Internet marketing, one thing that everyone thinks they are expert about. After all, you can create a Facebook page and a Twitter profile, why wouldn’t we call you an internet marketer, right?
Wrong!
The internet marketing industry has evolved significantly in the last 3-4 years. The core of any marketing is advertising to people who are or might be interested in your service to the places where they hang out. That is the reason why you see advertisements shown on television in between tv shows. Why? Because people are watching those television shows and you want to place your ads in between so that they can know more about your product too.
Since people do not watch television anymore and everyone is on internet, it was obvious that internet marketing would be a thing and that’s exactly what happened. Internet marketing is now a mainstream marketing channel for any company out there be it national or international. In fact, studies have shown that internet marketing is more popular than any traditional marketing activity by startups around the globe.
How Important Is Internet Marketing?
To understand the importance of internet marketing, you have to have ideas about the benefits that internet marketing brings to the table. Let’s face it. It was impossible for a boy from Idaho to advertise his small business in the 90s on a television network. The competition is fierce and nobody would allow him or her to showcase the product or service. The world has changed and internet marketing has created an interesting level playing ground for marketers.
Today, anyone with the comfort of their phone can go ahead and promote their business online, thanks to internet marketing. However, internet marketing has evolved too. With crap looking banner ads back in the 90s to the responsive contextual ads that don’t even feel like advertisement, internet marketing has sure evolved a lot.
How Important It Is Though?
Internet marketing is important for many reasons. Let’s try to acknowledge some of the key ones:
Cost: Traditional marketing costs a fortune and the legislation that you have to go through to launch a marketing campaign is huge. Think about setting up a billboard in your home town. You first need to know the size, take the permission, rent the space, print the billboard and only then you can hang it out there for people to see.
From then onwards, you don’t actually know if people sees your billboard or not. That’s waste of money, right?
Thanks to internet marketing, you now can do that whole thing within 5 minutes using a platform like Facebook or Google. On top of the usual benefits, you will also know if people are clicking on your digital billboard and you will also know if they are converting customers for you.
Access: Access is another opportunity that internet marketing brought. Previously, it was not possible for everyone to market to everyone. Now, an Indian can market to an American and vice-versa. This created opportunities for people from all over the world. Customers are also getting the benefits as competition is always good for the market.
Speed: If you have a product that you want to launch in mind, it wouldn’t take weeks for you to create a test audience and run marketing to see if the ‘pilot project’ works or not. You can simply create a few funnels and check it yourself within a day. This is a benefit that only internet marketing could offer.
Data: You as a marketer now know more about your customers than any of your previous generations did. You now know where they hang out in, what pages of your website they go to and you can actually retarget those same audience which will increase their chance of purchasing your product. Research has shown that a customer is more likely to purchase a product if you show it to them for at least 6 times in a quick span. Internet marketing can make that happen where it is not possible for you to make someone drive in front of a billboard again and again.
Now, what are the types of online marketing strategies that you can implement in your business?
Let’s address some of the most important ones.
Content Marketing
Content is one asset that stays with you for a real long time. Content can be in the form of audio, video or even written blog posts. Content marketing is the art of attracting traffic using your content so that they get familiarized with your brand. You can later on convert those traffic into leads and then can try to convert those leads into customers.
What’s the best part about everything? Content marketing is a one time solution for you. You only pay for your content production once and you can use that same content again and again for the rest of your business life. Also, you now have the liberty to repurpose your content across platforms. The video that you have uploaded on YouTube can also be placed on Facebook now and vice-versa. This creates cross-promotions and helps you do well in the world of content marketing.
Display Advertising
Though many do not think display advertising is still as effective as before, data shows otherwise. People are more likely to click on a display network advertisement if they know about the brand from before. It also depends a lot on your creative that you put out there. People like creative marketing messages and if you can make that happen, your display advertising will always be worth spending.
Also, display advertisement might be less costly to you depending on the industry which will obviously result in more value.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the key marketing methods to not only attract your leads to purchase your products but also to create and manage a sustainable long term relationship with them. You want to make sure that your customers love you and that is only possible if you offer them value.
How can you offer personalized value? Yes, Facebook or YouTube might work as you will be replying of the comments and so on, however, email is personal. People can respond to your emails that only you will read and you can also reach out to them with personal solutions that only they have.
Also, email is an asset that you own of your customers. Unlike Facebook pixels or YouTube subscribers, email is here to stay and it has been here since long enough.
PPC
PPC stands for pay per click advertising which in simple words mean that you only pay to the advertise network when someone clicks on your campaign. Compare this with a billboard analogy. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to only pay when someone read your whole billboard ad instead of paying a big amount upfront?
Yes, that’s exactly what PPC offers to the table.
SEO
Search engine optimization is the art of ranking your website on the first page of Google organically so that whenever people search for relevant information, your website comes at the top. Think about it for a second. If you can rank your website for a ‘keyword’ that has a high search volume, you are not only getting traffic regularly but you wouldn’t have to pay for that traffic either.
This is a major benefit which can make or break your business. There are companies who went to multi-millions only on the back of organic SEO and nothing else. If you have the ability to incorporate organic SEO in your marketing activities, you should do that immediately.
Social Media Marketing
Every day, more and more people are using social media. Social media is now known as internet 2.0 as people get all their information from social media now. As this is their favorite ‘hang out’ place, it is obvious that you as a brand should also advertise there.
How to make that happen?
Well, decide on which social media you should target. The biggest ones right now are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; however, it might make more sense to you to target LinkedIn if you are in a B2B business or Snapchat if you want to target a lower age bracket.
Social media shouldn’t only be an advertisement platform for you. You should take time to communicate with your audience there and you should also take time to respond to their queries and complains.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing takes place when you give someone a commission based on the sales that they generate for you. For example, Amazon has their own affiliate program where they pay 6-10% of commission for everyone who helps them sell a product.
You have to setup an affiliate network system to make that happen, however, you can use independent solutions such as JVZoo to manage your affiliate campaigns. If makes sense, affiliate marketing can be the way for your business as you are literally hiring hundreds of marketers who will only be paid if they help you sell something which means that it is a win-win for you and for them.
Which internet marketing channel is right for you? Well, it varies widely and it completely depends on the type of your business. In an ideal scenario, you should be able to operate in as many of them as you can.
Internet marketing, one thing that everyone thinks they are expert about. After all, you can create a Facebook page and a Twitter profile, why wouldn’t we call you an internet marketer, right?
Wrong!
The internet marketing industry has evolved significantly in the last 3-4 years. The core of any marketing is advertising to people who are or might be interested in your service to the places where they hang out. That is the reason why you see advertisements shown on television in between tv shows. Why? Because people are watching those television shows and you want to place your ads in between so that they can know more about your product too.
Since people do not watch television anymore and everyone is on internet, it was obvious that internet marketing would be a thing and that’s exactly what happened. Internet marketing is now a mainstream marketing channel for any company out there be it national or international. In fact, studies have shown that internet marketing is more popular than any traditional marketing activity by startups around the globe.
How Important Is Internet Marketing?
To understand the importance of internet marketing, you have to have ideas about the benefits that internet marketing brings to the table. Let’s face it. It was impossible for a boy from Idaho to advertise his small business in the 90s on a television network. The competition is fierce and nobody would allow him or her to showcase the product or service. The world has changed and internet marketing has created an interesting level playing ground for marketers.
Today, anyone with the comfort of their phone can go ahead and promote their business online, thanks to internet marketing. However, internet marketing has evolved too. With crap looking banner ads back in the 90s to the responsive contextual ads that don’t even feel like advertisement, internet marketing has sure evolved a lot.
How Important It Is Though?
Internet marketing is important for many reasons. Let’s try to acknowledge some of the key ones:
Cost: Traditional marketing costs a fortune and the legislation that you have to go through to launch a marketing campaign is huge. Think about setting up a billboard in your home town. You first need to know the size, take the permission, rent the space, print the billboard and only then you can hang it out there for people to see.
From then onwards, you don’t actually know if people sees your billboard or not. That’s waste of money, right?
Thanks to internet marketing, you now can do that whole thing within 5 minutes using a platform like Facebook or Google. On top of the usual benefits, you will also know if people are clicking on your digital billboard and you will also know if they are converting customers for you.
Access: Access is another opportunity that internet marketing brought. Previously, it was not possible for everyone to market to everyone. Now, an Indian can market to an American and vice-versa. This created opportunities for people from all over the world. Customers are also getting the benefits as competition is always good for the market.
Speed: If you have a product that you want to launch in mind, it wouldn’t take weeks for you to create a test audience and run marketing to see if the ‘pilot project’ works or not. You can simply create a few funnels and check it yourself within a day. This is a benefit that only internet marketing could offer.
Data: You as a marketer now know more about your customers than any of your previous generations did. You now know where they hang out in, what pages of your website they go to and you can actually retarget those same audience which will increase their chance of purchasing your product. Research has shown that a customer is more likely to purchase a product if you show it to them for at least 6 times in a quick span. Internet marketing can make that happen where it is not possible for you to make someone drive in front of a billboard again and again.
Now, what are the types of online marketing strategies that you can implement in your business?
Let’s address some of the most important ones.
Content Marketing
Content is one asset that stays with you for a real long time. Content can be in the form of audio, video or even written blog posts. Content marketing is the art of attracting traffic using your content so that they get familiarized with your brand. You can later on convert those traffic into leads and then can try to convert those leads into customers.
What’s the best part about everything? Content marketing is a one time solution for you. You only pay for your content production once and you can use that same content again and again for the rest of your business life. Also, you now have the liberty to repurpose your content across platforms. The video that you have uploaded on YouTube can also be placed on Facebook now and vice-versa. This creates cross-promotions and helps you do well in the world of content marketing.
Display Advertising
Though many do not think display advertising is still as effective as before, data shows otherwise. People are more likely to click on a display network advertisement if they know about the brand from before. It also depends a lot on your creative that you put out there. People like creative marketing messages and if you can make that happen, your display advertising will always be worth spending.
Also, display advertisement might be less costly to you depending on the industry which will obviously result in more value.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the key marketing methods to not only attract your leads to purchase your products but also to create and manage a sustainable long term relationship with them. You want to make sure that your customers love you and that is only possible if you offer them value.
How can you offer personalized value? Yes, Facebook or YouTube might work as you will be replying of the comments and so on, however, email is personal. People can respond to your emails that only you will read and you can also reach out to them with personal solutions that only they have.
Also, email is an asset that you own of your customers. Unlike Facebook pixels or YouTube subscribers, email is here to stay and it has been here since long enough.
PPC
PPC stands for pay per click advertising which in simple words mean that you only pay to the advertise network when someone clicks on your campaign. Compare this with a billboard analogy. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to only pay when someone read your whole billboard ad instead of paying a big amount upfront?
Yes, that’s exactly what PPC offers to the table.
SEO
Search engine optimization is the art of ranking your website on the first page of Google organically so that whenever people search for relevant information, your website comes at the top. Think about it for a second. If you can rank your website for a ‘keyword’ that has a high search volume, you are not only getting traffic regularly but you wouldn’t have to pay for that traffic either.
This is a major benefit which can make or break your business. There are companies who went to multi-millions only on the back of organic SEO and nothing else. If you have the ability to incorporate organic SEO in your marketing activities, you should do that immediately.
Social Media Marketing
Every day, more and more people are using social media. Social media is now known as internet 2.0 as people get all their information from social media now. As this is their favorite ‘hang out’ place, it is obvious that you as a brand should also advertise there.
How to make that happen?
Well, decide on which social media you should target. The biggest ones right now are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; however, it might make more sense to you to target LinkedIn if you are in a B2B business or Snapchat if you want to target a lower age bracket.
Social media shouldn’t only be an advertisement platform for you. You should take time to communicate with your audience there and you should also take time to respond to their queries and complains.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing takes place when you give someone a commission based on the sales that they generate for you. For example, Amazon has their own affiliate program where they pay 6-10% of commission for everyone who helps them sell a product.
You have to setup an affiliate network system to make that happen, however, you can use independent solutions such as JVZoo to manage your affiliate campaigns. If makes sense, affiliate marketing can be the way for your business as you are literally hiring hundreds of marketers who will only be paid if they help you sell something which means that it is a win-win for you and for them.
Which internet marketing channel is right for you? Well, it varies widely and it completely depends on the type of your business. In an ideal scenario, you should be able to operate in as many of them as you can.
