The last ten years has seen business and marketing absolutely transformed. Whilst in years gone by businesses operated from a stationary location, and marketing and advertising involved the utilisation of television, radio and print; the advent of the Internet has turned the business world on its head.

Today those in retail will rarely operate solely from a store. The Internet has opened the doors to multiply sales, and in some cases, has become a necessity in order to ensure the survival of the business.

In addition, the cost of marketing your product or service has dropped and today, having an online presence is an absolute necessity.

When we talk about an online presence we refer primarily to three things: your positioning in the search engines organic listings (SEO), your social media presence and your utilisation of pay per click marketing.

The three forms are highly unique, yet ultimately interlinked. Having a significant presence in any one of these three marketing forms will inevitably impact upon your presence in other areas online.

So which area do you focus on?

Whether social media, SEO or PPC stands as the most effective marketing form for your company depends upon you product, service and target market. However having a presence in all three is ultimately a good thing.

You may find the services of an online marketing company or pay per click agency can help you to establish which marketing form will be most cost-effective and have the biggest impact for your company.

Keywords are key:

One of the first steps an online marketing company and a pay per click agency will take is to establish the best keywords for you to use.

Keywords relate to what people search for online and having the wrong keywords will make it very difficult for your customers to find you.

The right keywords will be those that are searched for frequently, while having minimal competition from others in your field. If the right keywords have been chosen, you will find that you climb the search engine positions more quickly, and incur lower costs in a pay per click campaign.

If you want to increase your online presence, you must work with the right keywords. For instance, if you sell DVD’s and choose to work on the keyword ‘DVD’ you are unlikely to achieve much success due to the vast competition for that keyword. However something such as ‘cheap DVD’s’ or ‘buy DVD’s’ may garner more success since they eliminate sites which simply talk about DVD’s such as forums, review sites and blogs.

Market yourself:

While a page one position on Google and a big pay per click budget are all well and good, social media offers a very effective and (mostly) free means to market your company and communicate on a personal level with your customers. In addition, having a big presence on the most popular social media outlets will inevitably affect your organic search rankings; boosting your presence online even further.

Getting a social media campaign started is easy. Getting it right is not. There is an endless array of information available to you online if you wish to teach yourself how to execute an effective social media campaign. However, an online marketing company can help set-up, control and monitor the campaign on your behalf; if you wish to benefit from the experience of a company who have been there and done it many times before.

This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Boom Online Marketing. James writes on subjects relating to online marketing and business.