Bonafide Marketing Genius

Online Marketing Essentials: Oer’s E-Book

The internet has opened up the world of marketing to anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection, but that doesn’t make it easy to understand all the ins and outs of the digital marketing world.

Luckily, there are experts who can help.

The Complete Online Marketing Basics Course

If you’re looking to enter the field of digital marketing, you’ll need to know the basics before you can start applying what you learn. The Complete Online Marketing Basics Course by OER is an e-book that provides beginners with a comprehensive guide to understanding online marketing, including:

  • The history of online marketing
  • The fundamental concepts of digital marketing
  • The anatomy of a successful digital marketing strategy
  • How to find the right audience for your product
  • How to measure the success of your strategy
  • Tips on how to position your product to succeed
  • The importance of SEO
  • E-commerce concepts and strategies
  • Email marketing
  • Paid advertising and cost-per-acquisition (CPA)
  • The future of marketing and digital marketing tools

Whether you’re just getting started or you’re already deep in the trenches, this comprehensive guide to online marketing will help you avoid the many pitfalls that come with inexperience, and give you the confidence to become an effective digital marketer.

Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) vs. Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

One of the first things you’ll need to understand is the difference between cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and cost-per-click (CPC). When you run a paid search ad campaign on Google or Bing, you’re typically charged on a CPA basis: each time a user clicks on your ad, you’re charged regardless of whether the user ends up buying your product or service. Cost-per-click is similar, but it only charges you when a user actually clicks on your ad.

CPA and CPC are both types of cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and cost-per-click (CPC) arrangements. The key difference between the two is the scope of the charge. With CPC, you’re only charged when a user clicks on your ad. With CPA, you’re charged whenever a user acquires (hits on Google and Bing to land on) your website, even if they never click on your ad.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

If you want to advertise on social media platforms like Google and Facebook, you’ll need to know what pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is and how it works.

PPC is a type of cost-per-acquisition (CPA) advertising. When you run a PPC ad, you’re typically charged whenever an ad display is clicked on — whether or not the user lands on your website. So, even if a user clicks on a PPC ad that takes them to a landing page where they make a purchase, you’ll still be charged for that click because the ad drove someone to your site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about improving your pages’ search engine ranking so they show up when users search for products or services related to your industry. You can learn more about SEO and its various elements here.

The better your SEO, the more likely people are to find your website when they’re looking for information about your industry or product. The main elements of an effective SEO strategy include on-page SEO (optimizing your pages for search engines) and off-page SEO (improving your website’s ranking in search engine results through backlinks).

Optimizing your site for search engines is easier than you think. Even if you’re not tech-savvy, there are tools like HubSpot’s SEO Wizard that can walk you through the process step-by-step. Don’t forget to practice safe SEO techniques to prevent Google penalties (which can seriously damage your website’s search engine ranking).

Attribution Models

Even if you get to the point where you have a successful organic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in place and you see steady gains in web traffic, you’ll still need to determine the source of that traffic. What comes after the ‘organic’ — what are the other potential drivers of traffic to your site?

You have many options when it comes to attribution modeling. For example, you might want to attribute all of your traffic to a single source (like social media), or you might want to attribute part of your traffic to multiple sources (like search engines and social media).

The main difference between the two is how accurately you want to attribute individual traffic sources and how much data you want to track. The former is called ‘micro-attribution,’ while the latter is called ‘macro-attribution.’ For example, if you want to attribute all of your traffic to social media, you’ll need to break down the sources of that traffic into individual accounts — which can be extremely time-consuming. Alternatively, you can just track overall social media impressions and see how that metric relates to website traffic.

The Future of Marketing

The future of marketing will include a mix of online and offline strategies, as well as digital marketing and SEO combined with traditional marketing methods. The advantages of combining the offline and online world are many — the global reach of the internet combined with the power of traditional marketing techniques have never been greater.

Knowing the fundamentals of digital marketing will prepare you for the ever-changing world of marketing and help you choose your strategy for driving customer acquisition and engagement.