Employing a good online marketing plan for your business is key for it to succeed. You want to capture new customers, don’t you?

Luckily, there are many routes you can take when marketing your ecommerce store, whether it be with paid or organic marketing. Of course, so many choices can often intimidate newcomers. This article aims to demystify the world of online marketing and help you capture more leads.

Here are eight tips for marketing your business online:

Paid Marketing (SEM)

Also called search engine marketing (SEM), paid marketing is a form of sponsored digital advertising that lists your business among sponsored listings of a search engine or partner site and charges you each time your ad is clicked. Paid marketing can be costly but is essential to heightening your brand awareness and driving growth.

Here are four ways you can incorporate paid marketing strategies to your marketing plan:

Understand Your Shoppers

Identify who your target audience is and market specifically to them. For example, if your target audience is millennials, try engaging them on their favorite social media platform. So many 20-somethings gravitate around social media all day, every day. If this is your customer base, sponsorships on Instagram or collaborating with popular influencers can heighten your brand’s presence and drive engagement.

Local Listings

Local business listings offer you the potential for increased digital foot traffic. Sometimes we forget how often we use search maps to find local businesses. For example, people will search “best Chinese food near me,” or “most affordable yoga class in Uptown,” and often end up using a business displayed at the top. While the listing displays a small “Ad” next to it, we often click the result anyway because it seems to fit our search intent. The company makes a sale all because of this paid marketing strategy.

Invest in Intent-Driven Keywords

Utilizing routine keyword research is one of the best strategies to know what your target audience is interested in. This is a smart way to understand your customer’s needs and desires so you can tailor your products and services specifically to them. While many think of keyword research as an organic SEO strategy, having the right keyword groups can make or break an SEM campaign since your ads will only appear when keyword groups you’ve assembled are searched.

Convert Paid Clicks into Email Leads

Email marketing is often forgotten in business marketing plans. However, correctly targeting existing leads with educational or promotional emails still works. Because so many email providers have separated promotional emails into a separate folder, it’s actually conditioned us to look into our promotions folder for deals. If you can craft an educational newsletter to go with the occasional promo email, even better. These days consumers expect value from companies, not just sales pitches. But it all depends on which stage of the funnel the customer is at. Segment your email lists properly!

While useful paid marketing strategies will surely help your business’s growth, organic marketing methods are also important in showcasing your business.

Organic Search Marketing (SEO)

Organic marketing involves optimizing your site and various pages with the hope of ranking well for desired keywords. It’s a long-play strategy to naturally reach visitors and complement your paid strategy. Rather than getting your customers to come to you “artificially” through paid marketing links or promotions, having an organic search strategy can bring customers to your site through a more trusted lens. If you can impress them once they land on your site, it’s likely they’ll develop a positive impression of your brand and may even convert.

Here are some organic approaches for your marketing ethos and digital presence that you can use to help your company:

Refine Your Words

Evaluate the descriptions and blurbs that already exist throughout your website. Do they accurately and creatively portray your brand? Authentic, original copy creates trust in returning customers and invites new ones.

Evaluate Your Links

It’s important to assess how credible the pages that are linked in your website. Showing that you care about what you’re advertising on your page means that you’re reliable.

Craft Your Email Marketing Strategy

So much of your customer communication will come from emailing. Implementing an engaging emailing strategy will deliver great content to your subscribers as well as charter readership in immediate ways.

Network with Other Businesses

Find and engage with complementary businesses on social media. Through development of positive company networking, you’re optimizing your client base—so like and follow posts and tweets of other businesses you like as much as possible!

Although paid marketing is important in displaying your business to the common eye, organic marketing is going to ensure that your customers will be coming back over the long haul.

Hopefully with these eight tips for marketing your business online, you’ll increase your foot traffic and increase your ROI. Now go find your audience, entrepreneurs!