To build a successful website, marketing should be divided into two main groups. There is user-specific marketing to customers, which includes social media, e-mail marketing and original content on your site. This is important because it will build your credibility within the eyes of your customers and ensure return shopping. Marketing this way is building the image you will portray to your customers and potential shoppers. User-specific marketing has the main goal of being interactive and informative for your customers. It should include any information pages that a customer would use on your site, video clips, product reviews and any other unique content that makes the user experience on your site easier.

Then, there is the SEO/PPC marketing aspect. This marketing is in place to boost your search engine results, whether they are organic or paid. User-specific marketing is the trend in the industry right now and search engines seem to favor original content, however, to properly market your website your strategy needs to encompass both of these tactics. You want to develop a strong brand with your customers but you also need to be doing SEO and PPC marketing to reach out to new clients.

We all love that we can get free advertising through our networks of friends and followers, but there comes a time when you need to realize that a strong social presence needs to be accompanied by a strong ad presence on the web. If you aren’t using pay-per-click marketing tools, such as Google AdWords, its time. Brands spend thousands and millions of dollars on web marketing, knowing that you can’t rely solely on a social media presence to bring you sales. It’s all part of a cohesive marketing strategy and money needs to be put into online ads.

Consider how much you spend on a phonebook ad or a billboard. Those are both local, limited ad spaces, while the internet is infinite. Your marketing strategy should already have a budget in place for internet marketing alone, and if you haven’t given this any thought than it is past time to do so. There is a great opportunity to expand your brand, especially if you don’t have a brick and mortar location, through online marketing and advertising.