Is your firm in the process of exploring new means to acquire new customers? Are you feeling traditional marketing methods just aren’t enough anymore? If so, then this blog post is just for you. Continue reading…

Here’s an option you should consider for 2012: online advertising. While online advertising may be a new concept to your business, you may be surprised to know online lead generation is becoming more common than you think. According to a survey entitled, Online Marketing for Professional Services Firms: How Professional Services Firms Can Achieve High Growth and Profits with Online Marketing,” by Hinge Marketing, a majority of the 500 professional services firms surveyed said they generate leads online (77.1%). Take a look:

Buy It or Build It:
Let me first explain the basics. There are essentially two strategies in which you can market your business online. You can incorporate the buy (i.e. investing in a pay per click advertising campaign) strategy or build (i.e. social media marketing, blogging) strategy. Keep in mind the search engines rank your website based on their own individual algorithm, or in other words, their “secret” formula which isn’t public knowledge (if we all knew, wouldn’t it be so much easier?). However, we do know the search engines evaluate a company’s use of the build strategy to determine page rank. For example, if your competitor has more positive online reviews than you, then it is more probable your competitor’s website will rank higher in the organic search results (just below the paid ads at the top and top right-hand corner of the page).

Online Techniques:
Which online techniques did the high-growth firms (those that generate 40% or more of their leads online) from the study value as most effective? These firms picked SEO (7.28), blogging (6.68), Web analytics (6.50), and email marketing (6.33) (MarketingProfs).

Last, But Not Least:
I hope this blog post has helped you learn the fundamentals of online advertising and opened your eyes to a new approach to obtain customers. It seems as if companies do see the positive impact online advertising has on their business. Respondents from the survey also mentioned they plan to increase their online advertising budgets in the next year with the average anticipated increase at 56%. Consider yourself informed!

Does your firm practice the buy or build strategy, or both strategies? Which online techniques are you using this year to raise brand awareness?