How to choose your online marketing strategy

Online marketing has become one of the better ways to promote a brand and get a return on the money you put in. But choosing which strategy to follow means thinking through a few fundamentals first, or you end up spending on tactics that were never going to fit your business.

What is your budget?

The amount you intend to invest partly determines which actions make sense. Paid search with a small budget in a competitive sector will disappear without trace; the same money spent on content compounds instead. Define the budget before choosing the tactics, not after.

Who are your customers?

Being clear about who buys from you, what their habits are and what they care about is what separates a strategy aimed at the right people from one aimed at everyone. The second is always more expensive and always works worse.

Who are your competitors?

Your competitors shape your options. If three well-funded businesses own the obvious search terms, competing head-on is the expensive route and finding the terms they ignore is the cheap one. A proper competitive analysis pays for itself before you spend anything.

What is your business genuinely good at?

Find the real strengths of your business and build the strategy around amplifying them. Marketing that promises something the business does not actually deliver produces one sale and no repeat customers.

Answer those four honestly and the strategy tends to pick itself.