Are You in Love with a Marketing Technique?

Are you in love with an online marketing technique? So much so that you refuse to use any other marketing methods? Do you refuse to believe that a particular strategy is not a good fit for your business? Do you continue to use it against all odds, even though it's clearly not working?

Some business owners truly believed that search engine optimization was the end all and be all of online marketing. They spent their entire marketing budget optimizing and re-optimizing their web sites to the exclusion of all other online marketing strategies. Inevitably, search engines tweaked their algorithms enough to reduce the rank of these highly optimized sites. Naturally, these business owners had to scramble and re-optimize their web sites yet again because search engines were their only source of visitor traffic.

Other business owners really liked exchanging links with similar sites. They spent untold hours finding and managing their link exchange program. Eventually, some of their link exchange partners decided to go out of business, and all of the links from those sites evaporated. Other sites decided to change their focus and removed the links since they were no longer relevant. These links were lost as well.

Yet another group of business owners really enjoys online networking. Instead of concentrating on their business, they spend most of their time posting to miscellaneous online groups, answering questions, and chatting. This leaves no time for any other online marketing techniques.

What would work better for all these business owners is the same thing that has worked well for countless generations of investors: diversify. Split your marketing time between several different online marketing techniques - blogging, newsletter publishing, article marketing, pay per click search engines, search engine optimization, etc. Here are three reasons why this is the best way to get the most bang out of your marketing dollar:

• Using more then one marketing technique ensures that your business is not overly dependent on a single source of traffic. If all you do is search engine optimization, and a search engine drastically changes your search engine rankings, 80% of your traffic will be gone, and so will be 80% of your sales. Don't let this happen to you.

• Using different online marketing techniques exposes you to different slices of your target market. You can get exposure to segments to which you would not have been exposed otherwise.

  For example, some of your customers network online, but don't use search engines to search for products they need. Others prefer to search for resources in search engines, but don't have time to engage in online networking. If you use both online networking and search engine optimization as a part of your marketing plan you are able to reach out to both types of customers.

• Using a variety of online marketing techniques strengthens your marketing message. According to some studies, a buyer needs to be exposed to your marketing message 7 times on average before they finally decide to buy from you.

  If you publish a blog, write articles and send out a newsletter, you are effectively using three different ways to be exposed to potential buyers

Evaluate your online marketing strategy. If you are spending over 70% of the time on any one online marketing technique, take the time to learn a few more marketing methods and apply them to your business.

About the author: Biana Babinsky is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches business owners how to get more clients and make more money online. Get her special report, Top Strategies To Get More Clients Online absolutely FREE at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/free_report.html to learn how to get more clients online.