There are marketing opportunities everywhere! Which channels and platforms do you pick? It can be hard to decide on where time and budget should get spent, but one thing is for sure – Web Marketing should fit into your marketing mix if you want to see better results from your campaigns.
What Is Web Marketing?
To promote and advertise products on the internet. Web marketing incorporates all online channels used to market a business including both organic(free) and paid marketing. Several types of web marketing can be pursued; the main channels are:
Main types of Internet Marketing
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Content Marketing
- Viral Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
- Influencer Marketing
Content Marketing
There’s various types of content that can be used to market a business. Whether you’re trying to achieve well-known expertise in your industry, or market content simply to rank on Google, this method requires time and knowledge to craft quality content that can be published on blogs and websites. Most businesses go down the route on publishing content on their own blog, as this not only offers their customers resources to read about their industry but also drives traffic through SEO on Google.
Viral Marketing
Less used in digital marketing is viral marketing. The idea? To gain exposure through highly shareable content like videos or breaking news. Going viral can mean enormous amounts of brand awareness at once, leading to sales and enquiries.
Social Media Marketing
Platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, and Youtube can gather an audience interested in your business. You can pay for ads on these platforms or gain an organic following.
Affiliate Marketing
Offering affiliate commission on sales brought in by referrals can be an attractive proposition. Your marketing is essentially done for you, and isn’t limited to any one platform. Affiliates can market content, pay for ads, drive traffic through SEO and more ways. Ensuring your brand is seen right across the Web.
Influencer Marketing
Requiring little effort like affiliate marketing, you can pay influencers to display your products to their followers. Common on platforms like Instagram, brands can pay influencers with relevant content to show their followers their product and link to where they can buy it.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is a great way to drive traffic through keywords. Your website is the vehicle for SEO. Continually optimising your web pages to rank for popular keywords that will drive traffic from Google, Bing, and other search engines to your website.
Paid Advertising
Advertising networks like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising can be used to display ads in a range of different ways from image ads to search ads and even shopping ads.
Web Marketing Strategies
The internet is, by far, the largest human resource in the world. As a marketing tool, the internet can pose endless opportunities to push products and promote brands. Each web marketing channel has its list of strategies you can follow. To name but a few:
Basic SEO strategies include:
- Blogging
- Keyword Research
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
Basic PPC strategies include:
- Facebook Ads
- Google Ads
- Bing Ads
- Instagram Ads
Basic Content Marketing strategies include:
- Guest Posting
- Video Creation
- Quora Marketing
- Social Network Posting
Basic CRO strategies include:
- Testing different copy
- Improving load speeds
- Strong call to actions
- Improving buying processes
Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing
The costs of traditional marketing are increasingly expensive, their outdated approach to scattergun marketing might’ve worked in the past, but advertising is more cluttered than ever now and will only get more crowded. One way to improve your marketing strategy is to incorporate web marketing.
Web marketing offers tangible results that can be tracked in various metrics including conversions, impressions and more. Targeting the right audience online is considerably easier than offline and far less expensive. Ad spend can be funnelled directly into audiences that are interested in your goods or services.
Unlike traditional marketing, all data can be tracked online. With analytics, you can find out information about everyone who has seen or visited the product you have marketed. With this data, you can gain great business insights and improve your marketing over time.
How is an internet marketing plan developed?
Once you’ve decided on which web marketing channels you’ll be using and finalised your goals, it’s then time to create a marketing plan. The marketing plan will outline what will be done to ensure the marketing strategy is a success.
Start by thinking up which of the web marketing strategies you could use to drive traffic to your product. Choose the best method for your product and business. If you’re looking to grow your website as a means of bringing in more business, then SEO and Content Marketing used in conjunction with online advertising could be an option for you.
Your marketing plan should reflect the time and budget you have to execute the campaign, so make sure your channels fall under relevant constraints. For example, SEO is a long-term game and is organic, whereas PPC can start driving traffic immediately but at a cost; so there’s pros and cons to be weighed up here, primarily cost-effectiveness.
The development of a web marketing plan is then furthered by adapting it as needed throughout the campaign. Much of online marketing is collecting data on your performance, looking at that data, and making changes to improve it.
Using the web as a marketing platform
With over 4.39 billion internet users in 2019, why would you not want to reach potential customers here? There are far more marketing opportunities online that offer broader opportunities and formats than offline marketing. Having all web marketing channels controllable in one place, at the click of a mouse, makes it an efficient process with higher rewards. Before the internet not much went viral, yet today it’s possible for companies to grow tenfold overnight with clever online marketing tactics.
Which Digital Marketing Channel Is Best For You?
Are you spoilt for choice? As mentioned earlier in this post, aligning a channel with your marketing strategy and goals is a must. The channel or channels you use must work to your team’s abilities. If you want to collect emails and promote products and content repeatedly to a single user, then email marketing is a great option. If you want better organic exposure in search results for relevant business keywords, then SEO is for you. If your marketing goal is for brand exposure and engagement, then social media marketing will serve you much better than other channels. If you’re still unsure which channels are for you, then it’s well worth re-evaluating your goals and looking into more channels that may not be listed here.
Conclusion
If you want to be effective in 2019, web marketing should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. Whether as a standalone marketing solution or used with more traditional methods, driving traffic and potential customers to your brand at every point, both online and off leads to can lead to increased sales. If you’re struggling with your marketing, or are looking to outsource to an agency like us, then get in touch today! We’d love to hear about your business.
