In today’s era of technological innovation and social media, online marketing has evolved to incorporate new techniques and platforms. While some companies are doing well and continue to grow their business in the traditional methods of magazine advertisements, direct mail, and radio campaigns, others are taking the approach of experimenting with new ways to connect with customers and prospects.
One of the most popular methods of lead generation today is via online marketing. Thanks to the conveniences of the internet and social media, consumers have more access to information than ever before. Through search engines like Google, customers can easily find what they’re looking for, whether it’s a product or service related to their interests or hobbies. They can also easily communicate with businesses via email, text message, or social media to express their interest in a product or service, or to ask questions or get updates on new products or offers.
Although there are many benefits to online marketing, there are also some drawbacks. Since customers can access information and reach out to businesses at their convenience, there is the possibility that they could get distracted by the information overload and lose focus on what is important to them. In this article, we’ll explore which forms of online marketing work best for generating leads, and what marketers should keep in mind when creating content for online campaigns.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about improving a website’s online presence in order to make it easier for “search engines,” such as Google and Bing, to find and rank it highly when potential customers perform searches related to what the website offers.
SEO is all about making sure that your website is structured in a way that appeals to search engines, particularly Google. When Googlebot crawls your website, everything from the text on the page to the links inside the page need to work together in order to make your site seem attractive to potential customers.
There are three main components to an effective SEO strategy:
1. Content
In the past, creating content meant printing out documents, such as PDFs or MSWord files, and distributing them through email or postal mail. Thanks to the rise of social media, content today can mean everything from blog posts and webpages to videos, infographics, and social media. The content strategy will help determine what type of content you create and when you create it.
2. Link Building
In order to improve the SEO of a website, you need to have high-quality, relevant inbound links, or more simply referred to as links. Having these connections from other websites and authoritative blogs helps to boost your own SEO and that of your website. To garner these connections, you need to have a strategy for building and operating a healthy backlink profile. One of the simplest yet most effective strategies for building links is to make sure that your website is hosted on a reputable web host that is aware of SEO.
3. Performance Marketing
Depending on your site’s niche, you might also consider performance marketing, or performance advertising, as an alternative to SEO. Performance marketing refers to the promotion of products and services via digital channels, such as display ads on websites or in their mobile apps, SMS text messaging, and other forms of digital marketing.
The distinction between SEO and performance marketing is not always clear-cut. While SEO is about making your web pages and content easily discoverable and accessible to search engines, performance marketing can involve tricks, such as displaying popular videos or articles in an attempt to appeal to as many people as possible.
Whichever route you choose, having a clear strategy and utilizing the right tools will help you to generate more leads and grow your business.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Besides optimizing your web pages for organic search, it is also important to learn how to spend money on campaigns that will help you generate more leads. One of the most popular methods of doing this is through pay per click advertising, or PPC for short. With PPC, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. The cost of the click is usually between $0.50 and $1.00, depending on the advertiser’s bid pricing.
The main benefit of PPC is that you only pay for the clicks you receive. Therefore, you can set a budget and only pay for the results you get. When someone clicks on an ad, they are typically directed to a landing page where they can learn more about the product or service the advertiser is marketing. Getting them to this point without paying for the traffic is referred to as “affiliate marketing,” and is a popular method of generating leads.
PPC can be effective when used strategically in combination with SEO and performance marketing. For example, you might want to purchase the keyword ‘luxury handbags’ in combination with a performance marketing campaign that utilizes a combination of the abovementioned methods. The results of such a campaign would be highly pertinent to the luxury industry, as those who are searching for luxury handbags will more than likely be in the market for accessories of that nature. In this case, the carousel ads on social media would be a perfect fit, as you would be showing them products that are relevant to their interest in luxury lifestyle.
Regardless of which approach you take, having a clear strategy around lead generation is key to making your efforts successful. Once you do, you will find that the leads you generate will prove to be invaluable.