70% of the audience is practically online each day. Having said this, online marketing is one of the best ways to market your business.
Internet today has not just become a need but has become a habit.
Pinpointing the audience online, which is about 3 billion people just on Facebook, is much effective as compared to any other marketing style.
There are various ways to perform internet marketing. For example, search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.
From thousands of options available, it is vital for any entrepreneur to find out the most innovative strategy of online marketing for their business.
Let us look at some important online marketing strategies that every entrepreneur MUST follow:
1. List down your goals and make a plan
Before you create a success proving strategy, it is essential to first list down your goals and make a plan. Consider learning and analyzing various factors that you have with you or concern you.
For example, find out who is your target audience and what they really want you to serve them. Formerly study how much is the audience willing to spend.
All these plans will help you understand the market needs better and cater them effectively.
Do not ever compromise on creating a plan.
A plan is the set-up stage that actually explains efforts required to achieve the end goals.
Now, that you’ve made up your mind and you hold some basic information about your audience, the next step towards planning is to create a calendar understanding the time investment required, the budget that you have and then start some market research.
Online marketing can never be considered as a one-time deal. It needs to be flexible enough according to the needs of the business.
Also, it is important to be politically right with no compromises on understanding that there is no other option for a business to persist for long except by being morally right.
It is the only way an entrepreneur can succeed.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the basic type of marketing method but the most important one. However, without strategizing the plan to conduct SEO, it is impossible to generate results from it.
SEO is a way to optimize your business website so that it ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs). Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the top ones when it comes to searching on the web worldwide.
If your website does not have SEO properly done, there is no way people could find your business. For instance, if you are a manufacturer or seller of PVC doors, then your website should have appropriate keywords related to PVC doors for it to rank in search results.
Now, there are two types of SEO strategies, i.e.,
- on page optimization and
- off page optimization.
In the on-page optimization technique, one needs to ensure that the search engines understand the content on your web pages. This may be done by adding the required keywords related to the topic.
Thus, in order to efficiently conduct an on-page optimization, make sure to do a good amount of keyword research.
The better the search engines understand your content, higher would your web page be ranked.
In the off-page SEO, there are different techniques used to drive traffic using blog posting, guest posting, forum postings, etc.
Using relevant keywords along with posting your business links on external websites can create more traffic and thus more leads to the business.
Therefore, in order to look for some more traffic apart from your website, it is good to consider popular highly ranked websites and create guest posts mentioning what your business is about and why should people visit.
It helps to build more visibility in the market.
3. Personal Branding
One of the best practice is to create an online presence for your brand or the company. Working and promoting the brand yourself creates a sense of trust in the market.
Thus, instead of investing money in this marketing method, it is better to invest your time.
Talk to people about your brand, respond to the ones who connect with you through your website and social media or organize campaigns from your business services.
Communication that brings a sense of belongingness will enhance your personal branding.
Tip: When branding, use a common display name, profile picture, and bio so your identity is known and maintained.
Why is branding important?
It is essential to prioritize your brand because once a business shoots out its idea in the market, more and more companies come up in the market capturing the concept even before the originator is able to do so.
Thus, make sure to prioritize your personal brand to set the business name in the brains of your audience.
Moreover, other methods of online marketing become more comfortable when people are familiar with your brand name.
4. Content Marketing
Content is the most powerful tool that can help you accomplish your goals. There are a plenty of options you can actually explore with content.
You can write blogs, eBooks, create infographics, whitepapers, and a lot more to promote your business and website.
While the goal is to attract more traffic to your website, one can use content marketing flexibly making it informative such as writing tips, giving quick solutions, product reviews, etc.
However, make sure that the content posted is quality content and follows right SEO practices.
Further, the content shouldn’t just be informative but also clear to understand, engaging, interesting and fun to read.
Suppose you maintain a blog that has all the educational content, then simultaneously with posting quality content; it is important to stay consistent with your posts.
You may want to post content weekly, months or even daily.
Consistency is essential to avoid losing the interest of your regular readers who actually wait for the new articles.
Moreover, consistency creates a sense of reliability in your business.
Let’s break down the essentials of a good content marketing strategy:
- Share the content
Once you’ve added content to your site, make sure to share it on various social media platforms using social media marketing techniques, daily newsletters through emails and efforts to sharing the content.
- Write engaging content
Writing engaging content means the content should become a discussion. It should make the readers make comments to your posts, start conversations, and do new things.
For example, cover recent issues that interest the audience. Thus, instead of writing individualistic content, make sure you post something engaging that every reader can relate.
- Should generate lead
There are two types of contents. One is informative where you may share some tips, information or update to the readers. In the other content type, there may be a discussion where people ask you to write something that they need.
For example, a customer asking for assistance. A good content assisting the user can generate leads to the business.
- Create sales
When you want to create sales or have products cited on your site, make sure to write a description of the product which helps people understand what the product is, what are its specifications and why should one buy the same.
The content should be such that it is able to create sales.
5. Social Media Marketing
Social media is a platform that we all are active on, which means, the audience that a business looks for is the maximum available on social media.
This further concludes that social media marketing is one of the best ways to connect with a maximum part of your audience and build relationships.
Successful social media campaigns bring more traffic to your site as well as to the entire business.
Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter are some of the popular social media platforms to post your content and market your business.
However, if your business lies in the fashion industry, consider Pinterest and Instagram.
6. Email marketing
This is another alternative to market your business. Email marketing is, in fact, more efficient compared to social media marketing.
Wondering why?
This is because the number of email ids you have is 10 times more beneficial as compared to the total number of social media connections.
Moreover, email marketing helps send emails based on the customer type. There is not every person you bother but only your subscribers.
Emails play a formal way of communication and involve various strategies such as newsletters, direct sale campaigns, events, marketing offers, etc.
Emails, are thus, an effective strategy to keep your customers repeating once they join you.
The return on investment can be expected higher if implemented well. This is because your subscribers know about you and all you do is encourage the audience to revisit your site and buy your products and services.
7. Paid advertisement
The paid advertisement is an effective strategy when you seek instant traffic. It is most helpful when you want to establish a trustworthy and reliable brand quickly.
Customers today are pretty smart when it comes to buying goods online.
Since there are a lot of options on one service or requirement, they perform an ample of research before buying. They look for product reviews and feedbacks from reliable sources before completely trusting the company.
Thus, you can opt for paid advertisement by paying popular influencers or websites that can post your ads.
However, the most significant consideration in this strategy is your budget. Now that you have had already planned your budget initially, check if the paid advertisement is within your budget and how much you can invest.
There are various other techniques to conduct paid advertisements. Some of the popular paid methods are:
- Running Facebook ads
- Boosting your brand/identity or company page on social networks
- Building an affiliate program to increase leads and sales
- Sponsored listings at Google, Yahoo or Bing and
- Twitter Ads.
8. Follow other online marketers
If you are fresh to online marketing or aren’t in a position to beat them, then it is highly recommended to join them.
When we follow other marketers, understand their strategies and legally replicate them, it is easier to develop our own strategies.
Since you innovated the strategies successful marketers made and implemented them, you will surely do well in your business.
You may also consider reading and following the success secrets of the internet marketing gurus.
Conclusion
The scope of online marketing has been continuously evolving and changing day by day.
Though it is good to make strategies and implement them to achieve the end goals, it is equally important to look for the results and compare them with the actual planned results.
Find out the deviations and do the modifications accordingly.
Suppose you invest in affiliate marketing and some part of the investment in pay per click. With time you realize that affiliate marketing bought more returns as compared to pay per click, then, it is preferable to reduce your expenditure in pay per click and increase the same in the affiliate program.
Thus, correcting the deviations is as essential as making initial plans.
In order to be a skilled marketer, it is essential to be aware of all the online marketing methods. This helps in channelizing the most appropriate strategy for your business.
Furthermore, following the strategies mentioned above and online marketing options isn’t enough.
You should also be aware of your natural strengths and add them to these approaches. It is only then that you’d be able to perform exceptionally.
Hope this article helped you learn a lot about different online marketing strategies and has given you a direction on how to go about performing digital marketing.
You can now comprehend various marketing channels that fit your skillset and optimise your online marketing campaign.
With innovation in technology and modernization of the genius minds, online marketing is not just becoming competitive but even more effective. So, start planning and create your own strategies to do justice to your business.