In today’s ever-evolving world, your business can’t just rely on one source of traffic & sales. Thanks to the internet, you can grow your business to worldwide proportions without being present in every city. The key is developing a solid online marketing strategy that will encourage potential customers to learn more about your product or service.

If you’re just starting your business, it can be hard to know where to focus your efforts. There are so many niches, platforms, and ways to connect with customers online. When deciding how to approach internet marketing, it’s important to consider your resources, the aim of your campaign, and your vision for the future. So let’s discuss each of these points in turn.

Why Online Marketing?

For many business owners, the question of online marketing can feel almost like a choice between two evils. On the one hand, you have traditional marketing methods like television ads, radio spots, billboards, and magazine spreads. On the other hand, you have newer, digitally based channels like social media, websites, and smartphone apps.

While these are all important methods of reaching potential customers, consider the advantages of online marketing:

• It’s free.
• It’s flexible.
• It’s efficient.
• It’s measurable.
• It’s interactive.
• It’s targetable.
• It works.

As a business owner, you’re probably wondering which of these channels is the most effective. The answer is: it depends.

Just like any other marketing effort, the type of customers you are trying to reach and the context in which your ads appear can affect the results. For example, a business that sells fitness equipment might choose to advertise on a website for personal trainers or athletes. On the other hand, a cosmetic company might choose to advertise on a website for mature women.

In the same way, display ads that appear on webpages with large audiences are more effective than those that appear on sites with smaller audiences. In general, using a paid search engine to gain marketing visibility is more cost-effective than purchasing ads on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

What Is Paid Search?

Paid search, otherwise known as sponsored search, is a type of internet marketing in which you pay money for your business to show up when a customer performs a search on their phone or computer. Let’s say you’re a shoe store and you want to market your shoes online. You can take advantage of paid search by creating an honest website with informative content about your product. Then, you can perform searches on Google (or another search engine) using the keywords “shoes” and “sales” to get your site to show up in the results. When a potential customer clicks on your listing, they will be taken to your website to learn more about your product. This type of “pay to play” scenario is common in the online world and can be an effective way to gain exposure and make sales.

The Three Phases Of A Marketing Campaign

No matter what type of business you’re involved in, digital marketing comes in three basic forms: SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay-per-click), and conversion optimization.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of tweaking your website’s content and architecture to improve your ranking in search results. Typically, businesses will hire an experienced SEO specialist to help them improve their online presence and gain more customers. Although SEO is not an easy task, it’s a very effective means of generating qualified leads and attracting new customers to your business.

PPC, or pay-per-click, marketing is similar to SEO in that it requires you to pay for ads to appear in the results of online searches. The primary difference is that with PPC, you have to set a specific budget and create ad campaigns that will generate the most profitable results.

Conversion optimization, or converting visitors into paying customers, is similar to SEO in that it involves improving the functionality and usability of your website. However, unlike SEO, which focuses on drawing in potential customers, conversion optimization aims to turn those visitors into paying customers by increasing the likelihood of them taking action (e.g., making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or filling out a form).

The key components of a successful conversion strategy include:

• Good functional design
• Content that is relevant and answers questions
• Call to action buttons (e.g., a subscribe button)
• Interactivity (e.g., a dash of social media)
• Simple and quick checkout process

Anchor text, which is the text that appears directly below a hyperlink, is one of the most important factors that affect a website’s performance in search engines. The anchor text for your website’s backlink will determine its ranking in the search results. In general, the more unique and specific you can be with your anchor text, the higher your website will rank. For example, if you have a webpage about shoes and you want to link to a website selling a similar product, you could use the following keywords in your anchor text:

• shoes
• sales
• buy shoes
• buyer’s guide
• top ten shoes
• etc.

Now, let’s say that you’re running a spa and you want to promote relaxation in your services. One way you could do that is by creating a webpage describing the many benefits of spa treatments. Then, you could use the following keywords in your anchor text when linking to that page:

• spa
• health benefits
• relaxation
• massage
• shower
• etc.

As you can see, you definitely have a couple of options for SEO-based keywords, but you need to make sure that you choose words and phrases that are relevant to your product or service. Another important factor is your target audience. If you’re writing for a general audience, then you can choose your keywords more freely.

How Long Does It Take To See Results?

Whether you’re getting paid to promote a product or are doing it as a side gig, you’ll eventually want to measure the results of your efforts. If you’re a traditional marketer who is used to seeing immediate results from his or her advertising and marketing efforts, then you might be disappointed with the pace at which online marketing changes. Nevertheless, this is one of the benefits of digital marketing. You can set up automated marketing tasks to track your results and analyze performance at any time, regardless of whether you’re connected to the internet or not. Simply set up a regular monitoring activity and you’ll be able to see the number of unique visitors (or “hits”), how many people are exhibiting interest in your product or service, and the conversion rate (i.e., the percentage of people who have exhibited interest in your product and who have taken some kind of action, be that opening up a shopping cart or just scrolling through the pages). This way, you’ll always know whether or not your campaign is paying off.

The Difference In Resources

Depending on your available budget and the objectives of your campaign, you might have to choose between relying on traditional sources of traffic like television ads or magazine spreads and more modern methods like SEO, PPC, and conversion optimization. If money is no object to you, then you might want to allocate a significant chunk of your marketing budget to paid channels.

On the other hand, if you have a limited budget and you want to focus all of your efforts on organic search and social media, you might not see immediate results. So it is important to consider your resources before making this crucial marketing decision. To give you some peace of mind, most major marketing organizations and consulting firms offer digital marketing services, which include advice on how to use SEO, PPC, and conversion optimization to successfully market your business.