If you’re like me, I got really tired of paying for my traffic and striving to get a higher search engine ranking. The competition is getting tougher and tougher. Although I am getting more successful with my Google and Yahoo Marketing campaigns and that’s mainly because I’m getting more experienced at it. But believe me, I’ve wasted a lot of money going through the learning curve.

But I’ve gotten smarter! I’ve found a way to generate a lot more traffic to my website and it’s absolutely free! Yes, I’m going to continue using my adwords, but not as much as I have in the past.

How did I get smarter? I kept hearing how social media was going to be the wave of the future when it comes to internet marketing. So I started setting up a couple of accounts on sites like Facebook, MySpace, UTube and Twitter. Started asking people to be my friends and guess what started to happen. You guessed it! I started getting a lot more traffic to my blog and websites, best of all, it’s free traffic. I don’t have to work at getting ranking anymore. The back links from my media sites helps me to rank even higher in the search engines than I did when I worked at it.

If you use social marketing correctly, it will drive big traffic DIRECTLY to your site from the social media sites that you get involved withand that’s huge. After all, that is really the holy grail, isn’t it?

We all want more traffic to our site, right?

You may not realize it, but social media sites have more traffic than Google. And if you use the right strategies and tactics to put yourself in front of that traffic, then you don’t have rely on Google to get traffic to your sites. And best of all, you don’t have to worry about expensive AdWords campaigns or other forms of advertising.

Of course, let’s be real here… just because you start getting big traffic directly from the social media sites doesn’t mean you will abandon your Google rankings and stop all advertising. What it means is that you will be getting a lot more traffic, and the average cost of that traffic will plummet down to levels that are from the stone ages when it comes to the internet…. thats what I call back to the future!

Successful businesses have many things in common, today well look at the big R of recognition and how a digital advertising network may help.

Recognition can be illustrated by two individuals entering a crowded room at a party. Both walk to the far side of the room, one of them slips through the crowd easily and unnoticed as they reach the far side. The second person takes much longer to reach the far side because they are engaged in conversations along the way as they continue to meet acquaintances and friends during their path. Which type of person would you like to model your business after?

Your business is in a continual battle for your customers recognition whether you know it or not. If you happen to be fortunate enough to be in a marketplace with very few competitors, that will not last for long. You need your business to be at the forefront of your clients minds so that when they require your products or services, you are the go-to people.

Marketing your business is a necessity. Putting your name and logo out there and keeping it there is a must. This lets clients know that you are still around and in business. Frequency is a good way to achieve the stand out factor in recognition. I am reminded of both television and radio ads I had heard of in the past. They run continually with a catch phrase or musical jingle over and over again on the radio or television until you are absolutely sick of hearing it. You also cannot get it out of your head. Although this type of advertising is expensive, it can be very effective, and the recognition factor is quite high. Television and radio can reach a large audience, and they are broad in their appeal. In a brief sentence, you are paying to market to both those that are your potential customers and a large segment of those who are not now and probably never will be your customers.

There are more economical ways to pursue frequency, the point is to define your target market demographic, and invest your marketing funds into the locations that will best be seen by them.

Another factor to consider is can I market myself in a place where I will stand out from my competition, or where my competition does not have a presence? Why would you market yourself in a flyer or newspaper right beside your competition and risk blending into a crowd, and ultimately being ignored?

Another issue to look at is diversification. As the saying goes, dont put all your eggs in one basket. When you look at your advertising budget for the year, try to find the affordable solutions that will continue to reap during the full year of your advertising budget. An expensive radio or television promotion may give short term gains for that weekend sale, but what about the rest of the year? Your clients may end up with the impression of where did they go, I havent seen or heard anything about them for so long.

Dont always look for the old standbys in marketing, but keep your eyes and ears open for the latest and greatest ways to market your business. With the costs of technology coming down dramatically new options such as digital advertising on LCD and Plasma screens are becoming more and more affordable, and the paper billboards and posters becoming a thing of the past. With the flexibility, and curb appeal of full color and motion video footage with computer generated graphics available to you, this is an option you dont want to pass by without a good look.

Ultimately, recognition is required if you want to get people in the door of your business (or on your website for the new e-businesses). This is going to cost you money, time and effort up front any way that you look at it, but if you have successfully reached your target market, the payoffs will be worth it.

You will probably gain nothing by advertising your internet business to people who do not own, or spend very little time on the internet. Marketing has come a long way with the growth of the internet and advertising has to be aimed at potential customers. While offline advertising can pick up a few extra hits from people who have never heard of your website business, the best place to advertise your online business is online.

Look at it from the point of view as your website advertising being a billboard along the side of the road. Regardless of the quality and message on your billboard if no one drives down the road, it is a waste of money to keep it in place. The whole idea behind internet marketing is to put the advertising effort on the well traveled road and to obtain internet customers that road is the digital highway. There are many proven methods to succeed at internet marketing and even more ways to fail.

For an internet business, traffic means sales. Online, it is all about the traffic and rerouting potential customers to your site should be your goal. Whether you do it through pay per click programs, affiliate marketing, search engine marketing or simply advertising online, there will need to be some effort put forth in order to drag more customers to your website. Many times a combination of all of the various options will net the best results, but if your budget is limited you will have to determine which one is right for you.

Some of the successful methods of internet marketing include your website. It may be able to capture information, such as an email address of visitors and is the equivalent of a printed brochure or catalog. Offering direct sales of merchandise is often the goal and making sure the site fully explains to visitors what they are paying for well them make a decision.

Search engine marketing is enhancing your site to make it attractive to search engines, but keep in mind search engines only help customers find you, they do not make purchases or recommendations. Your site can be found on search engines by having it optimized for search engines or through pay per click advertising. You pay for certain keywords and when someone searches for that key work and clicks on your site, you pay for it. Pay for inclusion ads are essentially the same as the yellow pages and you simply buy the space for your name to be included.

Email marketing a banner ads can also provide name recognition but with most banners, according to size, you will pay for their inclusion on a site. These work much the same as traditional print advertising. You are charged for the space, without any guarantee of receiving any return on your investment. Online promotion is also becoming popular with blogs and online newsletters, written by you with links back to your site.