In theory, marketing a business online should be quite easy. You create a few product pages, place them onto your website, and then push ‘send’ and you’re done? Well, maybe not. Being able to market an online business successfully is a lot more complex than it seems. It takes a lot of research, strategy, and practice to understand how to effectively market an online business. Let’s explore some of the ways you can market your business online, and how to use them to your advantage.

Product Research

If you’re planning on selling a physical product that you create, you’ll need to do a lot of research into the market values of similar products. From there, you can determine how much you should charge for your product. You should also consider how much it will cost you to make. All these variables will determine your profit margins.

When it comes to creating an online product or service, you won’t have the luxury of making assumptions about the value of your product. You’ll need to do all your research online, which means you’ll need to visit forums, read blogs, and take part in groups to get an idea of how much others are paying for similar products. You can use free tools like Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Google Trends to easily find popular topics, keywords, and searches that you can replicate on your site to gain popularity with the right audience.

Content Strategy

Another important aspect of creating an online business is building a strategy for content creation. You’ll need to decide what types of content you wish to create and how frequently you intend to post. There are three basic types of content that you’ll need to get started:

• Product descriptions: These are the textual descriptions of your products. In the case of a pure-play eCommerce store, these can be the product images you use to sell the product.
• Product reviews: These are the opinions and experiences of others who have purchased and used your products. This type of content can be quite helpful for potential customers who are researching your products.
• How-to guides: These are the steps you need to take to create or use your product. The popularity of video demonstrations has exploded in the last few years, so video tutorials have become a valuable tool for many businesses, including internet marketers. How-to guides give you the opportunity to explain how to use your products, and show the audience how it works. At the same time, you teach them something new about your product. Video tutorials on social media are quite popular, and can significantly increase your reach to a target audience.

You don’t need to limit yourself to just these three types of content when developing your strategy. Once you have a good idea of what types of content you wish to create, you can start brainstorming different topics you could write about. The key is to pick a topic that is valuable to your target audience. If you can become an expert in your chosen field, you’ll be able to gain credibility with your audience and convince them to purchase your product. Remember: content is king.

Community Building

An important strategy that can help you succeed as an online marketer is to build a community. You can do this by getting involved in forums, groups, and sharing your knowledge and resources with others. You can even create a blog to do this, and use free tools like Google Groups to establish yourself as an expert in your field. The more you can do to establish your expertise, the more people will look to you as a trustworthy source when it comes to your field of expertise.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Many businesses fail to realize the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in terms of their online presence. SEO is all about getting traffic from search engines like Google towards your website. You can significantly boost your organic search rankings by using the right keywords in your content, product names, and website URLs.

As an SEO, you should make sure that your content is relevant, interesting, and uses the right keywords. You can also use free tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends to find the most popular keywords, topics, and searches related to your niche. When establishing your SEO strategy, you should try to avoid using competitive keywords, as Google punishes websites that use these keywords often.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Another important tool for online marketers is social media marketing (SMM). This is all about using social media platforms to receive free traffic, build a community, and establish yourself as an expert in your field. When used correctly, social media can work exactly like search engine optimization, except that you target your audience instead of search engines like Google.

The main advantage of digital marketing is the instant reach that you have to your target audience. With social media, you have the opportunity to connect with people all over the world, and gain instant credibility with your audience by sharing your knowledge and expertise.

Email Marketing

Another important tool that can help you market your business is email marketing. This is all about sending out carefully designed email campaigns to your audience to encourage them to take action and make a purchase. Depending on your budget, you can choose from a number of affordable email marketing tools that can help you get started.

The main goal of your email marketing strategy should be to gain as much interest as possible in your target audience, and convince them to purchase your product or service. To achieve this, you’ll need to consider the following:

• The contents of your campaign: This includes the subject line and the body of the email.
• The frequency at which you’ll send out campaigns: Will you send out a weekly email marketing campaign, or will you only send out a campaign every two months?
• The design of your email: You can choose from a number of simple yet effective email templates, or you can create a template of your own. If you create a template, you can use it for all your future campaigns, and update the content with only a few clicks.
• The offers you’ll make in your email: What will you offer your audience, and how can they benefit from your offer?
• The frequency of your email campaigns: You can set an interval of time between each email you send out, or you can send them all at once, once every week or two. The choice is up to you, but be consistent with your schedule so you don’t confuse your audience.
• The language you’ll use in your email marketing: The tone of your email needs to match the style and content of your website. Be careful not to overuse sales language, as this can turn off your audience.
• The style of your email: Choose a simple and clean design for your emails, and avoid using fancy fonts or any type of styling that might make the text harder to read.
• The length of your email: Short emails (fewer than three paragraphs) are preferable as they give the reader their full attention. Anything more, and they’ll likely hit the ‘delete’ key before they’ve even finished reading.
• How will you measure the success of your email marketing efforts: Monitor the number of new leads you’re generating from your email campaigns. If you can get a small business loan in Ohio, you can purchase a simple yet effective lead capture tool, like Hello Sales, that will help you gather and record leads from your email marketing campaigns.

An important point to make about online marketing is that it’s always evolving. The way we search for information, social media platforms, and how we communicate via email and text messaging have all changed in the last few years.

What isn’t changing is the need for businesses to succeed online. If you want to succeed as an online business owner, you need to continue to learn and evolve with the ever-changing world of digital marketing.