Welcome to the world of online marketing. With hundreds of marketing platforms available, it can be hard to know where to begin — and that’s assuming you even know what you’re looking for.
In this article, we will discuss what online marketing is and isn’t, the various strategies you can use to take advantage of the digital landscape, and, most importantly, how to approach marketing campaign planning.
What is Online Marketing?
It’s often said that the line between marketing and advertising has blurred, and that’s certainly true. Thanks to the likes of Facebook and Google, it’s now possible to target the right audience with ads, and engage with them on social media without necessarily having to spend a dime on traditional marketing.
In short, online marketing is marketing done through digital channels. The term ‘digital marketing’ can describe many different activities; keeping up with all of them can be challenging.
Traditional marketing involves lots of expensive TV ads, magazine spreads, billboards, and radio station promotions. While all of those forms of marketing still exist, they’re now complemented by online marketing activities like brand building, SEO, and PPC (Pay Per Click).
In addition to marketing through digital channels (which by definition includes online and mobile), traditional forms of marketing still exist alongside digital ones. For example, Facebook and Instagram ads are an affordable and popular way to advertise a business or brand.
A 2018 study from HubSpot and VaynerMedia analyzed over 3 million emails and found that 79% of consumers have responded to marketing messages via email, while only 17% have preferred to receive messages through text messaging.
So, in summary, online marketing can refer to any marketing activity performed through digital channels, but it’s generally used to describe activities such as SEO, email marketing, and PPC. To learn more, you can visit the Digital Marketing Specialization on the SAPE Accreditation System website.
Why Should You Care About Online Marketing?
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re already in some way involved in the digital world — whether you know it or not.
You use social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to promote your business, so it only makes sense that you’d be interested in exploring how to effectively market your business online.
Why should you be interested in online marketing? Well, as we’ve established above, marketing activities through digital channels offer businesses and brands a way to target the right audience, with the right message, for the right reasons.
They also provide a great way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and determine which tactics and strategies work best for your business.
Why Is Online Marketing Different From Traditional Marketing?
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re already in some way involved in the digital world — whether you know it or not.
You use social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to promote your business, so it only makes sense that you’d be interested in exploring how to effectively market your business online.
Why should you be interested in online marketing? Well, as we’ve established above, marketing activities through digital channels offer businesses and brands a way to target the right audience, with the right message, for the right reasons.
They also provide a great way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and determine which tactics and strategies work best for your business.
However, there are a few significant differences between online and traditional marketing:
Technology
The first and most obvious difference between online and traditional marketing is the level of technology involved.
While traditional marketing basically involves pushing out marketing materials (e.g., TV ads, magazine spreads, billboards, etc.) using methods that were originally designed for printed media (e.g., newspaper ads, billboard space, magazine spreads, etc.), online marketing involves using software tools to automate many of the tasks involved in marketing and promoting a business or brand.
Automation allows for greater flexibility and efficiency — and, let’s be honest, who doesn’t like efficiency?
When it comes to technology, online marketing is definitely the future of marketing, and it’s predicted that 20% of all marketing activities will be automated by next year.
Target Audience
The other significant difference between online and traditional marketing has to do with the target audience.
While traditional marketing is aimed at the general population, with the right adverts and placements, businesses and brands can target the right audience with their marketing activities.
On the other hand, online marketing allows businesses and brands to target the right audience with their marketing activities; it doesn’t just limit themselves to certain demographics like age, gender, or region.
As the name would suggest, Google Ads target the general population, with the ability to target by interest, location, and demographic.
So, while traditional marketing generally targets the entire population, and could end up being received by anyone, online marketing offers businesses and brands a way to target the right audience — with the right message, for the right reasons.
Specific Online Marketing Activities
Now that we’ve discussed the differences between online and traditional marketing, it’s time to dive into the specifics of online marketing.
The most prominent of these specific online marketing activities are SEO, PPC (Pay Per Click), and Email Marketing.
SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of affecting the rankings of web pages in search results.
In practice, this usually entails using specific keywords in the content of a website or blog, as well as in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator, e.g., https://www.example.com/blog/tips-for-parents-on-thrifty-shopping/ ), in order to optimize a business’ or brand’s web pages for search engines like Google or Bing.
When a consumer performs a search for a product or service, and the resulting list of web pages is ranked organically based on how closely the content of each page matches the keywords input by the consumer, your business or brand will appear at the top of the results.
In this way, SEO is similar to traditional marketing in that it’s aimed at drawing potential customers to a business or brand’s website — but with the additional advantage of allowing for more precise targeting.
Like SEO, Pay Per Click, or PPC, is also aimed at drawing potential customers to a business or brand’s website. However, unlike SEO, which involves optimizing existing web pages, PPC involves the creation of a single ad that will appear on a web page exactly when a consumer performs a search for a product or service related to your business.
With PPC, you are not limited to a few keywords and phrases. Instead, you can use a combination of targeted keywords and phrases, as well as specific ad copy to draw potential customers to your website.
Additionally, instead of appearing in search results, ads displayed through PPC mostly appear as a box at the top of a page, with a small arrow next to it, indicating that there’s more content below.
Once again, like SEO and PPC, Email Marketing allows businesses and brands to target the right audience with their marketing activities, but with the added advantage of being able to do so in a personal manner.
This largely involves sending out regular marketing emails to existing customers, inviting them to purchase a product or service related to your business or brand, or inviting them to some kind of event.
Depending on your business, you might choose to send out emails at regular intervals, or only when a product or service is sold, or when an event is scheduled.
Marketing email platforms like MailChimp and HubSpot make setting up and managing these email campaigns easy — and for a business or brand with a limited marketing budget, this could be a cost-effective and productive way to engage with current and potential customers.
How to Approach Marketing Campaign Planning
So you’ve decided to enter the online marketing world. Congrats! Now it’s time to figure out how to approach marketing campaign planning.
As we established above, online marketing is a broad term that describes many different activities — from SEO and PPC to email marketing and beyond. For this reason, it can be difficult to know where to begin.