When it comes to implementing any kind of marketing in your small business, ask yourself this - "Will this activity impact my bottom line?"

Specifically what is your goal with any kind of marketing activity that you are trying to execute? It is so easy for us as online marketers to get wrapped up in search engine marketing, social media, SEO, among a whole host of activities that we are told we must do in order to live the dream.

But if you step back and reflect for a moment, do all these things actually help you and your business? Or are they just more of a distraction? Are they taking away from your actual business that you need to be working on? Are they nice to have but not necessary?

Okay, so take this as an example.

Search engine optimization. Ultimately, it is important to any business because this is a large part of how people finding you. Building backlinks will always be important, too. However if you want to avoid any future Google Slaps, Dances or whatever someone wants to call the next big algo change, then you'll want to future proof your site. Instead of putting all your focus and energy into building just backllinks put your focus into providing quality content. Real content that real people want, not crap that not even a search engine can understand.

Another example is social media. So many people are told they need these automation tools and software in order to get 10 million Twitter followers. That's great. That's nice but again is this just serving as a distraction??  Do you actually need this tool in order to do something?

I fell into the trap of buying and learning. It's a never ending cycle until one day you wake up and realize you havne't gotten anywhere. (And an empty bank account!).

The two concepts I just talked about are methods for achieving the same end goal - getting traffic to your website so people will buy your stuff. Bottom line.

Often times we get so caught up in the hype of online marketing that we lose sight of what actually matters. Earning money. If you're activites don't focus directly on you making sales, outsource it. You know your business better than anyone else. You can find people to do the $5 dollar problems that waste five hours of your time (Fiverr.com anyone?)

If you're really wanting to move your business to the next level, then do an 80/20 analysis Tim Ferriss style. If you do this, you may be amazed as to what you actually will discover. What items are part of your small business marketing matrix that are just resource hogs?