Your time and money are valuable, you need to know what works in order to market properly online. Now obviously, there are no guarantees in business... but you need to know what to try in order to give yourself the best chance for success.
What Doesn't Work
Pop-up Ads - Pop-up Ads probably haven't worked for years. Just think about it. When your surfing the web and a pop-up ad comes up, what do you do? Do you pay attention to the ad? No, you probably irritated by it interrupting you and you close out of it out of frustration.
Banner Ads - Banner Ads are about as effective as pop-up ads. When your surfing the web, how often do you pay attention to them? Granted they are not as irritating as a pop-up ad. They don't interrupt you while you surf... but they are just kind of there. Banner ads have been around so long, they just kind of lost their effectiveness.
Tip: The best way to know what marketing tools work is to put yourself in the consumers shoes. Ask yourself, "what type of marketing (online or offline) has been effective on me when I went pay for another companies product or service?"
What I Would Recommend To Try
Articles - Become a writer. Outline the details about the product or service your company sells. Check out your competition, find out what they offer. Explain to your readers that "although their product or service is great, we are better." Then proceed to explain why.
Business Forums - Go to business forums or chat rooms and build some relationships. Talk to people about your product or service and explain to them how you can help them. BE HUMAN, people want to talk to someone who is real and they can trust.
There are plenty of other ways to market online to which I haven't discussed in this article. When trying to figure out what tools to market with (like I said in my tip), put yourself in your consumers shoes. What type of online marketing has attracted you to a peculiar companies product or service?
Tip 2: Have a small optional poll for your customers on your website. Ask them something along the lines of "How were you referred to my site?."
