Snagging more customers doesn’t have to be tedious, expensive and stressful.

So, let’s break it down. When you’re hungry, which would you prefer?

1. To run to the fridge and grab a tasty snack or
2. To grab your fishing pole, and head out to the lake and catch your next meal?

Obviously, most entrepreneurs would favor the fridge. Why? Simply put, it’s all about convenience. In today’s technology-driven mobile world, we live for “the now”. From smartphones to iPads, we chat, shop, communicate, and search with ease.

Marketing Strategies That Work

Ultimately, it’s time to give cold calling (i.e. the messy, expensive and hard way to drum up sales) the boot, and adopt an easier, more cost-effective way of captivating, engaging and attracting more customers and qualified sales leads online. So, let’s take a brief look at eight simple ways to find more online leads and customers:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The creative art of SEO involves integrating keywords and phrases into your website content, making it easier for potential clients to find you as they are combing the web looking for products and services to cure their number one source of pain.

It is essential to integrate keywords into your company website content strategically (i.e. without overusing them or “keyword stuffing”), in order to optimize search engine hits and traffic. Google is currently making updates (i.e. known as Penguin and Panda) to their search algorithms, to ensure websites that rank the highest, contain the most relevant and valuable content.

2. Advertising

The ultimate goal of advertising is to reach more potential customers. You want to get as much bang for your buck as possible, so research and highly targeted efforts are crucial. It is more important to intimately know your consumer base than it is to stress about which channels to market your message.

The worst thing you can do is try to appeal to everyone – for you will effectively reach no one. In fact, I’d wager that 99 percent of the people who currently see your ads right now, don’t respond. If you want more customers, you must first create a message that captivates and inspires your ideal prospect.

3. Internet Marketing — Webinars

A webinar can be viewed by thousands of potential customers simultaneously from different locations in real-time and it can be recorded, shared and sold at a later date on your website. Use webinars to create relationships. They are a great low-risk and low-cost way to share valuable information with your prospects and build your email subscriber database up very quickly.

4. Search Engine Marketing — Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads

Pay per click (PPC) advertisements are an effective way to snap up more customers as they search Google (and other search engines) for solutions to their problems. These advertisements are easy to spot since they often appear in shaded boxes at the top of search engine results or in display ad slots on high traffic websites, portals, forums and blogs.

Using PPC ads can allow you to strategically route targeted traffic direct to a landing page that is designed to convert more prospects into customers. Since you have to pay for each click, care must be taken to ensure that your landing page converts a large percentage of the traffic. Bear in mind, that independent research has shown the average e-commerce site converts only 2.2% of its PPC traffic.

5. Content Marketing

Content marketing (i.e. creating and sharing content to acquire customers via blogging, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, etc.) is a great avenues to deliver insightful information to your prospects.

For instance, blogging is the perfect vehicle to keep visitors coming back on a regular basis and it helps boost your search engine rankings. Google and other search engines give preferential treatment to websites that update content on a regular basis and exhibit an active social following.

It also allows you to post valuable content on other sites, social media platforms and customer forums which can help more customers learn about you, make an informed decision and build backlinks to bring even more traffic to your site.