Marketing isn’t the same as it was ten years ago. With digital advancements, marketing is no longer all about billboards and full-page spreads in the local magazine. Are you making the most of online marketing opportunities? If you’re not, you’re losing out on plenty of attention from potential customers and clients.
People are spending more of their day on social media and browsing the internet. If you’re marketing strategically online, you’ll have a much better chance of catching their attention. Your competitors are doing it, so should you!
What Is Online Marketing?
Online marketing is any marketing that takes place on the internet. It covers a range of marketing and advertising activities, including social media and content marketing. Businesses of all sizes are maximizing their reach online by making use of this accessible form of promotion. The great thing about online marketing is that you can reach a more targeted audience, which means you are more likely to get your message in front of the audiences who matter to you. Plus, since much of the marketing done online is free, this is a particularly great thing for small businesses to get involved with.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is when a business produces content that isn’t directly promotional. Instead of promoting the business, this content demonstrates your industry expertise and builds brand awareness by providing value to your customers. Content marketing is usually educational and useful to the target audience. For example, an orthodontist might write a blog post on the psychology behind smiles. It’s not directly pushing or promoting dental work, but it’s providing intriguing content that positions that business as a trusted source. This type of material, when done well, subtly positions the business as a thought leader in the industry.
It can take time to produce this type of content. You might want to hire a freelance writer to create relevant content for you, particularly at first. This can be a worthwhile investment, since they will also know how to write for SEO and sharability, meaning you could get more traction from your content. If your brand is producing valuable and fascinating content, it’s highly likely that your audience will share it online. This provides additional marketing for your business, with potential for more clicks through to your website.
Once people hit your website, there’s a high chance they’ll leave and never come back. It’s not anything you’ve done wrong. It’s just how the internet works. After all, there are millions of webpages out there! Capture your visitors’ ongoing attention by encouraging them to sign up to your email newsletters. This can be as simple as a pop-up or a well-placed call to action on your site.
Paid Advertising
If you’ve spent any time searching the web, you will likely have seen the bold options at the top of your search engine labeled ‘ad’. This is a form of paid online advertising, where companies pay to reach the top of the search engine. This has enormous benefits since users are more likely to click the first options that come up for that search term. If you have a budget, you could consider placing adverts like this to capture the attention of customers who are searching the net for your product or service. Google Ads can be used to set up paid search advertising in this way, and so much more. You can also seek the help of automation for Google Ads experts, to automate your search campaigns and boost your conversion rates.
Social Media
Everyone uses social media nowadays, and your business should be no exception. It’s one of the best ways to market yourself, as there’s no filter between you and your audience. You get to control your messaging and how your brand is presented.
You should be generating a robust online presence and building followers. But this will take time. If you feel like you don’t have time to engage on social media, you could use a scheduling tool to automate your posts, so you only have to generate content once a week. You’ll still need to put time aside to engage with your audience. After all, that’s another significant benefit of social media – you get to communicate directly with your customers. Just bear in mind, users on social media expect a reasonably quick response since it’s a fast moving platform.
Not every business owner feels confident in social media. If this is you, you could hire a freelance or digital agency to support you to create a social media presence that gets your message out there.
