Whether you are a retailer of a product or service, the fact is that you will need to effectively market that commodity. Marketing strategies will vary, unless of course you have an online business, and then you will realise that there are actually many marketing similarities between products and services within any industry.

If you have an online business, the focal point will be a little less about the actual commodity and more about getting your website to be easily accessible. You must however understand that by accessible, I am not referring to persons being able to access the website, but rather being able to locate it.

For many persons who are not familiar with internet marketing, it may sound strange to hear someone say that your website is not easily found on the net, but to understand what is meant, you will first need to know how the online business work. The first thing that you need to realise, is that your website is not immediately search friendly once it has been launched, it has to be submitted first.

Your website will need to be submitted to all the major search engines because that is how majority of your target market will be able to find you. Your target market refers to the persons who are more likely to be interested in the type of service or product that you offer. These people will often type a keyword or key-phrase in a search engine (which will more than likely be Google) and that keyword or key-phrase will point them to your website if it has been effectively optimized.

Often times, customers will not know your website address offhand, so they tend to search directly for what they are looking for instead of searching for the company. If you sell shoes, they should be able to find you when they type shoes in the search bar, even if your website address does not have the word shoes in it. This is what effective online marketing will do for you.

Your first step will be to submit your website to the search engines so that they can add your website to their database. Now, that is the easiest part of the entire marketing process; you will now have to get your website optimized so that it appears among the very first set of links that the search engine returns on its result page.