In the last few years, more and more consumers have gone online to research and purchase products or services. This trend has driven the growth of online marketing, as businesses look to gain a foothold in this new world of online market research.
Online marketing is a broad term that can be used to describe all kinds of marketing done online. However, in practice, it tends to focus on marketing activities conducted on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Why Market On Social Media Platforms
The main reason businesses tend to focus on marketing on social media platforms is because, as we have discussed in other articles on this site, people on social media are already in the habit of sharing, liking, and commenting on content.
From an online marketer’s perspective, this means that communities of people on social media have already built a model for engaging with content that your business creates. Your business can then adopt this model and use social media to get in front of these targeted audiences and encourage them to choose your product or service.
The Difference In Strategy
While engaging with customers on social media is a great way to attract and retain business, it’s not the only approach. In fact, there is a difference in strategy between marketing on social media platforms and traditional marketing strategies.
Traditional marketing focuses on getting the word out about your product or service in as many places and through as many channels as possible. For example, perhaps you have a luxury goods brand and you want to showcase your product on television. Your strategy might focus on getting coverage in top tier publications or gaining some prominent bloggers’ support.
On the other hand, when marketing on social media platforms, you want to focus on engaging with potential customers on the platform and converting them into paying customers. To achieve this, you can use social media to follow and connect with people who are likely to be interested in your product or service. When they find out about your brand, they will already have an interest in what you have to offer because you showed up on their radar.
How To Make The Most Of Your Online Marketing
To ensure you make the most of your online marketing activities, it’s essential to establish clear goals and objectives. With this in mind, here are five ways you can make the most of your marketing efforts:
1. Measure the Results of Your Online Marketing
While you can’t prove directly that your online marketing activities lead to sales, you can measure the results of these marketing efforts.
If you are using Google Analytics, you can monitor the performance of every marketing channel you use, including social media. You can then measure which ones are working and which ones aren’t based on specific metrics like the number of leads, website traffic, and so on.
2. Identify The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
To gauge the success of your marketing efforts, you need to examine key performance indicators (KPIs). These are specific benchmarks that you can use to measure your progress toward attaining business objectives. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, your key performance indicators might be:
- The number of leads
- The revenue generated from these leads
- The average sales person’s commission
- The amount of time it takes to close a sale
The beauty of having clear performance indicators is that they allow you to measure your progress and determine whether you’re meeting the goals you set. If you determine that you’re falling short of your goals, then it’s time for some serious adjustments.
3. Adjust Your Strategy Based On The Results Of Your Measurements
Once you have determined your key performance indicators, you can change your strategy to match your goals. If you determine that the leads you’re generating are not converting into revenue or maintaining existing revenue, then you might want to consider lowering your marketing budget and trying a new approach, or even abandoning this strategy all together. But, before you do that, you should first examine the reasons these leads are not converting into paying customers.
You might find that a lead magnet needs to be updated or changed, or that your website needs to be altered so that it meets the needs of modern day customers. Perhaps your PPC campaign is not generating the results you’re looking for, and you should re-evaluate this strategy. Or, you might even decide to try a different industry altogether. The options for re-engineering your strategy are endless when you have access to real-time data about your marketing programs.
4. Keep Improving
The success of your marketing strategy does not lie in the first plan you put in place. In fact, a lot can go wrong along the way that leads to bad results. This is why it’s always a good idea to improve your strategy over time as you learn more and more about marketing.
What this means is that you should continue to examine the results of your strategy and make adjustments as needed, but in the meantime, you should also be thinking about what new strategy you can bring to the table. In some cases, the failure of a marketing program can be attributed to one bad decision or oversight. However, most often, it’s a combination of many factors. This is why it’s important to examine the results of your strategy in detail and identify the underlying causes of any problems you might encounter.
5. Use Technology To Your Advantage
If you’re looking to make the most of your online marketing, you’re in the right place. We have discussed many times on this site how technology has transformed the way we live and work, and it continues to do so as we enter the era of big data and artificial intelligence. The way we access and utilize information has changed, and it continues to change how we engage with customers and businesses.
With the ability to access the Internet and search engines at our fingertips, customers can discover a whole world of information, products, and services in mere seconds. If your business is not online, it will be left in the dust by competitors who are.
This poses great challenges for businesses that are not technology savvy, as they must quickly and effectively adapt their marketing strategies to take full advantage of this new landscape.