each day, video is one of the most-consumed forms of online media. Plus, videos have been shown to lengthen a consumer's time on a Web site and increase their likelihood to purchase.

3. Start a business blog

Create a platform to tell your brand's story, and employ a content marketing strategy to help you build awareness, acquire customers, generate leads, and increase customer loyalty. A business blog is a great way to showcase your industry expertise, share useful tips, highlight community involvement, and more. Using SEO best practices will help it rank in search engines. Plus, sharing blog posts on your social media profiles can help you drive engagement and word of mouth with your fans and followers.

4. Leverage compelling infographics

Using infographics in your marketing can help you drive engagement and social sharing with your audiences on your blog or social media outposts. Creating an infographic from scratch can be a daunting task, but you can easily re-share an existing infographic (just remember to cite the original source!), or use an app like Wordle or Visual.ly to create a custom infographic about your business.

5. Retarget your Web site visitors

Web site retargeting, or remarketing, is a cost-effective way to target visitors who may have left your Web site without converting and drive them back to your site. Because this technique targets consumers who have already shown interest in your business by visiting your Web site, remarketing can lift conversions on your site, boosting your online marketing efforts.

6. Boost awareness with display advertising

Another way to boost your advertising efforts is with display advertising. This advertising technique reaches consumers where they spend most of their time online -- browsing Web sites -- so it builds brand awareness with a broad range of consumers who may not be actively searching for your business.

7. Incorporate mobile in your marketing

Now that more than 100 million people in the U.S. use smartphones and 80% of searches conducted on mobile devices are for local products and services, it makes sense to have a mobile marketing plan to reach these on-the-go consumers. Some mobile marketing options to consider include SMS marketing, mobile search, display advertising, QR codes, and social media marketing.

8. Create a Foursquare special

To attract and engage local consumers in your area, consider joining Foursquare and creating a special that customers can take advantage of. By offering a discount for new or existing customers and sharing it across the Web, you can drive a stream of revenue and generate new customers for your business.

9. Establish a business page on Google plus

You may already have business profiles on top social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but you can also create a business page on Google Plus to begin sharing content. Once you have set up your Page, optimize it for SEO, do something creative with your photos, and share through other social channels.

10. Market your business on Pinterest

According to comScore, Pinterest had around 17.8 million visitors at the end of February, with a 52% increase in growth from January to February, making it the third-most-popular social media site in the U.S. Because of its design, share-worthy content, and accessibility, Pinterest has become an “addictive” site, with users spending 98 minutes per month on the site. It's prime online real estate for you to reach social networkers who show interest in the types of products and services you deliver.

Incorporating all of these marketing tactics might not be feasible for your business, so it's important to understand your audience and the types of marketing they will respond to. Then add some of those methods into your marketing strategy to optimize your Web presence and boost the results of your online marketing efforts.

source - Tamara Weintraub