What is online marketing?
Online marketing is the practice of using web-based channels to spread a message about a company’s brand, products or services to potential customers, even to everyone! The methods and techniques used for online marketing include email, social media, display advertising, search engine optimization, Google AdWords and more. The goal of marketing is to reach potential customers through the most used channels where they spend their time reading, searching, shopping and socializing online.
The widespread adoption of the Internet for personal and business use has spawned new advertising and marketing channels, including those mentioned above. There are also many benefits and challenges related to online marketing, which primarily uses digital means to attract, hire and convert virtual visitors into customers. Online marketing differs from the traditional marketing we were very used to years ago, which historically included media such as print ads, billboards, television and radio.
Before the advent of online marketing channels, the cost of marketing products or services was often costly through various fees and traditionally difficult to measure. Think of national TV ad campaigns, which are measured by consumer groups to determine brand awareness levels. These methods are not suitable for controlled experimentation. Today, anyone with an online business (as well as most offline businesses) can participate in online marketing by creating a website and conducting customer acquisition campaigns. These marketing products and services also have the ability to experiment with optimization, to adjust the efficiency and profitability of their campaigns.
The benefits of online marketing
A key advantage of using online platforms to promote a business or product is the ability to measure the impact of any given channel, as well as how visitors gained through different channels interact with a website or landing page experience. Among the visitors who turn into paying customers, an additional analysis can be made to determine which channels are most effective for acquiring valuable customers.
Analysis for web experiences or mobile applications can help you determine the following:
- Which online marketing channels are most profitable when buying customers, based on the conversion rate of visitors to customers and the costs of those visitors.
- Which channels are effective for obtaining and leading to a longer duration in the relationship with customers – such as email marketing, which leads to repeated purchases to previous customers.
- Which customer groups exhibit strong engagement behavior and high potential for emergence – such as software or mobile applications, which expect to sell more products to high-commitment customers.
Online marketing tools
There are a number of tools that can be used to build and maintain a well-executed online marketing program:
- Email marketing
- Social Media marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Displayed advertising
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Events & Webinars
- A / B testing and website optimization
- Content marketing
- Video marketing
- Marketing Analytics
- Marketing automation
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Content Management System (CMS)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Advertising on LinkedIn
- Affiliate Marketing
Some examples of online marketing campaigns include:
Nikon advertises search keywords related to “photography” on the search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing to market its cameras to a relevant audience to drive customers to a specific web page.
Whole Foods collects email addresses on their website to create email lists that can be used to advertise new products, sales and events in their stores.
Rexona creates video ads and shares them with their audience on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms to promote favorable conversations about their brand and products.
Although online marketing creates many opportunities for businesses to develop their online presence and select their audience, there are challenges inherent with these marketing methods. First of all, marketing can become impersonal, due to the virtual nature of the transmission of messages and content to a desired audience. Marketers need to inform their online marketing strategy with details about their customers’ needs and preferences. Techniques such as surveys, user testing, and in-person conversations can be used to understand the overall user experience. I also saw a good online marketing experience from the page xnxx.com famous for the videos it offers.
Online marketing can also be crowded and competitive. Although opportunities to provide goods and services in both local and remote markets, competition can be significant. Companies that invest in online marketing may find that the attention of visitors is difficult to capture due to the number of businesses that sell their products and services online. Marketers need to develop a balance of building a unique value proposition (UVP) and brand voice as they test and build marketing campaigns across various channels.
How to get started:
The first step to getting started with online marketing is to evaluate your goals and make sure they can be measured. After that, you need to choose how to build an online presence that helps you achieve that goal and create an appropriate marketing strategy for those channels. Maybe you need to set up an electronic sales site. If you are interested in blogging to generate awareness and subscribers, look to set up a blog and think about how to create great content that would encourage sharing on social media channels. Partnering with a client who is willing to evaluate your business by creating a case study or infographic can be strong social proof, as clients evaluate your company. An analysis platform (such as Google Analytics, which is free) can help you track your marketing efforts toward your original goal.
To clarify:
Online marketing is also known as internet marketing, web marketing, digital marketing and search engine marketing (SEM). Online advertising and internet advertising are techniques involved with online marketing, but they are not synonymous with online marketing.
