Any business owner that has a lick of sense will tell you that marketing is a tricky business. Whole departments are dedicated to it. You can study it in college for four (or more) years to get a degree. You can take the following statement to the bank:

Your business lives or dies by its marketing strategy.

That statement is true for all businesses, offline or online. Online businesses have a greater task in their marketing. Like it or not, online marketing is still in its infancy. While the World Wide Web appears to be everywhere and on the cutting edge, there are two limitations that people just don’t realize when thinking about marketing.

1. The majority of the world’s population is still offline. According to comScore Networks 771 million people over the age of 15 used the Internet in May 2007. Based off of a world population of 6.6 billion people, that’s only over 11.6% of the world online. From January 2006 to January 2007 these numbers increased by 10%. World population growth and the percentage of that population that goes online both show continued signs of growth.
2. Technology and context change instantly online. Facebook and mySpace did not exist 5 years ago; now you couldn’t imagine that they didn’t exist. Yahoo! used to be the 800-pound gorilla when it came to search engines; Google reigns supreme now, with Yahoo! trailing in 3rd behind MSN. Trends, what’s hot, and what’s popular change in the blink of an eye. What’s the rage today, for sure, won’t be tomorrow.

To get your business noticed online, your marketing must be ahead of the curve, not playing catch up. In order to do that, you need to be dedicated to your online marketing. When I say dedicated, I mean, focused on what the search engines are saying about you, and how they’re saying it. This is where SEO comes into play. Read 100 different sites about SEO and you’ll get 100 different opinions about SEO. Which of those 100 opinions are correct? Who knows?

Your best bet is to get professional help with your SEO and your online marketing. I don’t mean buying some book. You need to outsource your online marketing needs to people whose only job is to stay current on online marketing trends and keep your business current as well. An example of one such company is Discount Click.

Discount Click offers a comprehensive online marketing service. They offer search engine optimization services, link popularity campaigns, SEO self-service tools, ad management services, and email list management and processing. Discount Click allows you to focus your attention on building your business while they take care of making sure your online presence is effective and taking full advantage of all the perks that being online allows.

Whatever method or strategy you use for your online marketing, it must be serious.  If you don’t take the online marketing of your business serious, then, really, what’s the point of being online?

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