As you anxiously await the results of your online marketing efforts to come pouring in, you might think, how long does it typically take to see results from online marketing?

That’s a great question, with a clear and yet also nebulous answer: it’s not certain. Ultimately, there is no time guarantee and no way to be sure of how long it will take. Any company whom you contract to ready your site with SEO and other ways to gain visibility that tells you they can give you an exact time frame of how long it will take to see results is not being truthful with you.

On the outset, you should know that seeing results from online marketing will typically take at least several weeks, more often several months. The base guideline is about three to six months for your website to gain any real momentum, especially with search engine optimization and to see your site come up listed first or in the top categories when your keywords are searched for by a customer. This is not a bad set of results, nor should it be any reason to be alarmed or think that search engine optimization or online marketing aren’t worth it: they are indeed worth it – it just, as anything else worthwhile, may take some time.

Some of the key elements to think about when you’re focusing on the time it will take for your website to be successful are things like: how competitive are the most used or important keywords? As in, is the market already well filled or saturated with your product or service, the thing your customers would be searching for? How much competition do you have? How many Backlinks (or links listed on other pages besides your own) do you have out there, and how many do your competitors? What is the geographic scope of your SEO keywords and SEO strategy? If you are looking to be found by customers nationally or globally, it will generally take longer for your website to be listed. For example, “candle shops” will generate a much larger set of search results than “candle shops Chicago.” Also, at what rate is your website being updated or is new content being placed on the site? A website that lies dormant or not updated for months upon months will be less likely to show up right away in search engines and less likely to be linked to in Backlinks.

Ultimately, the best thing to do when considering the timing of your internet marketing results is to keep in close contact with the person or company who has devised a strategy for marketing your site online, and ask for regular updates of milestones or goals within that strategy to make sure they have been completed. As long as the contracted marketer is doing his or her job, it’s only a matter of time before results and customers start rolling in faster than you can count them.

But you’re just getting started: now it’s time for internet marketing! You’re going to have the global-ready online world at your fingertips when they see your site. You are ready to open the doors for online marketing and reap the rich rewards so often promised of it.

Nothing comes without a price, though. In order to reap all of those great rewards with online marketing, you’ll need to be prepared for your website to be marketed effectively.

What you’re probably thinking now is, what amount should I be prepared to spend on online marketing for it to be effective?

If you haven’t yet, you need to draft up a budget for your business’ online marketing costs, so you are prepared to be paying for it just as you would any form of marketing. The amount that you need to set aside will vary based on the size of your business and the types of marketing that you’re interested in. DO you want to take advantage of social marketing as well as SEO and other types of marketing that ensure your website is well-viewed? Do you want to constantly be updating your site with the latest news about your industry, such as in blog or press release form? How interactive do you want your website to be? Do you want to host giveaways and promotions on your website, which will take extra maintenance than just setting up the website once?

In order to fully prepare, you’ll want to decide which marketing funds your internet marketing funds are coming out of, and why. Some companies include internet marketing in their B2B plans, while others designate internet marketing as part of their consumer company marketing budget. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s focus on the later: setting up part of your consumer company marketing budget for internet marketing. On average, businesses will often set aside approximately 2.3% of their consumer company marketing budget for internet marketing. This means that for a company with annual revenue of $500,000, the amount set aside for internet marketing would be about $11,500. Keep these numbers in mind when you are looking over your own budget and planning how you want to approach the costs of internet marketing. Rest assured, though, that even though it may seem foreign and overwhelming, internet marketing will be well worth the investment you put into it in the long run.

That’s an excellent, valid, and smart question to ask. There are so many choices and different roads to take when venturing into online marketing, and you’ll want to have a clear picture of your business’ needs for this powerful tool before you start.

Above all else, start with the basics – make sure your website is up to par with the websites of your competition. Investigate what they are working with and strive to make yours just as good or better than theirs. You must have a quality website in order for online marketing to be effective for you at all. That’s where quality site design and well-written content come into play: it will separate you from the pack. Don’t overlook these basic necessities, and the rest will fall into play very easily.

As you’re investigating in how to maximize your online marketing venture, price different marketers and companies offering online marketing services with one another based on their knowledge of marketing and what they offer. Even now, online marketing is still very new, and many people say they know how to do it well without actually retaining a full scope of knowledge about how to give you the most for your money. You will need to pay and pay well for quality online marketing, but the rewards will most definitely be worth it. Make sure that whoever does your marketing is knowledgeable about search engine optimization, or SEO, as that is an extremely vital part of good quality online marketing that will serve you more than almost anything else. Search Engine Optimization is the process by which your website will stay in the top search results when a customer searches for your product or service with a search engine like Google or Bing. It largely has to do with the key words in the headlines and copy on your website, and how well that website is put together. Search engines like Google will not list shoddy website in their top listings, so, again, you’ll need to make sure your website is of the highest quality.

As far as the entire scope of online marketing for your website or business, it will largely depend on your budget for marketing and the amount of time and investment you are willing to put into online marketing before you see it work. If you are willing to invest the money and a few months’ time into your website, you’ll see huge results from online marketing no matter the size of your business.

If you’re just stepping into the world of online marketing, the good news is that online marketing, with a few added pieces such as Search Engine Optimization and Graphics Optimization, is very similar to offline marketing in many ways. There will be key pieces to do with your website that you’ll need to pay attention to that would be the same whether you’re working with a website, a newspaper ad, or any other kind of marketing device you might use now or have used ten or twenty years ago.

First of all, you want to be sure you have an effective hook for your product or service. What are you ultimately trying to sell, and why do people need it? Consumers are just as savvy, if not extensively more so, in this digital age when they can compare products and prices with the click of a mouse. Present you and your product with confidence, relevant information, and most of all, an effective hook that will get your potential customers’ attention right away.

You’ll also need to have a value proposition that, while perhaps not explicitly stated on your website (or then again perhaps it is), needs to be prevalent and easily accessible to your customers. Why should customers choose you for the product or service you’re selling, and not one of your competitors? What makes you the most valuable business on the market?

Then, and just as importantly, you need to have quality content and a striking, memorable design on your website that is easy to navigate and understand. Customers have millions of companies and products to choose from when they do a search for something. You need to make your website stand out by being excellent quality, eye-catching, informational, upfront, and consumer-friendly. If customers are trying to read your website or can’t figure out where to go to get to the product or the information you’re looking for, they can quickly click out of it and back to their search results and go to another company’s website in an instant. Make sure that your website is as easy to navigate and as informational as possible, all set within an attractive design that will make the customer want to stay on your page and with your business.

To get started with online marketing, you’ll first want to sit down and draw up a budget that you’re willing to spend on the venture.  Of course, as with anything else, it’s true that the more you spend, the more you can get with internet marketing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to spend a lot in order to see results.  Come up with a preliminary budget with a little bit of wiggle room and get started – once you see results from internet marketing, you may then want to up your budget to take further advantage of the rewards you will reap as a result.

Good internet marketing is all about original content, having a well-designed, easy-to-navigate and consumer friendly site, and presenting the product or service you’re offering to your customer in a user-friendly, congenial, interactive way.  It’s always a good idea when you’re getting started to do your research and find out what your competition is doing – where and how they are focusing their internet marketing efforts.  When you have that information, and when you can, try to think outside the box as far as how to approach and attract your customers.  Where are your customers most visiting when they go online?  Are they reading national pages like CNN or the New York Times pages daily?  Are they interested in current events?  Are they more interested in entertainment or social media?  In other words, where is the most target-rich environment that your customers will be spending time online?  Once you determine that, you’ll know were you need to focus your advertising, whether it be through online ads, social media, interactive websites or pop ups, or a host of other options you’ll have when you begin online marketing.

Set a budget.  Determine your audience.  Find your audience, and capitalize on that finding.  Create quality, impressive content on a well-designed, easy-to-navigate website that your consumers will enjoy and find original and entertaining.  Once you’ve got those simple steps down, internet marketing will take off for your business and you’ll never look back.

So you’ve gotten your social media sights set up – you have a blog, you have a Facebook account, and you’ve made a name for yourself on Twitter, too. One of the first questions you might have now would be, how often do I need to update or pay attention to my social media sites to attract views or keep them current?

That’s a very good question, indeed. Setting up social networking sites is one thing, but maintaining them is a whole different venture. It’s also extremely vital to capitalizing on the effectiveness of the marketing that social media can do for you.

Different types of social media can be updated at different intervals, though. If you are maintaining a blog on your website, you want to make sure your content is high-quality, and you’ll need to update it several times per week. Unlike the up-to-the-moment nature of Facebook statuses or Twitter feeds, blogs are the more literary aspect of social media and you’ll want to be sure to treat them as such. Make sure that your blog entries are well written with solid content and meaty, interesting, dynamic points in each one. The good news about blogs is that you’ll only need to update them about 3 times per week, possibly 4 if your blog gets a heavy amount of traffic. You can update it every day, but it isn’t completely necessary, as you’ll have posted several paragraphs worth of content very recently – as in, one or two days before – and you’ll want to give your readers a chance to catch up with their reading without inundating them with too much to read at once.

Facebook and Twitter updates, though, are a different story altogether. Since these updates should be shorter – only one or two sentences each, or a few phrases – they’ll be easier to update on a more prolific basis. You should update your Facebook and Twitter feeds several times per day (at least, during the week) to get maximum results. You can even use the same sentences or updates for both venues, and there are programs you can set up which will feed your Twitter updates into your Facebook status.

All in all, keep a watchful eye on your competitors and make sure to keep your sites up-to-date, and you’ll reap wonderful rewards from social marketing.

Fear not!  The great news is that while social media used to just be something teenagers and Generation Y used to communicate, that is certainly no longer the case.  With the advent of many, many businesses utilizing social media to further their marketing needs, social media is just as much of a place for businesses and professionals of all ages than any other form of marketing available.

From celebrity Twitter accounts, to Facebook pages dedicated to restaurants and stores you know and love, to thousands and thousands of blogs written on every subject imaginable, the world’s way of communicating about consumer goods has moved directly into the realm of social media and it looks as if it plans to stay there for a very long time.  In fact, if your business does not have at least several pages devoted to social media, it’s seen as behind the times.

Basically, social media sites are attracting all age groups, but slightly older or more experienced generations of customers will be more expectant of high quality and will be less willing to take risks or to devote their time to poorly constructed sites or sub-par content.  Know your audience and who you’re ultimately selling to, and build your social media network from that knowledge.  Keep mind that younger customers will influence their parents and grandparents to check out your site and your company, so don’t overlook them.  Simply put, make sure that everything you share on social media sites is of the highest quality, and you’ll do well at attracting a vast and varied age range of customers in no time.

In short, you can expect that social media marketing can take weeks or even months to see substantial results, but it doesn’t have to take many months or years.  The more active you are, the more quickly you will see your rewards.

To begin using social media, you basically just need to create specific pages on social media sites for your business and then begin to add “friends” or “followers” to get attention for the site itself.  Creating a large fan base using social media can take time, such as weeks or months, but it will be well worth it in the end.  A very large percentage of the population uses social media to communicate even the most basic of information.

When you’re creating your site, decide on things like which photos or promotional material you want to include on the site(s) itself.  You’ll want to have a good quality photo or logo which represents your business to make your main picture on social media sites, which will instantly brand your business and make your logo recognizable to those customers you already have and also potential customers who may be seeing your business for the first time.  The information you’ll need to provide is basic as well – you’ll want to provide your street address and contact information if you want customers to come to your brick-and-mortar store or business.  If it’s a website you’re promoting, obviously you want to put a link to the site on your social media page.  Include any and all information you’d put into more conventional advertising like newspaper or television spots.  Make sure to inform your customers as much as you can without making it seem like you’re trying to sell them something.

After you put in the facts, you’ll want to put quality content into your sites to “update” them daily with “status updates,” “tweets,” or blog entries.  You want to keep your social media sites as active and up to date as possible to generate interest in them.  Considering that most people check social media sites multiple times per day, it will behoove your business to be active on those sites daily or even several times per day as well, with updates, offers, or just joining in general conversation about current events and giving your customers a place to have their voices heard, all the while underneath the brand of your business.