What Is Online Marketing?
Online marketing is a very efficient medium of advertising and marketing the products or services of a business over Internet. It is the process of creating, delivering & communicating the value of a product or service and making it relevant to customers so that they become compelled to consider buying a product or a service online. Online marketing is also termed as Internet marketing, Web marketing, or simply, OLM.
Difference between Traditional and Online Marketing
It is not interrupting. The user can attend online advertises as per his/her convenience and preferences.It can provide maximum information about the product or service, offers, and transactions.
It may leave users’ queries unanswered as printing or narrating complete information about the product or service may not be always feasible.
It is more cost-effective.It is fast and efficient for brand building.
| Traditional Marketing | Online Marketing |
| It is difficult to measure. You cannot know how many people read your advertise and how many took favorable action upon viewing it. | It is measurable. You can know the number of people who viewed the online advertise, and the number of ones who purchased the product. |
| It is not cost-effective. | It is not so good for brand building. |
| In some way, it interrupts regular activities of users such as television advertises interrupt the program you are watching, billboards divert focus of the driver, etc. |
Components or Strategies of Online Marketing
Online marketing has various components as shown in the illustration below –
- Market Research
- SEO or Search Engine Optimization
- Pay per Click (PPC)
- Social Media Advertising
- Blogs
- Email or Newsletter Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- User Branding Experience
- Interactive Advertising
1. Market Research
Business organizations need to set clear objectives and strong market understanding. To research the market, you can −
- Review your website traffic.
- Review the queries asked by your existing customers.
- Identify the customers’ pain points.
- Prepare a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) with their clear answers and align them to customers’ pain points.
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Search Engine Optimization (Seo)
It is the activity of optimizing web pages or complete website in order to make them search engine friendly, thus getting higher position in the search results.
The higher a page ranks, the more visible it is, and therefore will receive more traffic. It contributes to overall rankings of the keywords through influencing factors such as appropriate titles, meta descriptions, website speed, links, etc.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is an excellent process you can use to organically bring more visitors to your website. Generally speaking, performing SEO for your website will ensure that it appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine when prospects are online searching for products, services, or knowledge related to the content on your site.
There are many creative and technical ways to utilize SEO for your website, from incorporating keywords into your text & content to simply linking internally throughout your site to your other pages, articles and resources.
However, it’s still very important to understand that search engines are still only robots. Sophisticated robots, but robots nonetheless – and the first understanding of what a web page is about is going to be based on the text on the page.
There are a number of tools you can use if you decide to follow the path of the SEO, but I highly recommend the following:
- Top Seo Tips to Improve Website Ranking and To Boost Traffic
- Top Undisputed Ways Of How to Increase Website Traffic Fast
3. Pay Per Click
It’s one of the best lead generation techniques because once your campaign is optmized, you’re able to calculate a fairly accurate and predictable return on investment.
With Ppc, the entire goal is to turn passive viewers into interested prospects, and interested prospects into buyers.
To do this you must first entice users to click on an advertisement and send them to the perfect landing page with copy that matches the ad .
The idea is that you want to keep similar phrasing throughout the experience so your new visitor stays grounded throughout the experience.
Pay per click ads are no longer just displayed on the sidebar on search engines, but can be displayed on niche websites, or act as “sponsored stories” on social networks.
They can be displayed as product listings, or as a video advertisement. They are targeted, either by search term, profile interest, or by the website on which the pay per click ad is displayed.
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Social Media Advertising
Social media can be very useful to promote your brand and there is no investment in doing so. We can create profile or business page on all the social websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
It assures that you remain connected to the existing or potential customers, build awareness about the products and services, create interest in and desire to buy your product, and interact with the customers on their own terms and convenience.
Sharing and interacting through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, can do wonders for your business and at little to no cost, depending on how you use it.
We can also use other websites which run social forums for discussion where people posts messages and engage into conversation.
Utilizing Social Media platforms can increase your brand awareness, credibility, conversion opportunities and traffic to your website while allowing you to connect more deeply by creating sharing opportunities with your target audience(s).
5. Blogs
Blogs are web pages created by an individual or a group of individuals. They are updated on a regular basis. You can write blogs for business promotion.
Whether featured on your website or standing on its own, a blog is an invaluable way to delight and educate prospects & clients and build credibility in your industry.
It will also help you generate and nurture leads through calls-to-action featured in your articles, as well as improve client retention by developing a relationship with current clients. And if you’re a locally-run business, it can be a great way to connect with your community.
Blogs can improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rankings by including keywords for your industry in the blog article URLs, headlines, content, etc. It helps search engines index your blog for the content you want to be known for, and visitors to go to appropriate pages within your site. It is like booster for your online business.
6. Email Marketing
You can interact with the customers to answer their queries using automatic responders and enhance the customer experience with your website.
Offer the options such as signing-in to subscribe to our newsletter. You can make the emails catchy and crisp, so that they don’t make recipients annoyed. Also, you can use selected best words in the subject line to boost the open rate.
Email marketing is a great, inexpensive way to focus on long-term nurture for your leads and for you to generate a high return on your marketing investments, as well as increase brand loyalty for existing clients or customers.
.One major disadvantage for email marketers is the constant evolution of spam filters in email programs. Companies must also make ensure their program does not violate spam laws
7. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is the act of selling someone else’s product, or having someone else sell your product for you. This is purely based on commission and is a good way to get business. You can offer commission to different website owners to do the advertisement of your product on their websites or you can also earn money by doing the same thing on your own website by joining the affiliate program of big brands like Amazon.com
Many affiliate advertisers will provide their own unique content in addition to the affiliate product to build the value of the sale. First, they must create a product that is useful then find the right people to sell their product and offer a commission that is enticing.
8. User Experience Branding
UxB is done by the person who develops the “look and feel” that packages the content.The goal of the UxB is to develop experiences that are intuitive and “sticky”, keeping the user on the site for as long as possible.
Graphic Design, User interface design, Information Architecture and web development all play critical roles into this discipline. But perhaps the most important aspect of User Experience Branding is that the every aspect of the design accurately reflects the company’s brand character and experiences across all customer touch points (including brick and mortar locations)
For more resources on User Experience Branding
9. Interactive Advertising
With web technologies evolving every day, an emerging group of marketers take to creating advertising that requires users to interact with the website. This could require the user to upload a photo, video or audio to create a “branded” experience. Every day there are branded, interactive advertisements that give the user something to “play” with.
Advantages And Benefits Of Online Marketing
Cost Effective –
The biggest advantage of using the internet is its cost effectiveness. You do not have the recurring costs of property rental and maintenance. There is no need to purchase stock for display in a store. You can order stock according to demand, keeping your inventory costs low.
Reach-
By marketing on the Internet, you can overcome barriers of distance. You can sell goods in any part of the country without setting up local outlets, widening your target market. You can also build an export business without opening a network of distributors in different countries.
Easy and Quick Analysis –
Online marketing allows for statistics to be measured more effectively and easily and at a lower cost. Virtually all elements of an online marketing campaign can be traced and tested in some way. Tracking and measuring can be done almost instantaneously since online marketing encourages interaction by clicking on the ad and visiting the website, as well as other target actions.
Faster and Flexible –
Online marketing is faster than traditional forms of advertising, reaching a targeted audience within a matter of days and in some cases, hours. It is flexible where campaigns can be altered to test new markets, evaluate new programmes and make changes more specific to a targeted market.
Personalization-
Internet marketing enables you to personalize offers to customers by building a profile of their purchasing history and preferences. By tracking the web pages and product information that prospects visit, you can make targeted offers that reflect their interests.
Target Audience Closeness –
Online advertising enables marketers to get close to a targeted audience and remain that way. Internet consumers are growing in numbers and staying online for longer periods. A complete marketing cycle from can be achieved with online marketing offering the opportunity to create an initial brand awareness right through to customer purchases.
Store Never Closes –
Internet marketing enable you to be open around the clock without worrying about store opening hours or overtime payments for staff. Offering your product on the internet is also convenient for customer. They can browse your online store at any time and place orders when it is convenient for them.
Relationships-
Internet provides an important platform for building relationship with customers and increasing customer retention levels. Emailing customers regularly with special, personalized offers helps to maintain the relationship. You can also invite customers to submit product reviews on your website, helping to build a sense of community.
Disadvantages of Doing Business on the Internet
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Legal Laws –
When you do business on the internet, you are subject to the laws of the countries where customer can access your website, according to the entrepreneur website. If you have materials that should not be accessed by people under a certain age, you have to follow certain legal provisions before your site can go live.
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Trust –
Consumers are sometimes wary of purchasing products online. You cannot establish a rapport with customers in person when you run an internet business, so you need to do what you can to establish trust in other ways.
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Imitator –
One of the problems is that it can be expensive to copyright or patent your website ideas globally. If you create a successful internet business, there is a good chance that someone will try to copy it. The inability to protect your ideas can be a disadvantage of doing business on the internet.
