The explosion of content sharing platforms has made it much easier for businesses to spread their messages across different channels – and allowed marketers to pinpoint specific audiences they can connect with.

As a marketer, you’ll need to decide which platforms to utilize based on your target audience’s behaviors and interests. When deciding what online marketing approach to use, you need to consider not just the platform but also the method you’ll use to attract and engage your target audience. In this article, we’ll cover the different types of online marketing approaches available to small businesses, including social media marketing, content marketing, and paid advertising.

Social Media Marketing

The first type of online marketing we’ll discuss is social media marketing. Though social media can be a powerful tool for marketing, it’s not right for every business.

If your target audience is already highly engaged on social media platforms, you might consider using this technique to market your business. But if you’re looking for fresh leads, consider another option.

Since social media is all about sharing content and engaging with existing and potential customers, you might want to consider creating content to engage with your audience. Create videos, articles, or just simple blog posts to keep people interested and encourage them to engage with your content. You might also want to look at using tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to engage with your audience across platforms, including social media.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about creating high-quality and informative content that teaches or informs your target audience about your business.

Like social media marketing, content marketing doesn’t always require a huge budget. You can use tools like Buzzstream to easily create engaging content for less than $100 a month. As a business owner or marketer, you’re responsible for making the content interesting and providing value.

If you want to take your content marketing efforts to the next level, consider looking at content strategies and creating content calendars so you can plan out content releases. Since you’re essentially creating content to attract and retain customers, you might also want to consider using content to cross-promote your other platforms, particularly social media.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising isn’t just about paying to have your ads presented on social media or search engine results pages. You can also explore ad platforms like AdWords so you can target specific audiences based on their interests. If you want to take your paid ad spending to the next level, consider running ads across different platforms (i.e. social media, search engine, email), using different creatives, and measuring the results.

Depending on how much you can afford, you can target users based on their interests and behaviors using interest-based and lifestyle ads. If you have a smaller budget, consider using display ads or sponsored content to generate leads.

Which One Should You Choose?

Deciding which online marketing technique to use can be difficult. There are a lot of pros and cons to consider.

On one hand, you have the freedom to create whatever content you want and engage with your audience as much as you want. Social media provides a great opportunity to easily connect with your customers and potential customers. With paid advertising, you can target the right audience and choose what platforms to use.

On the other hand, content marketing requires a significant amount of planning and preparation. You’ll need to think about what content you’ll create and how you’ll create it.

The key is to figure out what is most suitable for your business. Do you want to create engaging content for social media? Or do you prefer to use paid advertising to grow your business?

Once you’ve decided what is most suitable for your business, you can find the right tool for the job. Keep in mind that not all tools available on the market are made equal. Some tools will work better for you than others.

Final Takeaway

The right tool, strategy, and approach will help you reach your target audience and engage with them online. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to track the results and evaluate whether or not this was a successful approach.