To improve your online marketing strategies effectiveness, you should take into consideration the business environment you work with. There are two approaches in examining the business environment you operate in:

First, the Porter's Five Forces Model

This approach is named after the creator Michael Porter. He was a strategy professor at Harvard Business School. The Porter's Five Forces Model gives a formal and in depth industry analysis compared to just simply finding out new trends and general industry information. This analysis may help you to develop better online marketing strategies. According to this approach there are five forces that affect the happenings within the industry. There are the existing companies, potential new companies, alternative for products to be offered, suppliers and customers. These five forces when combined make up the business environment. You can realize better opportunities upon your marketing strategies by analyzing the structure of and the movement between these forces. In developing your online marketing strategies, you should identify the five forces:

Your Competitors: These are the sites that also provide same product, service or information as your site.

The Possible Competitor: These are the Website off-line competitors same as new companies that may enter the industry thru a Website.

Patrons: These are the visitors and probable visitors to your website and your entrant's website.

Suppliers: These are the companies that will provide you with products and/or services offered on your site. It may also be a web-hosting, software and other suppliers that offer Web-enabling technology.

Alternatives: These are your other ways and resources for the same products, services or information as your website provides.

Applying these basic definitions of the five forces and by fully understanding and using Porter's strategic methods, you can obtain a clearer view of the industry, giving you sounder and effective marketing strategies.

The second approach is the SWOT Analysis

This approach would help you identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, marketing Opportunities for the company and Threats to your business. One means of applying this analysis is to develop the marketing strategies that will lessen the effect of weaknesses on your company while taking the advantages of your strengths. Preferably, you will set off your strengths in contrast to market opportunities that result from your entrant's weaknesses. It will be useful to make a table identifying observations comparative to each SWOT element both for your business site and competitor's sites. Don't forget to note on your table Internet related activities like search engine inclusion, trade organization participation, and the outside links to your site. This table will help you to recognize your company's strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats. Online marketing strategy opportunities occur as a result of the changing business environment.

As soon as you develop your online marketing strategies, you may be able to fulfill a marketing plan that takes into account the overall business environment.

Mobile marketing has become one of the hottest marketing strategies and is expected to explode by next year. The potential for business owners to reach massive amounts of customers is the driving force behind sending marketing messages to mobile phone users.

Mobile marketing is a fairly new venue, so business owners will need to spend time learning the best ways to implement into their marketing plan. Presently, there are more than 5 billion mobile phone subscribers. Those who learn how to tap into this market could potentially turn their brand into a household name.

In addition to learning how mobile marketing works, business owners will need to know how to properly apply strategies to their business, and understand how to track and monitor results. Just as with any other campaign, marketing messages should be tested and improved to make certain marketing funds are not wasted.

Several options exist for incorporating mobile marketing into existing business plans. However, prior to implementing this online marketing strategy, make certain to understand Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines.

Handheld communication devices are an intimate person-to-person communication tool. Companies must be careful about the type of messages sent and frequency of campaigns to avoid intruding into their customers personal lives.

Mobile marketing can be an effective way to provide opt-in subscribers with time-sensitive information. Companies can send private offers, discount coupons or codes, or announce 'flash sales' that require subscribers to act quickly to receive discounts.

Mobile marketing can be a great lead generation tool or used to build brand recognition. Many business owners are offering free ring tones, wallpapers, games or mobile apps to keep their business name at the forefront.

When establishing mobile marketing strategies it is best to determine goals before investing money into campaigns. Will you use mobile advertising as a way to build your brand or for direct marketing purposes? Do you plan on creating viral marketing campaigns that are short-lived or do you prefer ongoing campaigns that build upon previous marketing messages?

It is also important to establish a marketing budget that includes funds for advertising campaigns and employee salaries. Few people can engage in all marketing mediums without at least one fulltime employee. Staff members are needed to develop marketing campaigns and monitor results. Those who do not have sufficient staff will quickly fall off the mobile marketing bandwagon.

Sole proprietors and small business owners may find it beneficial to work with an online marketing agency. Working with experienced professionals allows business owners the opportunity to learn the ropes or turn their marketing campaign over to outside sources.

David Berkowitz, Editor of Advertising Age warns, "It is critical to understand your audience and how they are using mobile phones when creating marketing plans." Does your demographic market use their cell phone primarily for texting, surfing the Web, taking photos, for social media, or playing games? Understanding how potential clients use their phone grants business owners the opportunity to provide messages in the most effective manner.

Venturing into this new marketing niche requires research and the development of a strong marketing plan. Presently, this advertising method is nearly untapped. Companies that take time to capitalize on the power of mobile marketing can potentially dominate their niche market.

Your business growth strategy should include a well structured online marketing strategy for sales lead generation and lead nurturing to keep you top of mind with your clients and prospects. Research from Marketing Sherpa shows that 12.5% of leads are normally ready to buy now, 17.5% can be discarded or disqualified and a huge 70% are longer term opportunities worth nurturing.

This is where having an automated lead nurturing program as part of your Online Marketing Strategy can really make a difference to the return on your marketing efforts.

Most businesses seem challenged to keep in constant contact with their clients and prospects. The challenges with nurturing prospects and leads are many and may include:

• There is just not enough time in the day

• You may have many customer relationship products, excel spreadsheets and other data sources to manage and integrate

• Your process to send and schedule emails is manual and requires specific knowledge to be done correctly.

• You may struggle to develop good, interesting material.

• Pressure to improve results immediately pushes nurturing to one side

• Lead qualification and prioritisation is hard and for many is a long process without immediate results.

The longer term opportunities (70%) are in the interest stage of your products and services but as yet do not have the desire to buy. They are in "research" mode. This is typical in the business to business space and can range from 8 to 18 months in duration. For business to consumers this may still be anything up to 3 months or longer.

In contrast, the pressure on sales is to focus on hot prospects, now! They need to close deals for the month or the quarter and do not have the time to nurture possible deals that have a longer opportunity window. Many will probably not even start their buying process within the next 3 months.

A good lead nurturing strategy and system can plug this leaky hole in your marketing and sales pipeline. An automated system, with content well structured in paths can help qualify and score your leads automatically. At the same time, these leads can be automatically fed to your sales team as better qualified prospects.

The biggest mistake that is made is the belief that a monthly email is a lead nurturing program - it is far from it - although it is a good start, particularly if you have limited resources. The right strategy and system will use a combination of electronic, telephone and print to stay in contact with prospects.

The system can:

• Be smart enough to learn when each individual is most likely to open their email and send it at the right time

• Deliver content that they are interested in, from the sales person with whom they are dealing.

• Give you sales business intelligence so you know what your prospects are interested in.

• Seamlessly integrate your email with your website analytics so you can track your prospect's behaviour end to end.

• Integrate with your sales pipeline system - customer relationship management.

• Possibly even tell you about who the company is, before you know who the person is looking at your online marketing.

The bottom line is that if you have an online presence and you don't have a nurturing program in place, you are quite possibly missing out on the 70% that are opportunities for you. They are just not ready right now. You are allowing your competitors into the game, because you don't keep in constant contact with relevant and valuable material.

To improve your sales lead generation, automate your online marketing strategy and your lead nurturing program. You can then take advantage growing your business without significant increases in marketing or business development resources.