What Is Online Marketing? 7 Techniques To Easily Understanding It

Online marketing is the most sought-after and in-demand strategy that most businesses are using today.

It helps in building a company’s reputation and increasing its strong exposure online through a variety of internet solutions and tools.

It exists because your business needs to establish its brand by reaching out to your customers. Without effective marketing techniques, a business would probably be stagnant and worse, have the highest risk of failure.

It is also called “online advertising” or “internet marketing” because it’s a method, a tool and a strategy that can get the name of your company out to its target market.

Advertisements can take many forms and strategies may only focus on quite subtle messages instead of straightforward advertisements.

However, the way online marketing promotes any business is very simple: it builds a reputation by directly increasing online presence.

It’s very useful because of the large count of prospective customers that are going online to search for varied information.

When there is a current trend, it’s ideal to take this as an advantage of using online resources and tools to attract potential customers and directly to your business website.

Before you could understand how different marketing strategies and tools work for your business, it’s important that you have the prior understanding of what online marketing is and how it can help you promote your business.

This comprehensive guide will be useful for you especially if you’re a beginner and new to online business.

7 Components of a Successful Online Marketing Strategy

We are now living in a digital age where businesses can sprout practically everywhere.

An extensive online marketing strategy can be very helpful for these businesses to increase their customers.

If you’re an online business beginner or already have a business online, if you want to re-evaluate your strategy, you need to focus on key components contributing to your business’ growth.

1. Website Development

Website development plays a very crucial role in the ability of your business to reach your market. This is because prospective customers and online users are searching for relevant information, services or products that can direct them to your site.

Your website is important so that they can find your company online and get to browse for your products or services and know what you have in store for them. Having a website is also your chance to introduce your company’s background to them as well as show them the benefits of your products and services.

2. Website Design

Your website is the face of your company so it’s essential that you consider its design. Website design should always be clean, professional and easy to navigate so that visitors will be attracted and find ease. When designing a business website, you should focus on:

• Including a call-to-action on every page of your site so that viewers will be encouraged to know more about what your company can offer.

• Optimizing your site on all browsers, including browsers on smartphones because the percentage of online users who use tablets and smartphones in surfing the web is growing. As a matter of fact, there are 25% of mobile users who use their phones to surf instead on desktops.

• Incorporating keywords that are relevant and can naturally help the search rankings of your business.

3. Blog

Statistically speaking, companies that have blogs get as much as 55% more frequent visitors than companies that don’t include the blog as a strategy. Therefore, you should really integrate blog as a tool in providing your customers with relevant and useful information. In creating your business blog, make sure that it’s:

• Easy for your readers to subscribe via email and RSS,

• Easy for them to share through social networks, and

• Easy for them to interact and communicate with you by just commenting on your posts.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is one of the most important aspects of online marketing because it’s all about what people search on the web. Your potential customers usually go to search engines to browse for products, services or information they need.

SEO helps your business to be found first by potential customers. In order to rank first on SERPs, you need to use SEO techniques for your site, social media accounts, and blog. Follow these steps for your marketing strategy:

• Ensure that all website pages are optimized for search engines.

• Research for specific keywords that most people commonly search for in your business segment.

• Use these relevant keywords on social media and on your site.

• You can also include long-tail keywords that are specific to your market. (This is one of the secrets to rank high on search engines)

5. Email Marketing

You can’t always keep your customers on your site so you need email marketing to stay in touch with them. In email marketing, you need to focus on:

• Creating email templates with high-quality designs so that it would fit into the feel and look of your website, complementing an extensive marketing strategy.

• Providing relevant and useful information via email regularly as your way of converting your leads to paying customers.

6. Social Media Presence

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+ are not just for people. They also have major benefits for businesses like:

• Providing a business opportunity for you to create a community that revolves around your business through interaction with your customers.

• Helping you keep your people updated through your posts, media, updates, blog posts and other information about your company every day by using a tool like Buffer.

• Allowing you to increase the number of your customers in a cost-effective way.

7. Analytics

It’s important that you measure the trends and results of your website, email campaigns, blog, and social media reach and search engine rankings through analytics. You should measure the following metrics:

• Website – Site visitors, average time on site, pageviews, pages per visit, bounce rate, top content, leads and conversions and top exit and landing pages.

• Blog – Subscribers, visitors/views, comments, conversions, rank, clicks, social media shares, and inbound links.

• SEO – Page rank, a total number of inbound links, a total number of indexed pages, a total number of keywords that drive traffic, long-tail keywords rank, and opportunities.

• Email Marketing – a total number of sent, spam reports, bounces, opens, clicks, forwards, and opt-outs.

• Social Media – a total number of likes, connections, followers, engagement, momentum, growth, and results.

Knowing all these essential things and components that contribute to a successful online marketing will be a useful guide for you to starting your own or existing online business.

Just keep in mind what online marketing can do for you and consider all its aspects within your radar. How you manage your online marketing strategies will determine your business’ long-term growth and success.