The internet has changed the way we look at and buy products, and online marketing is a crucial part of that change. If you’re reading this, I assume you’re interested in building your own online marketing strategy. Congratulations! You’re on the right track. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about getting started online marketing and the role marketing plays in your overall strategy.

Why Online Marketing?

You may be wondering why you should bother with online marketing when you can simply send out an email blast and watch people come to you. Believe it or not, social media has actually made the process of attracting potential customers much more complicated. Nowadays, people are used to getting information and buying products via text and video messages, as well as website posts and emails. If you want to capture their attention, you need to provide them with content that’s more interesting and valuable than what they’re getting from the platforms. That’s where online marketing comes in.

What is Online Marketing?

When you think about traditional marketing, you probably think about outdoor billboards, magazine covers, and radio ads. But the digital equivalent, online marketing, is much broader and incorporates a lot of different strategies.

Online Marketing is simply marketing activities that take place online (i.e. on the web or social media platforms). When someone visits your website or submits a product review to your Amazon store, that’s online marketing. When you Tweet about a new product or service, that’s online marketing.

So, basically, when you do anything that attracts potential customers to your product or service, you’re doing online marketing. You might think that only large companies can afford online marketing campaigns, but that’s not true. Even small businesses can have highly effective online marketing strategies if they know how to implement them.

What is Online Marketing Strategy?

An online marketing strategy is a plan designed to generate sales via the internet. In other words, your strategy is focused on utilizing online marketing to drive inorganic leads (i.e. people who don’t come directly from a search engine), as well as creating awareness about your product or service among your target audience.

To do this, you’ll need to determine what platforms your ideal customer (i.e. someone who’s interested in your product or service) uses, then build a strategy around engaging with those users. One of the first steps in this process is to figure out what you’ll call your business or website. If you need some help deciding, ask yourself these questions:

• Who is my target audience?
• Where do I want my business to be in X amount of time (i.e. What’s my growth mindset)?
• What makes my product special?
• What do I want my customers to feel when they leave my site/business?
• How soon do I want to start seeing results?

Once you have your business name and logo, you can integrate an online shop or store into your website (if you don’t have one yet). Then, you can start building out your brand identity and digital store. When you have a good foundation, you can begin to experiment with different marketing techniques to see which ones work best for you.

Where To Start?

With all this talk about strategy, you may be wondering where to start. If so, here are some places to begin: