In today’s digital world, online marketing is an essential tool for any business, whether you’re a big or small organization. The internet makes it possible to connect with customers where they are – even if they are in another city or country – and allows for real-time communication and engagement. Marketing online means you can target potential customers and generate leads organically, without incurring massive ad expenditure.

However, to optimize your results from online marketing, you need to understand how digital marketing works, what strategies to use, and how to track the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Understand How Online Marketing Works

Before you can effectively utilize online marketing in your business, you need to understand how digital marketing works. Essentially, online marketing is a form of marketing that mostly takes place via the internet. This encompasses websites, social media, and emails – the three main targets for online marketing strategies.

When a customer navigates to your website, they are considered to be in the ‘ecommerce’ phase of the buying cycle. At this point, you can engage with them, capture their interest, and turn them into a paying customer. Once they have become a paying customer, you can continue to market to them via emails and push notifications. You can also look to online marketing to gain support, increase visibility, and establish credibility.

The Three Phases of the Buying Cycle

Every buyer’s journey is different, but typically buyers will go through the following stages in a typical purchase:

• Attracting and Capturing Attention
• Identifying Needs and Learning About Your Product
• Deciding To Buy
• Shopping For Your Product
• Purchasing And Imposing Willpower
• Enjoying The Product
• Using The Product Or Service
• Maintaining And Improving
• Selling The Product Or Service

When a customer clicks on your product or service, they have landed on a page that represents the first impression that they have of your brand. In the world of digital marketing, this is called a ‘landing page’ or ‘click-through rate’. Having a high click-through rate means that lots of people are landing on your landing page – probably because it’s catchy, engaging, or offers something that appeals to your audience. If you’ve ever run a Facebook ad, you’ll know that you have to keep on testing and optimizing your ads to see results. The same goes for your landing pages.

The Importance Of Website Design

One of the most important things to consider when marketing online is your website’s design. It can be tempting to just go with whatever template your nearest web designer hands you, but if you want to truly optimize your results from online marketing, you need to put in the time and effort to research and test different designs and page layouts. You can also get assistance from a digital marketing agency, who can help you find the right web designer for your needs.

When a customer comes to your website and browses through the products or services that you offer, you have three options:

• Keep them on your site and hope that they continue to browse (inbound marketing)
• Offer them what they need (focused marketing)
• Send them to another site (outbound marketing)

Depending on your website’s design, you may not always have the flexibility to do what you want. If you decide that your best option is to send them to another site, you can do this with a simple redirect. There are several free tools that you can use to test different landing page layouts and see how visitors behave on different websites. For example, you can use Google Analytics to track the behavior of people who have visited your website. This way, you can get a better understanding of what is appealing to your customers, and make sure that your future marketing campaigns, products, and offers are in line with what they are looking for.

Tracking The Effectiveness Of Your Online Marketing Campaigns

Online marketing is all about measurements, and you need to make sure that you track the effectiveness of your campaigns to determine which ones worked and which ones didn’t. This is where you need to put in the time and effort to collect data, and determine what impact your marketing efforts had on the ultimate purchase. To do this, you need to track the results of your online marketing campaigns.

There are several tools that you can use to track the results of your marketing, from website analytics to CRM systems. For example, you can use Google Analytics to track the behavior of people who have visited your website. This way, you can get a better understanding of what is appealing to your customers, and make sure that your future marketing campaigns, products, and offers are in line with what they are looking for.

Building Better Relationships With Customers

One of the best things about online marketing is that it encourages two-way communication and engagement. Instead of relying on passive listening and waiting for customers to come back, you can have real-time conversations with potential and existing customers. This can be a great way to build trust, and establish better relationships.

If somebody visits your website and decides to purchase your product or service, you can follow up with them via email to remind them of your existence, and hopefully encourage them to come back for more.

Use The Right Metrics

To truly understand the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns, you need to track the results of your efforts using the right metrics. The digital marketing world has created several ways to measure the performance of an entire marketing campaign or website:

• Pageviews: This is the most fundamental measure of any website or blog. It represents the number of times that a particular page was accessed.
• Position: This refers to the location of a page or link within the organic search results. A higher position means that your page will appear closer to the top of the list.
• Clicks: This represents the number of times somebody clicked on a link or visited a page.
• Cost Per Acquisition: This is the cost of getting a specific lead or customer. Cost per acquisition is most useful when comparing one campaign to another, or when you’re looking for detailed information about the performance of an individual link or landing page.
• Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of people who had a certain action (such as making a purchase or enquiry) after visiting your website. For example, if you run a blog about fashion, and somebody visits your blog, but doesn’t make a purchase, the conversion rate for that particular visitor would be 0%.
• Lift: This is the percentage of people who visited your website, but who did not come directly from a referring link (such as another website or piece of content). The “Lift” of a campaign can be used to determine the effectiveness of different channels and styles of content in driving traffic to your website. For example, if you run a travel website, and you notice that your blog articles perform the best in driving traffic to your site, you can conclude that informative, in-depth articles about destinations are the most effective type of content for your business.
• ROI: This is the profit (or loss) that you made from a particular marketing campaign, expressed as a percentage. For example, if you run a travel website, and your hotel and flight deals generate $100 in profit, the return on investment would be 100%.

As you can see, there are several different ways that you can use to measure the effectiveness of your online marketing campaign. The important thing is that you track the results of your efforts, and determine which metrics work and which ones don’t. This way, you can improve your campaigns, and drive more sales in the future.