How Should I Market My Company Online?

Marketing is effective online, but not every online marketing channel is right for everyone.

When considering your marketing efforts, you have to be honest with yourself. Don’t get seduced by hip marketing channels or your ego. Make an honest assessment of your customers and business, and pick the right solution. This will save you time and money, and it will start to generate results quicker, too.

The First Question You Should Ask

When trying to choose the best online marketing channel, you first need to ask yourself:

Are people looking for what I have to offer?

How do you know if someone is looking for you online?

You can know this through “keyword research.” This is the process of brainstorming phrases potential customers might be searching for and then collecting data to determine which phrase is more common.

There are several ways you can do keyword research. To identify which marketing channel you should use. There’s even a simple way. The point is, don’t just pick your marketing solution on fads or ego. Where are your customers? That’s where you should be marketing.

Use Search Marketing if you know someone’s looking for you

If customers are looking for you, you should consider Search Marketing. Search marketing is the practice of connecting people with the solutions they seek. There are two ways to engage in search marketing: SEO and PPC. I’ll discuss these below and how to choose which is best for you.

Use Demand Generation if only a few are looking for you

If customers aren’t looking for you or you are unsure, you should consider Demand Generation. Your company might have a unique solution that nobody has considered before. That’s great! Choose marketing efforts that introduce your company to them. There are two basic ways to do Demand Generation online: Display Advertising or Social Media. I’ll help you decide which one of these is best by asking a second question.

The Second Question to Ask

Once you know the broader marketing channel, ask yourself another question:

What resources do I have?

Even the most prominent companies have limited resources. The two limitations every company faces are either time or money. Which of these is your limitation?

Use Paid Search if you have the money

If you know people are searching for your solutions, and you have the money, you should consider Paid Search (PPC). This is an auction, held by the search engines, where companies bid to appear in the search results. If you win the auction, you only pay if someone clicks on your ad. This is why it’s called pay-per-click (PPC) or some call it cost-per-click (CPC) marketing.

While this channel costs money, it can start to deliver results fast. You should begin to see results within a month of starting your PPC campaign.

Use Search Engine Optimization if you have the time

If you know people are searching for your solutions, and you have time, you should consider Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is the practice of helping your website be more relevant to search engine users. There are three basic things involved in every SEO campaign:

1. Can the search engines crawl your website? This is Technical SEO. It can include making code changes to your website so the search engines can read it. Most modern CMSes do a decent job with this. Most developers know how to do most of this. However, even the best of these sometimes overlook things.
2. Does your website use the exact words that your customers use as they look for you? This is about content. Words are important. Any SEO campaign has an insatiable need for more content.
3. Do other websites consider your site an authoritative source of information? This is Link Building. While this might be the most challenging part of any SEO campaign, it is still the most important.

SEO takes time. It takes time for the search engines to review your site. Once they’ve reviewed it, they compare your web page to other, relevant pages. This is not a quick marketing effort. It can take three to six months to see the effect of an SEO campaign.

SEO also takes time to learn. Once you get the basics down, you’ll also need to spend time keeping up with changes in the algorithms. Don’t forget to keep up with changes in search technology, too.

UPDATE: I wrote this years before LLMs were available to the public or marketers thought this might be a marketing channel. Despite the age of this article, what’s true about SEO is true for marketing for LLMs:

1. Like SEO, LLM marketing is a good play if you have more time than money.
2. What it takes for success in SEO marketing (technical SEO, content, and links or mentions) is also necessary for LLM marketing.
3. Marketing through LLMs will be slow if you want to do it right. Some people might claim to have a secret or trick (as they do with SEO), but be wary.

Use Display Marketing if you have the money

If you have a unique solution for which people are not searching, and have the money, you should try Display Marketing. With this channel, you show ads to potential customers on third-party websites. Several services can help you with this (including Google AdWords). To show your ad, of course, you need to pay. Sometimes you’ll pay on a cost-per-impression (CPM) model. Other platforms, like a PPC campaign, allow you to pay on a cost-per-click basis.

Not only do you need to pay for engagement, but you’ll also need to invest in assets to display. That means you’ll need to pay a designer to create a series of ads, each in various sizes.

Even though you pay money for this channel, it is not quick. Creating demand for anything will take time.

Use Social Media if you have the time

If you have a solution that is new to your marketplace, and have the time, you should do Social Media marketing. To do this, you’ll need to:

1. Choose a social media platform on which your customers participate. You can choose this based on demographics or by your industry. Find out where your customers spend their time, and be there with them.
2. Develop a following of relevant people. Without followers, nobody will hear you. You don’t just want anybody to follow you. You want potential customers to follow you.
3. Encourage engagement with those people. Don’t just talk about your company or your services. Provide something valuable to people in your target industry. Let them know you care about their success. Don’t overlook the value of giving things for free- whether knowledge or tools to help them.

As you can tell, this will take time.

Time is Money

When I say a solution takes time or money, I’m oversimplifying. Channels that take time will cost money, and channels that cost money will take a little time.

For example, if you are running a PPC campaign, you need to look into it at least once a week. Then, you’ll need to make tweaks and optimizations to get more from your campaign.

At the same time, if you’re running a Social Media campaign, you’ll need to spend some money. That might go towards tools to help you save time. It might go to assets such as images or even copywriting.

This is also why I have a business. Companies pay me in exchange for time. Some companies pay me as a consultant to help them be more efficient with their time and money.

A Little from Column A and A Little from Column B

If you have more time or money, why not do a few things at once? Combining some of these efforts means you’ll get a little more out of each.

Whatever You Do, Measure It!

No matter which solution you choose, you must be able to measure it. If you can’t measure your results, how do you know if it works?

What should you measure? That’s easy: what makes you money? Are you trying to generate leads? Track them by their marketing channel. Are you selling products? You need to know which channel generated the most sales.

Sure, you need to keep an eye on other metrics, but the most important ones are those closest to your revenue. That’s how you’ll know if the time and money behind your marketing effort is paying off, and that’s how you’ll know you chose the right marketing channel.