What form of online internet marketing is best for business?

[Victor]

I think it will depend on your knowledge level, what business you are marketing, and what kind of budget you have to work with.

You can build a responsive marketing campaign using only free methods, but it may take longer to see results depending on your knowledge level. A marketer with the right knowledge might get a far better response using free methods than a less knowledgeable person using paid methods.

If you have the budget for it, you can hire someone with expertise in all the areas mentioned. What is the "cheapest for its buck" will be what gives you the best ROI, or Return On Investment. That means your ads and traffic source (audience) will need to be very targeted and already interested in what you are promoting. Any contextual advertising source such as PPC or Organic search will be best for that, but each method or site can be "best" depending on how you approach the people using those sites.

How you handle your sales funnel is also important to converting prospects to sales. You may lose money on the front end, but if you are offering something of value like a free giveaway to build a customer list and are building a relationship with them based on establishing trust and authority, you can experience a far greater return on the back end of the sales process. Even if you break even on the front end, you are at least building a valuable future customer list for free.

With social sites, you have to think about the types of people who use each site. Facebook users will likely have a different mindset and purpose for being on that site as compared to Twitter or LinkedIn. Knowing what motivates the majority of users on a given site will help you to design the right approach for each site.

I don't think you can make a blanket statement about which is best or cheapest. Your knowledge level and willingness to test different approach methods for each site will determine what works best for you. I could say that Facebook is best, but out of 100 people that follow that advice and try advertising on Facebook, maybe one person would actually succeed in making a profit. Is it the site that is the problem or the knowledge of the person creating the campaign?

People using Google or Yahoo are likely searching on a specific topic. People using LinkedIn are professionals or business owners. People using Facebook are mostly looking to alleviate boredom or connect with friends. People using Twitter are people following a news feed, their favorite niche or hobby, following their favorite celebrity, or just have a need to tell the world what they are doing every other moment of the day.

If you design a sales approach that capitalizes on the mindset of each site user, you still have to identify who the buyers are. In organic search or PPC, that means finding buyer search terms, product names, product reviews, etc. With the other sites, you may have to do some testing, or offer a freebie for filling out a survey to find out what people are looking for.

I don't claim to be an expert on marketing, but I have failed enough times to have learned a few lessons on the topic.