If you have a small to medium sized business and are interested in doing online marketing, you will find several choices. How you choose depends on customer you hope to reach, the message you want to convey and most importantly your budget. Keep reading for an explanation on our preferred eight methods.

1. Pay per click

The great thing about pay per click is the results are immediate. You can place an add with Google and see it appear almost immediately. The other great thing about pay per click is you can gain access to page results that may be very difficult to obtain with organic search. The more competitive the keyword phrase the more you may need to aid your marketing strategy with the use of paid search marketing. Be sure to use the tools provided by each engine so that you can track your click through rate and understand the cost / results ratio.

Pay per click marketing is offered through Google (Can include AOL), Yahoo, and MSN. Ad campaigns are built and displayed on pages when specified keywords are used in a search.

2. Pay per inclusion:

A pay per inclusion search engine is a service in which a search engine charges you a certain amount to spider and include your website in its database and search results. The fee is for regular indexing which makes sure your site is always listed. Yahoo! directory uses the paid per inclusion method for their directory listings. For many small businesses the value of the listing quickly justifies the cost to be listed in this web directory which is $49 for one year.

3. Pay per performance:

Pay-Per-Performance advertising methods give you results or you don't pay. Instead of paying to place your ad, you pay for each lead your ad produces. You can adjust your ad, your media, and your method until prospects start to roll in. Only when you get results do you start paying small fees per lead.

One of the quickest ways to pull lots of prospects to your website is to get listed prominently in search engines. Unfortunately, with over one billion sites catalogued, your URL can get lost in the crowd. Pay-Per-Performance search engines give you a way around this problem. They list your site high for a fee. You can pay as little as a penny a click for each prospect the engine sends to your site. If no one clicks on your link, you don't pay. The up side to these engines is you can adjust your listing until it works without going into debt. You can also list dozens, even hundreds of keywords that will bring up your link.

The big disadvantage to Pay-Per-Performance search engines is many keywords get very little response. Common keywords that draw lots of prospects are probably well known to other businesses in your industry. With everyone vying for the same keywords, the price can be bid up to several dollars per click.

Some top Pay-Per-Performance search engines are GoTo.com, NetFlip.com, FindWhat.com, SearchHound.com, and RocketLinks.com. Most require a $25 to $50 minimum to participate.

Pay-Per-Performance banner advertising is also popular. With banner response trending lower in recent years, businesses are looking for ways around costly cpm banner purchases that don't always get results. Services like ValueClick.com and PennyWeb.com make you pay only when someone clicks on your banner and goes to your site.

4. Email marketing:

Broadcasting emails can be an effective marketing strategy depending on the email list source and the message. Email filters and spamming tools have significantly cut down the value of this marketing method however developing an internal email marketing list for regular communications can produce excellent results.

5. Blogging:

Using a web blog to deliver timely information to your prospects and customers is quickly becoming the new standard in internet marketing. Blogs use rss feeds or atom feeds to format the information for syndication to directories, blog readers and major new sources. If you have timely important information to offer the general public using a web has excellent potential.

6. Product feeds:

Pay per performance directories use merchant generate product feeds to develop traffic, Google product feed "Froogle" offers merchants a free directory listing for products within the Froogle product directory.

Shopping sites like Shopping.com, Yahoo! Shopping and Bizrate.com use the pay performance method of merchandizing your products. These services offer a directory of products for consumers to search or comparison shop. Merchants are charged when consumers click through to their website from the directory listing.

7. Internet advertising:

Internet advertising usually refers to banner advertisement placement or strategic advertisement placed on industry specific websites. There can be some strategic value to a well placed advertisement for both branding and sales purposes. General "impression Advertisement" performance must be tracked very closely to validate its effectiveness.

8. Local internet yellow page directory listing:

Internet yellow page listings are the growth area for primary search engines Google, AOL, MSN Search and Yahoo!. Each of these businesses has released new technology to better server advertisers and browsers in the local search arena.

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