If your competitors are eating away at your client base by taking out newspaper ads and sending out mass emails, you've already completed the first step at turning your marketing around. You've accepted the fact that you are losing customers. That's hard for any online business owner to accept, even when they have the statistics staring straight back at them from their computer screen. Thankfully, with social networking websites, video websites, and an entire world at your fingertips, you can take advantage of many new and unique ways of advertising to fend off your competitors.

Online social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter offer a whole new option for advertising that wasn't even available just a couple of years ago. Through all three of these websites you can design your own advertisement and purchase ad space. Facebook even allows you to go so far as to target your ad towards your specific demographic. So if you sell t-shirts to females ranging in ages 13-42, you can target your ads to show up on the Facebook pages of individuals that match those specific traits. Besides purchasing advertisements, on Myspace you can create a page specifically for your business. As long as you follow Myspace rules, you can add friends, advertise, and post messages for your business as much as you'd like.

With Google quickly becoming King of The Internet, it's only normal that you have an option to use them to help you advertise your online business. Google offers a feature called Google Adwords. After you've signed up, you can create ads that will run on a regular basis on Google searches and on random websites. It does cost, but you don't' have to be worried about the service bankrupting you and your company. Google Adwords allows you to set up how much you'd like to spend each month on your ads. Once you've reached that number your ad won't run until the beginning of the next month.

Another new and innovative way of marketing is using forums. While it's free, it does have a major drawback. If you don't follow the rules of each forum you visit and if you are found to be a spammer you can and will be banned from posting any further threads. You don't want to make those online dislike you and think of a spammer when they think of your site. Always contact the administrator of any forum you'd like to post in. Ask if you can make a thread somewhere on the board, or if you can't ask if you can include a link to your website in your signature. If you are able to do that, then become a regular member of the community. You may earn new sales and even make new friendships online. If the administrator doesn't let you advertise through the forum board at all, ask if they have banners available for purchase. You may still be able to reach out to the members of the community by creating a flashy banner ad designed to get the forum user's attention.

With all of the new ways that are available to market your online business, you can spend as little or as much as you want and even target the exact people you want to visit your online store. The possibilities are almost endless and with a little work and research you can get not only your original customers back, but gain many new ones!

Learn more about this author, Marie J Kelley.
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