Welcome to a new blog post on Entrepreneur where I’ll teach you the steps to take if you’re looking to launch a business or brand online.
Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or brand-new to the game, you’ll find everything you need to know about how to market your business online in this blog post.
Why Market Online?
Through the wonders of the internet, we have access to all the information we could ever want or need about pretty much anything. With the growing popularity of online marketplaces like Shopify, Amazon, and eBay, it’s easy to see why businesses have started taking advantage of the digital landscape and started marketing online.
In case you’re wondering, the term “marketing online” covers a range of activities including SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), email marketing, and display (banner) advertising. When it comes to marketing your business online, you’ll need to make sure that you do everything from the perspective of a potential customer who can eventually become a paying customer of your business. When it comes to SEO, you’ll want to look at how you can attract more customers to your site by increasing your Google ranking. For those interested in sales, you’ll need to look into email marketing and conversion optimization. Finally, for those looking to promote their brand, you’ll want to make sure that you utilize the considerable power of search engine marketing to make sure that people are finding your website when they’re searching for your product. For a more detailed explanation of SEO, you can consult with an SEO specialist to get started.
How to Market Online and the Importance of the Online Marketing Mix
To successfully market your business online, you’ll need to get your hands on a few of these key elements. When it comes to marketing, you don’t necessarily need to have all of these instruments in your toolkit to be able to succeed. You’ll have access to Google Analytics, which will give you a clear picture of your website’s traffic and the performance of different content within your site. You’ll also need to look into paid advertisements such as Google AdWords to drive more traffic to your site. However, it’s not advisable to solely depend on paid advertisements to gain web traffic. It’s better to develop a reliable audience that values your content and can become regular customers. This is where SEO (search engine optimization) and email marketing come in.
SEO is a form of marketing that can be free and requires very little effort on your part. Basically, you’re using various techniques to make sure that your website shows up in the search results for relevant searches. You can do this with content that’s been optimized for SEO purposes, backlinking, and utilizing keywords throughout your web pages. As a rule of thumb, you should never put your brand name in the opening sentence of your content. Doing this can actually hurt your SEO because it signals to Google that these are all the same pages and doesn’t provide any relevant distinction between them. So, make sure that your content provides value to your target audience and that you’re always adding new material to your website. If these elements come together, you’ll be able to climb the search rankings and gain more web traffic than you could ever dream of.
The Importance of Having a Mobile-Optimized Website
Since a large portion of our population now accesses the internet via their smartphones, it’s important to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. If someone visits your site on their mobile phone and then clicks on a link that takes them away from your site, you’ll lose out on some serious sales because they may have left your site thinking that it was an app that they were interested in. To prevent this from happening, make sure that your site is optimized for mobile phones and that you’re listening to what your mobile customers are saying and acting on their feedback. Your website’s performance on mobile phones will directly reflect the performance of your entire SEO strategy. So, make sure that you have a mobile phone around to test out your site and give you feedback. You can also get a free mobile phone app for testing out your site (and getting feedback on how to make it better).
The Importance of Having a Social Media Presence
One of the quickest and easiest ways to promote your business online is through social media. For those who have a Facebook page for their business, they’ll see their fans click through to their site more often than not. When someone shares a link to your website or a brand page on social media, you’ll gain some much-needed exposure and possibly gain some new customers. To start engaging with your audience, like a Facebook page for your brand, tweet out useful information that’ll interest your followers, and start conversations with your audience.
With the rise of mobile gaming and the increasing popularity of mobile phones, having a presence on social media can be quite the boon for your business. Being accessible on social media means that you can easily connect with your audience and gain their support. As a business owner or entrepreneur, you’ll want to have a social media account for yourself to connect with other businesses that can help you out. You can also use social media to easily engage with customers that have an interest in your product.
The Importance of Email Marketing
Another powerful tool for marketing your business online is email marketing. When someone signs up for your email list, you’ll have their email address and can send out useful tips and tricks on how to grow your business as well as relevant information about your industry. You can do this through a series of curated emails that you send out periodically. While email marketing doesn’t offer the same scale of traffic that some other marketing channels provide, it does give you the ability to target the right audience.
Like SEO and mobile-friendliness, having an email marketing program for your business is quite valuable. It can help you get the word out about your industry, attract new customers, and establish credibility.
The Differences Between the Different Forms of Marketing
To wrap things up, let’s discuss the differences between the different forms of marketing that you can use online. As mentioned above, SEO is simply the process of getting relevant traffic to your site via a series of techniques. When someone does a search for your products or services and ends up on your site, you’ll want to make sure that they’re leaving your site with a positive experience and that you’ve helped them find what they were looking for. Therefore, create quality content that provides value and doesn’t consist of too many keywords. Backlinking is the process of adding links (usually to high-quality websites) on your site that will send a signal to Google (and other search engines) that your site is relevant to a particular keyword or phrase.
Paid advertisements are one of the simplest and most affordable methods of getting traffic to your site. Essentially, you’re paying to have your ad displayed on a website along with other ads. When a customer clicks on your ad, they’ll be taken to your website. You can target your ad based on a number of different factors including the country, age, gender, and interests of your current and potential customers.
Email marketing is, simply put, sending out relevant emails to your audience. When someone subscribes to your email list, you’ll have their email address and can send out emails with useful tips and tricks on how to grow your business as well as relevant information about your industry. It doesn’t necessarily need to be promotional either. You can use email to simply keep in touch with your audience and let them know what’s new with your brand.
Last but not least, let’s discuss display advertising. Like I mentioned above, paid advertisements are one of the simplest and most affordable methods of getting traffic to your site. However, you can also use display advertising to simply put a banner on your site’s homepage or on a series of web pages that you’ve designated as key. When a customer clicks on a banner, they’ll be taken to the webpage that has the banner on it. You can also use display advertising to creatively showcase your products or services.
To get the most out of your display advertising campaign, make sure that your banners are eye-catching, simple to understand, and fit the overall aesthetic of your site. If you’re looking for a way to gain more customers, consider using a tool like Google AdWords that can help get the word out about your business.
With the information discussed above, you can see that there are a variety of ways that you can use the internet to market your business. Some of these methods can be free and some can cost you money. It’s important to look into every form of marketing that you can and understand what each of them can do for your business. It can be rather overwhelming to try and figure out which channels are the best for your product or service, so make sure that you consult with experts or those who have extensive knowledge in this area. With the right mix of marketing, you’ll be able to gain more customers and grow your business successfully.