A good marketing strategy is very important, now more than ever. With the uncertain economic climate, marketing and advertising can help companies strategize in order to get their brands in front of consumers. Applying these marketing efforts in your sales strategy is changing the way CEOs are measuring success.

The website, blogs and social media are quickly beginning to gain ground as a fastest growing way to communicate with prospects and customers. Smart CEOs are picking up on this concept and seizing this opportunity to communicate to all. Since the web reaches billions around the world, it can be the most efficient way to get information out to the masses all the while being a cost effective sales strategy. An integrated online marketing plan can be a great and effective marketing tool for a company that needs to connect to a large group of people in a timely and relatively inexpensive manner.

SEO, SEM , Blogging and Social Media marketing strategies are a few ways that you can use integrated online marketing. You may be asking yourself, what are all these things and how do we apply them to our business to create an integrated online marketing strategy?

When setting up your marketing mix and sales strategy, you'll need to understand some of these marketing tools:

SEO (search engine optimization) improves the placement of your web page organically or unpaid. The more users search for and click on your particular website or web page listings on search engine search pages, the higher the site will rank on search engines such as Google or Bing.

SEM (search engine marketing) increases website traffic by giving you paid, prime placement on a search engine search page. One example is the yellow boxes at the top of a Google search page. When you type in your search, the website results that are first in the yellow boxes are paid searches or SEM searches. Companies pay for that prime real estate.

QR codes are quickly gaining ground as a great way to advertise to people. These days many people have Smartphones and use the phones to connect with friends, family and businesses. You can use people’s new dependence on phones to the advantage of your marketing plan. QR codes give people the ability to link to a coded symbol and get access to any specific information that you want them to have. The key here is that you want to be strategic with the pages you drive the audience to. Just driving people to a homepage is not an effective technique so you want to find a special offer for the use of QR Codes. Your goal should be to add value for these prospects and try to engage with them.

No matter what options you choose for your integrated online marketing strategy, you won’t be disappointed with the results when you apply them to your sales strategy. There are many different ways that marketing online can help your business grow and succeed, even in today’s economy.