How Internet Marketing Can Help Grow Your Business

Digital marketing enables you to build relations with consumers and prospects. On an average, customers spend 7 to 8 hours online daily. Before starting online marketing for your business, the first step should always be to devise a digital marketing strategy keeping in mind your potential customers. Marketing mix is a highly recommended method where you need to employ a set of tactics while launching a new product or service in the market. Digital marketing services will help your business to reach target audience which you can select by age, demographics, gender etc. Return on Investment (ROI) is yet another crucial factor in an internet marketing campaign as it helps you to track revenue, profits and expenses.

Stay with us as we are going to explain you how online marketing can help grow your business:

1. The Rise of Internet for B2B & B2C

Internet is growing faster than ever. From Google searches to YouTube everything is dominated by Internet. People are not dependent on TV commercials now as they were before internet and often used to think with themselves, “Gee, that product must be as great as they say it is. I’ll go and buy it.” The trend has been changed now. Instead people do online research. They read customer reviews online and check comparisons on YouTube, Google or various social media networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This makes them real buyers.

In last 20 years, the computer retail channel has largely disappeared. E.g Metropolitan Boston has exactly one computer retailer location right now(Microcenter), the electronic chain store industry has now reduced to one giant online store (Best Buy). Also different hardware and software is sold online directly by the manufactures to the consumers. And whenever there is “distribution” it is through top online distributors like Amazon that handles all products from all manufacturers under one banner.

2. Internet Digital Marketing Plan for Your Business

The proper marketing plan must include the marketing channels you are targeting and your acquisition cost per customer. Also , determine your ad budgets based on your ROI and lifetime customer value (LTV). It’s not an investment, nor is it an expense but the moment it is performed rightly, it works. One of the main sales channels for eCommerce is Google Shopping. Success on Google Shopping and/or Amazon is essential to driving revenue for most of the new online retailers. Though Google Shopping is not a set and forget deal. It is a little tricky but if done correctly it can be very high ROI tactic.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Search Engine Optimization helps in enhancing the rankings or visibility of your website in search results. It plays an important role in moving the targeted search results up in rankings in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others. It is evident that the higher your ranking is in a search result, the more traffic you will receive.

Social Media Marketing:

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc. are the backbone of social media marketing. For effective social media marketing, you need to create business pages for your site and promote them so that the users can know about your products and services. It has been estimated that about 91% of mobile internet access is used for social media activities. So if your business is on social media, there are more chances of social media referrals for your business.

When you talk about marketing a business or building an online community it can be a bit tricky to know where to start as there are hundreds of active social networks. To attain the best out of your business, you ought to be well planned about which sites to use, and where to spend the most time and resources.

Facebook: It is extremely vibrant, consumer-focused social media networking platform. People use it heavily to stay in touch with friends and family.

-App integrations with games

– High engagement

-Fan pages integrate with newsfeeds

-Free and paid marketing solutions

-Sponsored post opportunities

-Strong performance in the mobile ad network

-Rich in multimedia

-Viral traffic driver

-Consumers exceptionally critical about ad targeting and banners

Twitter: Twitter is the micro-blogging platform for rapid and efficient distribution of information. Strength is in short-form communication. Twitter users are masters of condensing information into short spaces i.e. ’Hashtags’, for discovering and participating in new conversations.

Pinterest: Virtual pin board for curation of your favorite topics.

-Can be extremely strong referral traffic driver

-Strong skew towards female-focused demographic

-Visually engaging and friendly format

-Opportunity for community to share and pin products that they love

-Can be a challenging marketing medium for non-visual brands

-Self-promotion is a big no here

Quora: It is called as question and answer engine. The audience of entrepreneurs, marketers, engineers, VCs, and students are usually found on Quora.

-Genuinely curious and intelligent community

-Opportunity to promote and get distribution for blog posts

-Amazing opportunity to research topics in depth and to learn

-Requires dedicated time and effort

Linkedin: It is the largest professional business-to-business social media network. It is designed for networking and making new connections.

-1:1 outreach

-Market intelligence

-Employee recruitment

-A variety of paid channel solutions

-Interest-based groups

Youtube: The world’s biggest DIY video network. Indeed, it is the significant referral traffic driver.

E-Mail Marketing for B2B & B2C

A great way to convince the users to come back is by sending them an e-mail with right offers that are timely sent. However, it is not easy to get the email address of the customers. But you can obtain it with the help of offering information that is of real value. Having a sign-up option on every page is one of the best ways to get the email address of the customers. The bottom line of an email marketing strategy is personalization. The complete experience of the user should be prioritized and email subscribers towards should be ushered to conversion-focused goals.

Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC):

Effective PPC campaigns drive users with intent to purchase, making it more efficient than many traditional advertising platforms. Businesses bid on impressions for paid listings at the top of search engine results, paying on a per-click basis. Impressions are determined by user search query, with strategy revolving around which keyword bids yield the highest ROI.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM):

SEM is often used to describe efforts on Google’s AdWords platform and paid platforms on other search engines, such as Bing. This multifaceted term is also used by many marketers to describe all paid and organic efforts.

Mobile Marketing Strategy:

Mobile marketing is crucial for any business because you’ll end up losing customers if your website is compatible for desktop-only. While establishing an  internet marketing strategy, your approach to mobile should be prioritized. Apart from keeping track of the wants of your customers, also aim at where they are and what they might be doing while engaging with your brand. Instead of showing texts in bold fonts, use catchy pictures and visuals with users on mobile screens. Apps and mobile websites are two different things.

3. Develop Online Marketing Strategy

In order to start an online marketing campaign for any business, you must take into consideration a number of things such as:

• Possess a firm understanding of the product and experience of online marketing.
• Design a user-friendly and easy to use business website that displays your products so that customers can easily visit it.
• Work on various aspects required to boost your business online such as social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing etc.
• Decide the target market, the ways you will reach them and what services you will use according to the demand.
• Create a good reputation of your brand.
• Get feedback and follow-up from the customers

4. Understanding Your Target Audience

It is important to keep in mind that conversions happen only when targeted traffic gets the appropriate offer. To find the right end target customer for your business, you can talk directly to people, take surveys and use analytics data. These methods will help you to get information about the audience and you can employ it in your product development and positioning.

5. Keeping Up With Ecommerce Marketing Trends:

All industries evolve, but Internet marketing tends to mature at a very high speed. Search engines and advertising platforms are constantly changing their requirements, rules, and algorithms that determine results. As such, it’s very important to stay updated with important changes. Some extremely successful SEO tactics, for instance, can become liabilities over a period of time. As Google and other search engines refine their algorithms to deliver the highest-quality results, it’s critical to monitor these developments and make sure your store is compliant. Algorithm updates can also offer opportunities. Hummingbird increased the importance of semantic search, allowing SEOs to rely less on exact-match keywords. Less stringent keyword requirements lead to more creativity, and high-ranking product results today are not as reliant on an inclusion of precise product keywords. Other updates have favored websites with quality informational content, increasing the importance and opportunity of utilizing blogs, buying guides, and other forms of content.

6. Digital Marketing ROI Vs Traditional Marketing ROI

There is a stark difference between the cost of traditional marketing and digital marketing. You can end up spending high in traditional marketing as it includes the costs of advertisements on magazines, television, direct mail etc. Also, there is no certain way of knowing how effective the campaign is going to be for the business. On the other hand, digital marketing platforms have a vast amount of customer base that involves Google ads, social networking sites, video marketing, websites, content marketing, banner ads etc.

7. Hire a Digital Marketing Professional/Internet Marketing Agency

Hiring a digital marketing consultant or an internet marketing agency is as necessary as hiring any professional like a lawyer or a doctor. These professionals have years of experience in digital marketing and keep an eye on the latest Google trends and updates. They can help you in developing such an internet marketing plan that fulfills all your objectives and makes your businesses successful.

Keep in mind the aforementioned strategies as you start working on your online marketing plan and you will soon witness the growth of your business like never before!