Once you have determined your online marketing budget, then you will want to know how to use your marketing spend in the most effective way. Again, as with our previous blog on how much attention and money you should spend on your online marketing, you have to determine the most effective ways of utilizing that budget to the fullest extent.

Here are some ways to use online marketing to grow your small business:

• Geo-targeting. Do you have a small business that caters to a very specific location or neighbourhood? Geo-targeting allows you to advertise to potential customers in a specific geographic area or location. Most online advertising sites will allow you to Geo-target your ads to people in specific geographical areas, right down to a zip code or postal code.

• Contextual advertising. Contextual advertising will place your ad on sites related to your products and services where potential customers will see your ad. These sites traditionally have a higher potential conversion rate. For example, if you are targeting customers who are looking for office space, then it is best to have your ads running on sites where visitors are looking for business products and business real estate.

• Affiliate website marketing. Sometimes you can have other websites in a similar industry or even competitors drive traffic to your website. If you are selling a product online, you can list your products on websites that can directly sell your product or refer buyers to your site. If you choose to have other website direct traffic to your product page, you only have to pay when the potential customer clicks on the link to your page .This allows other sites to drive prospects to you.

• Search engine advertising. Services like Google AdWords can help you deliver a targeted message to potential customers at the very moment when they are searching for the products or services you offer. Choosing the right keywords that most closely describe your product or service offerings is key to that prospective customers finding you. Be careful when bidding on these keywords. Don’t get into a bidding war with your competitors. Then again, with PCP (pay per click) ads, you only pay when somebody clicks on your ad.

• Retargeting ads. This allows you to target your ad to people who have previously visited your website, but did not purchase anything. See our previous blog on retargeting ads.