Everyone likes to spend money on themselves, but sometimes there are just needs that have to be met. Having a disposable income of your own is great, but if you’re finding that your savings are not growing as quickly as you’d like, it may be time to re-evaluate your finances and see what you can do to increase your earning potential.
The good news is that there are numerous ways for you to earn extra cash without too much effort. One of the easiest and most effective ways to make money is to start an online store. You can use Shopify or WooCommerce to set up an online store in less than 10 minutes, which you can then use to sell your own products, provide online marketing services, or sell affiliate products. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about creating an online marketing budget and the benefits of an online store.
Why An Online Marketing Budget?
In the past, large corporations would advertise on TV or radio stations, pay per click marketing to make their websites jump out at people, and then pay per conversion to make sure people actually went on to buy the product after leaving the website.
This is all very costly, and for small businesses, it can be near impossible to afford. This is where online marketing budgets come in. By investing in online marketing and a few select marketing channels, you can gain the benefits of online marketing without needing to break the bank. In addition, you can scale your investments quickly and easily. If you discover that one particular channel is causing you to lose money, you can easily remove it and replace it with a channel that offers better returns.
What Is An Online Marketing Budget?
An online marketing budget is exactly what it sounds like: the money you set aside to pay for online marketing. It could be money you’re already spending on ads, social media, or email marketing and analytics. It could also be money you’re saving up for future ad campaigns or the purchase of a new website.
When you have an online marketing budget, you are committing to spending money on online marketing. You can’t go back and change the channel mix or the amount you’re spending, so it’s essential that you’re spending money on channels that offer good value. If your existing marketing budget is not allowing you to make the necessary investments, it may be time to re-evaluate whether or not online marketing is right for your business.
The Difference Between Brand Advertising and Marketing
Many businesses that begin their marketing journey online get confused by the differences between brand advertising and marketing. Brand advertising is, essentially, ads that promote a brand or company. These are generally ads that you might see on social media platforms like YouTube or on a website.
Branded ads focus on the emotional side of marketing instead of the rational side. If we’re speaking about a car brand, you’re more likely to remember an emotional connection you had with a specific vehicle rather than any objective quality that the car might have had. The same applies for many other types of advertising.
Just like in real life, where you have friends and acquaintances that you can rely on for advice or whom you can ask for help when you’re stuck, you can turn to online marketing communities when you’re needing advice or assistance. Just remember: brand advertising is about promoting a brand, not a product, and it often focuses on creating emotional connections with the audience. Marketing, on the other hand, is much more product-focused, and although it might involve promoting a brand, it’s more about selling a product. When it comes to online marketing, this is often synonymous with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which we’ll discuss further on in this article.
SEO, Or, Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is the process of enhancing your website’s visibility in search results on Google and other popular search engines. There are three main tools you can use to perform SEO on your website or blog:
- Keyword research
- On-site SEO
- Off-site SEO
Together, these three tools help you identify exactly what terms you should be using to achieve your desired results. Once you found the right keywords, you can incorporate them into the content of your site or blog. For tips on how to perform keyword research, check out this helpful guide from the Google Keyword Tool. For information on On-site SEO, visit this helpful guide from the Moz team.
Off-site SEO, or link building, involves creating backlinks, or inbound links, to your website. If you want to learn more, this TechCrunch article is a great place to start.
What Is A Backlink?
A backlink is a link from one website to another. When a user clicks on one of your links, they’ll be directed to the URL you created for that particular page. If you have a lot of backlinks, you’ll achieve greater visibility in the Google search results for your keywords. The more backlinks you have, the greater the chance your site will pop up on the first page of search results.
As a blogger or website owner, you’ll want to make sure you have a good link from reliable, authoritative sources. The better your backlinks are, the more you’ll boost your rankings and the more traffic you’ll draw to your site. You can take advantage of the Google My Business Chrome Extension to see your backlinks and to keep an eye on your link building efforts.
Why Is SEO Important?
In the near future, searches will become more sophisticated. People will use voice search, and they’ll expect to see relevant results appear when they ask questions using speech. In 2021, 48% of all online searches will be done using voice search, as compared to 20% in 2020, and 12% in 2019.
With more and more people using their voices to search the web instead of the traditional keyboard, SEO becomes all the more important. If you want to be in business in the future, you must learn how to perform SEO on your website or blog.
How Can I Perform SEO on My Website?
The first step to performing SEO on your website is to correctly identify your target audience.
You’ll need to consider who you’re aiming your SEO efforts at, and you must do this before you begin any kind of content creation or link building campaign. Start by looking at your analytics, as this will give you a great indication of who your target audience is. From here, you can move to demographics and psychographics to gain a better understanding of your audience. After you found your target audience, you can move to the next step.
Step One: Define Your Audience
After you found your target audience, the next step is to define them. Just like with any other facet of marketing, being overly general with your audience definitions will get you nowhere. The better you define your audience, the more you’ll be able to tailor your content to resonate with them and the better your chances of converting them into paying customers. These are known as “hard-to-reach” audiences, and although they might not be as easy to convert, every business and marketing professional should still care about them.
Step Two: Create Content For Them
Once you have your target audience defined, you can move to the next step and create content for them. The most effective way to do this is to begin with a keyword analysis. The Google Keyword Tool is the perfect place to start. Once you have your keywords, you can move to the next step.
Step Three: Find Keywords Within Your Article
The next step is to use your keywords in your articles to attract the right audience. When someone types a keyword into the search bar of Google or another search engine, they want to find the answer to their question. When your article happens to be the first result, you’ve hit the jackpot. People will come back to your site time and time again to read your content because it’s highly relevant to what they’re looking for. By regularly creating and publishing content like this, you’ll establish yourself as an authoritative source and gain credibility.