Online marketing, as an extremely effective way of getting a business out and visible to the public, is among the most prevalent marketing techniques these days. It is a vast, comprehensive phenomenon that requires specific planning and, obviously, particular skills, which will depend on each concrete subtype of online marketing.
SEO
Referred to as Search Engine Optimization, this subtype implies improving the position of your business’s website in the search rankings. The benefits of this marketing method are actually quite easy to figure out: the higher your page appears in the search, the more visible it is to the potential consumers and the online users overall. This means your web page will get more views, more visitors, and more traffic, which may result in more activity and, consequently, a larger number of potentially successful deals.
SEO methodology may look or sound simple, but it involves a rather complicated process. It implies using the right, appropriate keywords, implementing the links from other pages that use these particular keywords, and so on. However, simply stuffing your web page with the needed keywords won’t do. Even though search programs are machines, they are intelligent enough to distinguish the contents of your page and its text. Therefore, the general context, in which those keywords are being implemented also matters in SEO.
Emailing
Email marketing is sometimes considered to be outdated, especially when compared to more recent and more hyped up social media marketing. However, emailing is still among the most effective and potent techniques these days. Why? First of all, it allows businesses to establish a more private connection with each consumer. Second of all, it can be a rather cost-effective technique since it allows businesses to estimate the exact marketing cost directed onto each customer (depending on their interests, their buying habits, and their current place in the buying cycle). Emails allow businesses to target specific audiences with specific deals and campaigns, which may result in acquiring a larger number of regular customers.
However, there are also downsides to such a method. For instance, not all customers and web page visitors agree to receive newsletters when registering, buying from, or simply visiting your page. Plus, the constant development and improvement of anti-spam email systems makes the task a bit more complicated. Oftentimes, your company’s letter with the best deals and offers may not even reach your clientele.
PPC
Some users and business owners see the Pay Per Click system as a way to earn money fast and draw more traffic to their page. However, PPC doesn’t serve only those objectives. It is also extremely helpful when it comes to attracting potential clients and making your target audience more engaged with the goods or services that you are offering to them.
There are a couple of essential rules when dealing with PPC (if you want your campaign to be potent, of course). Remember that the landing page matters as much as the clickable advertisement that you post. They ought to be linked together by the content and the copy style. This means using similar expressions when creating an ad and when writing a copy for your landing page. Some businesses prefer posting their PPC ads not only on search engines sidebars but also in videos or in a form of a sponsored merchandise display on social media.
Video
If you think that YouTube serves to simply entertain, you are mistaken. Actually, it is one of the biggest search engines (currently occupying the third place, to be exact). Therefore, more and more businesses use it to advertise their merchandise.
Video marketing is an excellent method to deliver the message to your potential clientele in a very specific, audience-oriented way. Videos that are used in marketing can be empathic, funny, informational, and so on. They serve to engage with the audience, present your brand’s image, and simply get potential buyers interested in your business.
Content Marketing
This method may involve a ton of distribution means, but it is concentrated around only one thing: creating a proper, interesting, captivating, and informative content for your potential clientele. A well-written and properly executed content leads to a certain chain of actions:
- It gets shared. This is the stage when a business is recognized by the public and by its potential consumers.
- It is being discussed. Whether your content depicts a new discovery in your specific field of business or a release of a unique, previously unmentioned product, becoming a discussion point among the potential customers is extremely beneficial. It may spread the info further and attract even more consumers.
- It generates more leads. To reach this objective, your content ought to help consumers realize their needs and issues and, consequently, offer them a solution and assistance with their matters.
- It results in more successful deals and increased sales.
Blogging
Being a significant part of content marketing, it is a potent channel of info distribution, and the info can take almost any form. A business may use their blog to post articles, guidelines and tips for consumers, news, affiliate projects, podcasts, etc. And even though blogging may seem like an extremely easy means of marketing, it demands concrete skills, planning, and has numerous peculiarities that might influence your business marketing strategies.
To blog successfully, a business ought to thoroughly plan its content, think about the blog’s design, and predict reactions from the public. Blogs help businesses not only keep the existing base of clients informed but also attract and direct new customers and visitors to their websites.
Social Media
This marketing method is among the most appealing ones these days due to the fact that it’s rather new and innovative. Another reason why social media is so attractive in terms of marketing is that it allows for numerous (almost countless) channels of info distribution. The number of media platforms is excessive, and there always are additional sources like forums, apps, niche networks, etc.
The most crucial role of social media in the segment of marketing is establishing a specific (positive, of course) image of your brand. Social media also allows businesses to reach the audience they are targeted at faster and with specifically developed, interest-oriented marketing strategic schemes.
Affiliate Trading
This marketing method involves other businesses or people selling your merchandise. It may remind you of a regular sales job on commission. This technique may be pricey (depending on the affiliate program agreement and its requirements), but it allows for a larger number of sales through other businesses’ channels.
Selling someone else’s merchandise or allowing other businesses to sell yours requires a thorough strategic planning. Therefore, each affiliate program has its own specific rules, demands, requirements, and regulations, which both sides ought to meet and stick to. Oftentimes, a business that’s going to sell your merchandise may require you to provide your personal unique content to support the product. Because of this, numerous businesses develop content and marketing materials for each type of their product in such a way that those materials can be easily adapted to their partners’ and affiliates’ platforms.
Network Marketing
Despite being closely connected with social media marketing, networking has its own peculiarities and a separate set of working methods. It involves selling a business’s merchandise through the network of semi-independent distributors. Those distributors (also called “agents”) build their own, smaller, personal networks by reaching potential agents in their circle and spreading the merchandise further.
This method may oftentimes be underestimated since it is rather time-consuming. However, it has its own advantages as well. Networking is an excellent way to reach a larger number of customers on different marketing levels. It may help a business become well-recognized and establish a trust-based relationship with the consumers. This may be achieved by allowing the distributors and the agents to communicate directly with the clientele, share helpful info concerning the brand and the merchandise, and spend time online spreading the info via forums, emails, blog comments, and so on.
Contextual
Basically, this method implies appearing in the context of other online content. This may imply suggesting your merchandise to bloggers for reviews, appearing in someone else’s videos, paying for Instagram posts, etc. The contextual type of marketing is concentrated around finding more means of sharing the info and increasing the number of platforms, on which a certain brand and its merchandise may appear.
The main objective of this marketing type is to make a business appear on platforms that have overlapping, diverse audiences. This allows brands to reach numerous potential consumers that belong to different areas, age categories, etc. and to make their appearance memorable to the clientele by regularly emerging on various platforms.
Interactive
This marketing type implies engaging users and potential clientele in the interactive experience that a certain business may offer. Suggesting a user or a customer to upload or share their pictures, audios, or videos, and then altering those materials based on the merchandise the brand is offering is a bright example of a popular interactive marketing technique. This method may also involve specific apps developed for a business and its objectives, or even Virtual Reality interactions.
The beauty of this method is in its ability to capture the interest of various audiences. When creating a unique, unforgettable experience for a user, a business establishes and develops a connection between its brand and its client. Moreover, it is an excellent way to spread the info about a certain brand. You see, the more interested users will be in such an interactive experience, the more they will share it with other people, thus increasing the business’s potential base of clients.
Location-Based
Just like social media marketing, this method is relatively new and fresh. It is a direct form of marketing, which implies using the smartphone’s location to send notifications about special offerings from the nearby stores and business locations to potential buyers. This marketing type may also involve a reward system. For instance, customers can receive discounts or special propositions after visiting a brand’s physical store and checking in using their smartphone connection.
There are numerous apps designed specifically for location-based marketing. Some of them allow users to leave comments and reviews after visiting physical business locations. It is crucial to monitor such apps if your business is implementing a location-based marketing strategy. By following comments and reviews, a business may find and reach new clients or deal with potential issues and complaints fast and effectively.
User Experience Branding
This marketing technique isn’t concentrated on increasing the quantity of sales. Instead, it is centered around one objective: making user experience as pleasing as possible. In other words, the goal of this type of marketing is to keep a potential client on the web page longer and to make them want to stay. User experience branding involves creating and developing user-business interactions that are appealing, intuitive, and simple.
One of the key principles of marketing this way is making the web page fun to surf through, easy to use and navigate, pleasant to look at, and interesting to interact with. By providing a user with an immersive, interesting, and unique web experience, a business increases its chances to get a larger number of shares and become more recognizable on the market and online in general. Thankfully, the constant technology improvement and development allows for a more versatile use of numerous online tools, which consequently helps businesses create an unforgettable interactive experience for their customers.
Community Building
This technique is applicable once a business has already attracted a certain base of clients using the previously mentioned methods. Community building implies developing and strengthening the connections between a certain group of individuals that may be united by a common interest. Of course, a business and its merchandise ought to be linked to that specific group of individuals and their interest in order to be a driving force that stimulates and induces a conversation between them.
The number of benefits that community building may provide is quite extensive. The major advantage a business might take of this marketing type is a chance to increase brand loyalty and build a trust-based bond between the business and its customers. Moreover, by uniting the clients with common (brand-related) interests allows businesses to gather and group brand enthusiasts, who might share the info about the brand’s merchandise and spread the word further.