Did you answer “Marketing Business?” Well you should have. That’s right; you’re not in the chiropractic business, real estate business, coaching business or whatever happens to be profession. You are in the business of marketing your products or services.

You see, without marketing, you don’t have a business at all. To be successful in business, your business needs to be based around your marketing. To fully grasp this concept, I highly recommend checking out The Duct Tape Marketing Complete Small Business Marketing System.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Probably the #1 question I get asked is, “how do I get found on the search engines?” Most of the time, it’s just a matter of researching the right keywords. Learn how to organically position yourself in the search engines.
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Pay Per Click (PPC)

Where SEO is organic or natural search engine marketing, PPC is the paid sector of SEM. PPC advertising can be a highly effective and quick way to get targeted traffic to your site. You can also blow your whole marketing budget if not done correctly! Find out how to build a profitable PPC program.
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Postcard Marketing

Postcard marketing may seem a bit antiquated with so much emphasis on the internet today but postcard marketing, when done right, can produce excellent leads and sales.

Social Networking

Social networking is basically socializing online. This can be a very effective, and fun, tool in your internet marketing arsenal. Find out how to incorporate social networking into your business.

Email Marketing

The importance of having your own email list cannot be overstated. Virtually every visitor that comes to your site the first time is not going to buy anything. You worked hard to get them to your site, doesn’t it make sense to capture their contact info so you can try to sell to them again? There’s really only one thing you need to do to get them to hand over their email address.

Relationship Marketing

Social networking and email marketing are essentially list building tools, but what you do with your list is what counts. Cultivating strong relationships is key to building a strong sustainable business. Learn how relationship marketing can transform your business.

PPC advertising is also an excellent way to get search engine traffic quickly because you can create a campaign in 10 minutes and within an hour, you could be receiving traffic from those ads.

Here’s a screenshot to help illustrate where the Paid vs. Organic listings show up.

The way it typically works in a PPC campaign is you bid for a position. Generally the higher up you are, the more you paid for that position. This makes sense since the higher up you are the more visibility your ad gets.

The big three PPC search engines are the same big 3 regular search engines. There are a ton of others in the game but these are where I recommend starting.

• Google Adwords
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• Microsoft adCenter

Facebook maybe another I would consider trying out. I haven’t personally used them much, but they have some excellent targeting features that make it a very viable option.

When creating your campaign, be as targeted as possible. Bidding on very broad keywords will not only get you untargeted traffic, it will also cost a lot more! Depending on your chosen keywords, you may be paying $0.50 to $1.00 or more PER CLICK. That can add up really fast.

Therefore bidding on “Wilmington, NC” maybe a smart move for a hotel chain in Wilmington for instance, but not so smart for a specialty merchandise store.

Formula: Revenue / Ad Cost = ROI

Let’s say that specialty merchandise store spends $100 on PPC which only brings in 1 customer that nets her $50 in revenue. She’s in the hole by 50% and hasn’t even taken into account the overhead associated with that customer.

The formula here would be: 50 / 100 = 50% ROI

She only got back half of what you put into the campaign.

Now, if you take that same scenario but this time it’s the hotel chain. They have a higher revenue per customer so their ROI would look much different. For this example, we’ll say the hotel nets $250 per customer

This time the formula would be: 250 / 100 = 250% ROI

Hopefully it’s obvious at this point but I’ll say it anyway. For PPC to be a cost effective advertising medium, you must diligently track your costs and you have to know your ROI (Return on Investment).