Traditional marketing in many ways was all about getting your message pushed onto to potential clients with the hope of converting them into active clients. Internet Marketing on the other hand is focused on getting the potential client to come to you. Once they arrive, they are in control and it's important to recognise that distinction. On the internet, you must provide your visitors with the information they want in the quickest and clearest manner possible. You can't beat around the bush.

There are several methods of accomplishing a successful Internet marketing campaign. At the moment the key marketing strategies you should focus on are:

• Organic Search
• Paid Search
• Blended Search
• Social Marketing

With a well crafted and planned out campaign, you should see an incremental increase in your website traffic. Mix in a little luck and you could see exponential growth month to month. Keep in mind however that growth no matter how large, is a positive. Keep your expectations reasonable and remain patient.

What is Organic Search?

Organic search refers to those listings in search engine results pages that appear by virtue of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being paid advertisements or paid results. Organic search results have long been considered the bench mark to measure a website's Internet marketing performance. The fact of the matter is that more people are more likely to click on an organic search result rather than a paid search result.

Reports show that any given website should strive to at least be within the top 5 returned results for its targeted keywords. A search engine user will more often disregard other results or will refine and/or change their search term before reviewing the other pages of search results. So the key is to not only choose and target the correct keywords but also choose keywords that you are able to attain a top 5 result for.

What is Paid Search?

Paid search is a form of targeted advertising for advertisements appearing on websites or most typically search engines such as Google. Within Google the paid search results typically appear horizontally above the Organic Search results and vertically to the right of the Organic Search results.

While studies have shown lower click-through rates on Paid Search results as compared to the Organic Search results, the fact is this is still a very important aspect of an effective marketing campaign. The old marketing theory that the more times a user sees your message, the more likely they are to remember you, holds true in your Internet campaign. Also consider this; if during a user's search the user sees your website listed on both the Organic results and the Paid Search results, it is very likely that the user will click on one of your listings. Even if the majority of the time it is the Organic Search result they click on, psychologically the Paid Search result has played a part in the click-through.

What is Blended Search?

Blended search is the next evolution in search and is very much attributed to the Social Networking scene on the Internet where various forms of content are being created by all different demographics of people. Now when you search on a major search engine like Google, not only are you seeing Organic and Paid Search results, but you are also seeing blended into those results Video Search results, News Search results, Map search results, etc.

Because these are still relatively new and marketers are still catching on to trend, you have even more opportunity to compete on getting a top 5 listing for you keywords. If you do a search for your targeted keywords and you do not see any blended results returned, jump on the opportunity. Create a relevant video and submit to YouTube, you have a good chance of being picked up by Google and placed in the results.

Making a video not your thing? Well create a Press Release and submit to some Internet Press Release agencies. You could be blended as a News search result.

What is Social Marketing

Social Marketing is the process of promoting a website, business or brand through Internet based social media channels. This is done by engaging and interacting with existing consumers or potential consumers. Primary objectives of Social Marketing are to enable marketers to build links, attention and receive large amounts of traffic for their company or website.

There are new social media channels launched daily. Some of the more popular ones today include but are not limited to:

• Twitter.com
• Myspace.com
• Facebook.com
• Blogger.com
• Wordpress.com
• LinkedIn.com

There are a couple of directions you can go with Social Marketing. One is to do Paid Advertising campaigns; the other is to simply network and be-friend your existing and potential clients. The latter is a necessity; you need to have an open line of communication and interaction with your target audience.

Now that you have a baseline understanding of these commonly used Internet marketing tactics, start applying them to your business and its marketing strategies for 2009 and beyond. You will see return on your investment. How much you will see and how quickly you will see it, no one can say for sure. You just need to remain patient and be realistic in your goals.