One of the essential components in building up a business today is solid marketing. Lots of different marketing strategies with step-by-step guides provided by various business gurus can be found online. Most of them emphasise the need to build, monitor and manage business online in order to achieve business success. A strong online presence doubles your chances of being seen and heard, and, consequently, of generating interest. Data collected by Google shows that 97% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses. For those aiming to provide products or services, this means that it makes more sense to utilise the internet than to just set up an in-store business when it comes to meeting the needs of consumer society. An online presence can reinforce your brand, facilitate communication with your target audience and attract new clients or partners who are vital for business growth.

Your company's online presence can be established and improved through successful content management. This can be achieved by making the online content you are offering unique, and ensuring it can be found by search engines — 89% of consumers use them to research an item or service they are interested in or a business they are about to use before making a final decision. For this reason, it is important to work on search engine optimisation (SEO) if you want to achieve real success in online business. SEO can attract more people to your website by making it easy for search engines to find it and list it in their results. Search engine optimisation, which basically involves the application of search-engine-friendly marketing methods and techniques, helps to generate more traffic as consumers tend to trust search engines.

Use the internet to grow and advance your business

SEO can help you grow your business by utilising the support and promotion generously provided by search engines, which connect people to their desired content on a global scale. Such well-known search engines as Yahoo, Bing and Google appreciate new and original content, which can do wonders for your business online. Appropriate, up-to-date and quality content can be viewed as the key to search optimisation.

Another way to make your business or a brand memorable is by using social media marketing. Some clients prefer to turn to Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare or other popular social media websites prior to buying a product. 79% of consumers choose to follow or like brands on social networks just to get more valid information about the goods the company is selling. The information provided on social networks can influence people to a greater degree than discussing the planned purchase(s) with their relatives or friends, as people today are becoming more independent in their personal views.

Another effective marketing strategy is video marketing using YouTube. This works well because videos are a great substitute for actual samples of the goods or services being sold. The short video format is really effective when it comes to grabbing people's attention.

There are also a number of other popular marketing strategies, such as email marketing or delivering targeted messages directly to your audience using various email formats (e.g. ShoutOut); relationship marketing based on building win-win relationships with prospective business partners, dealers and consumers; and developmental marketing, which relates to finding new purposes for widely used products or creating, designing and adopting innovative products. It is up to you to decide which of these strategies will best suit your business.