Five Ways to Make Your Online Marketing Strategy Count in the 21st Century

Online marketing used to be an option for businesses. Today, it’s not just an option—it’s a necessity. Over half of the world’s population is online. That means an online marketing campaign can potentially expose your brand to over three billion people! There are downsides to this fact too. With so many people online, and so much content on the internet, it can be extremely easy for your brand to fall through the cracks. No matter what marketing strategies you use, it is important to make sure they count, especially in the ever-changing world of digital marketing.

Make Your Online Images Count

Images are extremely important in the online world. Studies have shown that content with accompanying images gets more involvement from users, and images are more likely to be shared on social media. Using stock photos is better than using no images at all, but if you really want to make your images count, you should learn how to take great photos yourself. Not only are pictures taken by your team more personal, they also have the potential to provide your brand with even more exposure. For example, taking a picture of your team under a custom canopy tent that features your logo ensures every time that photo is looked at or shared on the internet, users are exposed to your brand.

Be Personable

Gone are the days of heavy-handed sales tactics. Today, it’s important to learn how to sell without being a salesperson. It’s important to show genuine interest in your customers, and show genuine passion for the products and services you’re trying to sell. Customers today can smell a sales pitch from a mile away, which means traditional tactics will leave your brand in the online dust. Be upfront and honest about the kinds of people your products or services aren’t for. Share behind-the-scenes videos and images of your team at work. Share your struggles and your accomplishments with your customers. They’ll thank you for your genuineness by spending more money with your brand.

Try Everything at Least Once

There are tons of marketing strategies that can grow your business. That’s a good and a bad thing. It’s great to have so many choices, but it can be extremely overwhelming too. You don’t have to try and do everything all at the same time, but you should be open to trying new strategies at least once. A few ideas include:

• Try a new social media platform
• Upload videos on the internet
• Start an email newsletter
• Write guest blogs for other websites
• Buy ads on Facebook or Google

Don’t overthink how successful you think the new strategy will be, and don’t spend too much time perfecting it either. Just give it a try! You can always discontinue that strategy and try a different one instead if it doesn’t work end up working for your business the way it should.

Reinvent Yourself All the Time

What created excitement around your brand on opening day can quickly get stale. If you want to remain relevant in the 21^st century, you have to keep your brand fresh. That might include designing new products or services, but reinventing your brand doesn’t have to be quite so expensive or involved. It might mean taking a different approach with your social media, you could host a contest or a giveaway, or you could simply try a different tone with your online content. Creating and updating an app is also a great way to keep your brand relevant and fresh!

Have Fun

You’re ahead of the game if you show your customers you care. If you really want to get ahead of the curve, show your customers you like to have fun too! After all, you can’t expect your customers to have fun with your brand if you don’t! Host special events and invite customers. Host employee fun days and document the antics of your team members on social media. Attend area events and participate in the activities. You can even upload videos and images of customers having fun using your products or enjoying your services, with their permission of course. The internet is an important piece of our everyday lives and the lives of billions of people all across the globe, which makes it an important piece of your marketing strategy. Make sure that no matter what kind of marketing you decide to undertake online, it makes an impact with your target audience by following the tips on this list.

Related reading

• How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
• Maximizing Digital Marketing Strategies with Advanced Digital Signage
• 5 Marketing Ideas for Financial Advisors
• An Introduction to CPA Marketing
• the best AI marketing tools

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What a real budget split looks like: a £6,000 a month example

Say you run a mid-sized B2B services business. You sell something with an average contract value of £4,800 a year, and your sales cycle runs about six weeks from first contact to signed contract. You've got £6,000 a month for marketing, no agency, one part-time marketer. Here's how the numbers might realistically work out, and why splitting that budget matters more than picking the "right" channel.

Start with the maths backwards. If your close rate from qualified lead to customer is 20%, and you want 10 new customers a month, you need 50 qualified leads a month. At £6,000 spend, that's a maximum acceptable cost per qualified lead of £120 if you want marketing to break even in month one alone (which you don't, but it's a useful ceiling to test against).

A plausible split for that £6,000:

• £2,000 on paid search targeting bottom-of-funnel keywords ("[service] pricing", "[service] vs [competitor]"). At an average CPC of £4, that's 500 clicks. At a 6% conversion rate to lead, that's 30 leads at roughly £67 each.
• £1,500 on LinkedIn ads aimed at a specific job title list, running a gated case study. Lower conversion rate (maybe 3%) but higher intent once they convert. Expect 8 to 12 leads here, at a higher cost per lead but often better close rate.
• £1,000 on email and retention, nurturing the leads who didn't convert on the first two channels. This doesn't generate new leads directly, it recovers ones you'd otherwise lose. A 10% recovery rate on 40 leftover leads is 4 extra conversations for almost no extra spend.
• £1,000 on content production, feeding both the paid campaigns and organic search over time. This is the line item businesses cut first and regret most, because it's the only one still working in month 18 without ongoing spend.
• £500 on testing and tools, because if you're not testing landing pages and ad creative monthly, your cost per lead only ever gets worse as auction prices rise.

Total: roughly 45 to 50 leads, landing right at the target, at a blended cost per lead around £120 to £135. If your close rate holds at 20%, that's 9 to 10 customers, generating £43,000 to £48,000 in annual contract value against a £6,000 spend. That's the number that matters to whoever signs off your budget, not impressions or click-through rate. The point of walking through this isn't the specific figures, yours will differ. It's that a strategy without this level of arithmetic behind it is just a wish list. If you can't say what a lead should cost, what your close rate is, and what that means for spend, you're not running a strategy, you're running a guess with a budget attached.

Questions people ask

How do I know what my target cost per lead should be?

Work backwards from your numbers, not forwards from what a channel charges. Take your average deal value, your close rate from lead to customer, and how much profit you want marketing to generate relative to spend. That gives you a maximum cost per lead. Anything a channel charges above that number isn't a marketing problem, it's a maths problem, and no amount of "better ads" fixes it.

Should I put all my budget into the channel with the lowest cost per lead?

No, and this is where a

Bottom line: A strategy only counts if it's built around your actual audience, tracked with real data, and adjusted often. Tools and trends will keep changing, but consistency and clear goals are what make online marketing pay off.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most important part of an online marketing strategy?

Knowing your audience comes first. Every channel, message, and piece of content should be shaped around who you're trying to reach and what they need, rather than copying what competitors do.

How often should I update my marketing strategy?

Review it at least every quarter. Platforms, algorithms, and customer behaviour shift quickly, so a strategy that worked a year ago may already be underperforming.

Do small businesses need the same strategy as large brands?

No. Small businesses should focus on a few channels they can manage well and measure closely, rather than trying to match the scale or budget of larger competitors.

What metrics matter most when measuring success?

Focus on metrics tied to business outcomes, such as leads, conversions, and customer retention, instead of vanity metrics like likes or impressions alone.