Internet Marketing Strategies
Internet marketing or online marketing or web marketing, is a revolutionary process for all types business operations. It is the cheapest way to reach maximum audience.
Internet has provided the access to many platforms to reach out to people. Internet is extensively used by organizations to encourage the business and online promotion. It is one of the most successful and economical techniques of marketing for businesses. Internet marketing helps in conquering the constraints like distances, and not only promote their products but also sell them all over the world.
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing is the process of promoting a business or brand and its products or services over the internet using tools that help drive traffic, leads, and sales.
Content marketing and Internet marketing are often used interchangeably. Internet marketing includes a range of tactics and strategies like email, paid media, content search, etc. Companies must have to select carefully suitable internet marketing strategy as it is never certain that the strategy that works for one organization might not be effectual for the other. Also, you should keep the updates on the new technologies and upcoming one, and use the latest technology and software to take more advantage of online marketing.
Internet Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
The advantage of social media is that a business can interact with its customer in a closer, peer-to-peer manner, something that is not always possible with non-digital marketing. Social media is a unique instrument of communication that facilitates interaction not just between two entities (the company and the consumer) but between multiple parties (i.e. the company, its clients, stakeholders, employees, etc.). While, traditional advertising focuses on pushing messages at the consumer to get them to buy, which is It’s interruptive, obstructive, and intrusive.
Traditional ads are persistent and are bombarded on customers every single day. On the other hand, internet users can just click away from ads if they don’t want to see them. Ads are annoying and they aren’t the way consumers prefer to learn about new products anymore. That is why internet marketing is a different and gentle approach. Internet marketing can be targeted to specific cultural groups because different groups may respond differently to the presence of the same stimulus.
Brands and marketers who use it publish content that teaches, inspires, guides, or solves a problem for their target audience. With some handy tricks, the targets can find that content on the web without it being pushed at them. If the users are benefited by your products they will keep coming for more. These customers can be converted into leads and sales in future.
As I had said before business is all about people. Help user, offer them value and they will reward you in return.
Strategies For Internet Marketing
Before diving into this approach of marketing, it is important to understand its key processes.
SEO
Search engine optimisation encompasses a variety of techniques that help get you into prime spots on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is used to enhance the quality of the traffic which arrives at a website from search engines.
Here are some basic SEO techniques that will help your content get indexed and ranked in search results:
- Strategically-placed keywords – You should place your target keyword in the headline, in subheaders, in the content, and in the meta description to help Google immediately pinpoint what it’s about.
- A well-designed, well-organized site – Google looks at how usable your site is, or how easy it is for people to click around, find what they’re looking for, and read your content.
- Clean page URLs – The URL structure for your pages shouldn’t be gibberish. They should be simple and easy to read.
To get complete insight on SEO, read here.
Blog Based Marketing
A blog is a website that details personal views of individuals on a particular topic. A typical blog comprises of text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. A blog is more effective through its content. A blog gives you a foundation for lots of posts, pages, and content that all point back to your site.
Blogs also make easy the posting of comments and feedbacks, allowing admirers and detractors to post opinions and questions to producers.
Social Media Based Advertising
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.
Publishing to social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, an image, or a video on a social media platform. But, plan your content ahead of time instead of creating and publishing content spontaneously. Also, to ensure that you are maximizing your reach on social media, you need to publish great content that your audience likes, at the right timing and frequency.
As your business and social media following grow, conversations about your brand will also increase. People will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their social media posts, or message you directly. So it is important to keep an eye on your social media handles and monitor the social media conversation about your brand. If it’s a positive comment, you get a chance to surprise and delight them. Otherwise, you can offer support and correct a situation before it gets worse.
Email marketing
This type of marketing use the power of electronic mail. Emails are sent mainly to develop strong relationship with the old and new consumers.
There are several benefits of adopting email marketing techniques:
- Email marketing campaigns are lucrative when compared to campaigns such postal campaigns or printed newsletters.
- Email can be sent quicker as compared to normal post. The companies can do mass mailing with the help of mailing list.
- Companies can effortlessly track their returns when they use this system.
- Advertisers are able “push” the message to consumers whereas website marketing has to attract customers to come to the advertiser.
- Companies that use html based email can provide other links which can create further leads for them.
- Companies can also recognize the preferences of customers by sending emails which ask for opinions from consumers.
- Companies can target based on consumers interest that is only after taking consumers interest when he signs up for a particular email service.
Email marketing has offered good range of benefits to companies as well as customers, it also has some drawbacks. Spamming is major problems and it is very difficult to differentiate between authentic email marketing and spamming. Most of the companies establish spam filters but filters end up preventing even genuine emails from reaching. Companies are taking all efforts to stop Spam. Email marketing needs to be done cautiously so that it cannot be sent to spam.
How to Dive in Internet Marketing?
If you have understood the concept of internet marketing, let me give you a head start.
- Set Goals: It is a marathon. Pacing yourself is essential to doing it right. Secondly, start formulating some goals for content marketing. Make your goals achievable (but not too easy), and make them measurable.
- Setup a ‘Home Base’: For content creation, lead gathering, and more, you need a home base on the web. If you have a website, make sure it’s optimized, user-friendly, and organized by following SEO and usability best practices. If you don’t have a website, start researching options.
- Strategise: Steps to make it work:
- Target audience research and brand persona development
- Keyword research and SEO opportunity research
- Topic ideation and content planning
- Creating/writing/producing content
- Community building and nurturing
- Sharing and promoting content on social channels
Each step requires planning and set of actions to be done. And it takes time, effort, planning, patience and teamwork to get it all done.
So, roll up your sleeves and dig in. Plan your course, get creative, build relationships, and enjoy the internet marketing of today!
