What kinds of marketing are truly successful and to what degree they work are questions that business people have been asking themselves for years. Are those high priced Super Bowl advertisements for Doritos and natural baby products really worth it, or are they just good for entertainment? Can the Internet really bring in better sales, or are businesses just investing money into plans that look good on paper but fail to play out in reality?

The answers to some of these questions are definite, while others are not; that's part of why people have been playing the advertising game for so long. For business owners, however, there is one approach which seems to be more successful than any other, and that is marketing the right message to the right market at the right time.

Of course, those are all very relative conditions to place on the question of a marketing campaign. They depend on what kind of business you own, where you are located, and your range of clientele. For local business, public broadcasting may present the best chance to invest in tangible marketing strategies. This is evidenced by the many ads a North York real estate agent will place on a local channel of any type; the market is all local, and this type of advertising represents the right type of investment.

However, such small market approaches may not work for every type of business. Real estate can be advertised through just one picture and minimal information, something like a clinic for naturopathic medicine in Toronto needs a more extensive approach. People want to know that a health related business is legitimate and staffed by caring professionals, therefore marketing will require a medium which allows for a lot more informational capacity.

Up until recently, that capacity could be directly measured by the cost of the advertising method you were engaging in. Again, take a look at those Super Bowl commercials. On average, a thirty second slot would cost a business the same amount as a cottage wedding, if that wedding included 10,000 guests and the cottage was located in Hawaii. Businesses are willing to pay these prices because they feel they can reach the target market more effectively; Doritos and Bud Lite are perfect examples. The companies know they can reach hungry and thirsty people, at a time when they are likely to drink and eat more than any other, in numbers unprecedented on television.

The good news for today's small business is that you can reach a large amount of people without operating on a Hostess budget. The Internet means that you can include all the information about your long term care, Mississauga based business at a fraction of the normal marketing costs. This makes Internet advertising through a number of different strategies the best overall advertising for any business, and it works for most budgets.