There are lots of online marketing types out there but here are the five most commonly used ones. More and more small businesses are now using the internet to grow, and if you are not yet promoting your small business online, it is high time you start. It is now tested and proven that online marketing and advertising offers the best results in almost any business. But… to get the best results you need to know what you are doing.

The problem is, most small business owners contract these tasks to individuals or firms, and they know nothing or little about what is happening. According to Ken Shenkman of Bulk Candy Store, many small business owners are taken advantage of by disreputable SEO firms just because they don’t know anything about online marketing.

So, whether you plan to do your online marketing yourself or outsource it;

Here are the online marketing types and basics you should know

1. Search Marketing

This is mainly reaching out to your target market through search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Inside this, there are two methods;

(a) Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is basically tactics used to optimize your website or offer to show up high in the list of search results on search engines. The advantage of this is that once properly done, you receive free traffic but the disadvantage is, it takes long to see the results.

(b) Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Unlike SEO, SEM is paid for. So, here you actually pay for your advert to be place at the top or close to the top of the search results. This is your best pick if you are promoting a time sensitive offer, or just want eye balls on your website instantly.

2. Social media Marketing

In social media marketing you reach out to your potential clients through social media websites. These websites include; Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn. These sites are built to connect people, and allow them to share information (text, links, photos, and videos). You can look at this as a powerful word of mouth tool. In fact, every business should be on social media since it enables your customers or potential customers communicate to you directly. Additionally, you get SEO boost because search engines also use the popularity of your website to rank in search results.

3. Affiliate Marketing

In this online marketing type, you as the advertiser or business owner, gets to reward a publisher or affiliate for bringing in a customer. The reward here is more of performance based. The compensation plan is mostly Pay per Sale where the affiliate is paid a percentage of the sale they have made. Another common compensation plan is Cost per Action (CPA). Here the affiliate is paid for a specific action executed by the customer. Affiliate marketing is a great online marketing type because you don’t have to spend in advance. You only pay commissions to affiliates once the business is done.

4. Email Marketing

This involves spreading your message through email. If you are still doing direct mailing, you may need to try email marketing because it is far much faster and cheaper. With the ability to automate your mails with Email marketing systems like Getresponse, email marketing can save you a lot of time.

5. Video Marketing

This is basically using videos to reach to your target market. This involves creating videos about topics or products, then uploading them to video sharing websites like YouTube, and Vimeo. Video marketing is growing every day and studies show that people tend to pay more attention to a message they can see and hear. That means through video marketing, people take you more seriously and are more likely to do business with you.

In addition to that, video just like social media also contributes to your SEO. This is mainly because videos increase the time a visitor spends on your website and search engines pay close attention to the time visitors spend on your website.

I hope this information was able to give you a clear picture of the most commonly used online marketing types. There is no one type that will work for every business out there. The idea is to simultaneously test those you can afford, keep track of the results, and then zero to the most productive ones.

Are you implementing any of the online marketing types above? Which one are you using and what results are you getting? Let me know in the comments below.