If you’re looking to engage with customers through paid advertising to promote your small business, you’ve probably considered exploring the many different options available on the internet. However, with so many different platforms and tactics to choose from, it can be difficult to know where to begin.

Fortunately, we’re here to help with a list of the best online marketing sites, sorted by category and offering an array of products and services that will suit your needs. Keep reading for more information on each platform.

E-commerce

The first thing you might consider is setting up an e-commerce store through which you can sell products directly to customers. Amazon’s wildly popular website, for example, is a great place to start. Not only can you set up an online store in no time, but you can also use the platform to track your sales, view your product’s inventory, and follow-up with customers. Plus, you can access Amazon’s sizable affiliate program, which offers performance-based commissions for promoting branded products on your blog or website.

Shopify, another online store platform, is another excellent choice due to its wide array of features and tools. With Shopify, you can set up an online store in less than a minute and take advantage of a range of features that can help you to connect with customers and grow your business.

If you decide that an e-commerce store is right for your business, consider how important it is to have a website presence in order to take advantage of the benefits that e-commerce offers. With an online store, you don’t necessarily need a separate website – although doing so can certainly enhance your presence and improve your conversion rates. You can use a free blogging platform, like WordPress, to create a website tailored to selling your products directly to customers – or you can purchase a one-of-a-kind domain and build a custom e-commerce website from scratch.

Blogs & Social Media

Blogs and social media are two of the most popular and effective ways of creating an online presence. Weblogs are simply websites that are written in the form of daily (usually) news articles – Think of Medium, Huffington Post, and Boing Boing as well-known examples of blogs. These articles are usually between 500 – 2,500 words in length and can cover a variety of topics, from business and marketing to sports and entertainment.

If you decide to write and edit your own blogs, you can use a free blogging platform to quickly set up a blog that covers the topics that are important to you and your business. You can even go the extra mile by customizing the blog’s design and functionality to fit your brand’s identity.

When it comes to social media, you might think that you need to have a large following to be deemed effective. While this is true, you can begin to build up a following on social media with just a few posts that are well-written, engage with your audience, and link to relevant content on other platforms.

Even if you have hundreds or thousands of followers, you’ll still need to curate relevant content that is beneficial to your audience. When you do this effectively, your posts will begin to speak to your audience as individuals, rather than just a passive collection of followers.

Email Marketing

Another effective and popular way of creating an online presence is through email marketing. With this tactic, you can send prospective customers emails that contain useful and appealing information. For example, if you’re selling kitchen appliances, you might consider sending out emails to past and present customers that contain helpful information about the different types of ovens and microwaves that you offer. Or if you’re an e-commerce store that sells clothing, you could send out emails to past customers announcing a special sale and encouraging them to come back for more.

You can also use email marketing to follow-up with existing customers. For example, if you’re selling kitchen appliances and you’ve previously sent out emails to your customers that contained helpful information, you might want to send them a quick email a few days or weeks after they’ve bought something from you. This email could contain a link to a page on your website that’s tailored to their specific needs or interests to encourage them to come back for more.

If you decide that this is a viable option for your business, you should look into a bulk email marketing provider, like MailChimp or Aweber. These services offer affordable pricing plans and feature smart automation tools that can help you to grow your business via email marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of changing specific elements of a website that affect a search engine’s ability to return relevant and high-quality content to its users. These changes, which can be made both manually and through the use of tools, can increase a website’s organic search rankings so that it appears more frequently on search engine results pages (SERPs).

The effectiveness of SEO will vary from website to website and depends on many factors, including the nature of the content, the existing search traffic on the site, and how competitive the target audience is for the product or service that your website promotes. In general, SEO is very useful for attracting traffic to your site, increasing your site’s engagement, and boosting your conversion rates.

A few important things to consider when assessing the effectiveness of your SEO strategy are the following: