The coming of the internet changed the business world beyond recognition. One of the integral elements of today’s promotional efforts is web marketing.  Internet marketing has been pushing out other forms of promotional campaigns due to its low cost and accessibility.

Even the local coffee shop has its own webpage and web-marketing specialists. Why don’t you? Internet marketing is diverse and somewhat complicated. Compartmentalizing what you know is the key to developing prominent internet marketing strategies.

 

What Is Web Marketing?

Web marketing is a collective set of methods for promoting your business on the internet. Any marketing efforts conducted online could generally be considered as a form of web marketing.

Marketers use online marketing as it is a cost-effective medium to promote businesses.

Be it a handkerchief factory, an art college or a travel blog, anyone who wants to attract clients can benefit with an effective internet marketing campaign.

Each business has its own goals and purposes, and one of them should be to drive as many people in your target market as you can to your website.

In turn, you want to convert this website traffic into leads, customers and eventually form partnerships (such as referral marketing or affiliates).

Web marketing helps you to do just this.

You should also track the results of your digital marketing efforts so that you can improve it in future.

Whether you are a beginner or an advanced marketer, you will find web marketing a useful arsenal for your business’s overall marketing campaign.

 

Going Deeper: 7 Types of Web Marketing

Each self-respecting marketer should know about the below types of web marketing on the Internet.

 

1. Display Advertising

Do you know the boxes with ads you see on most websites you visit? They are an example of display advertising. This form of advertising uses texts, banners, logos, videos, photos, and other graphics to convey a commercial message.

Display advertising appears on the sections of the websites specifically created for ads. Many popular sites earn money thanks to selling their space for display advertising.

A preferred form of display advertising is native advertising. Native advertising involves placing banners so they blend in with the website surroundings instead of jumping out at the visitor in an aggressive manner.

2. Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the most effective marketing strategies. A user types in the keywords into a search engine and gets certain search results. The advertiser pays the search engine to display the ad near these results.

This marketing strategy is keyword oriented. The advertiser provides a list of keywords that trigger the ad appearance every time a user types one of them in. Such ads come in various formats, including text-based and visual options.

Before appearing next to the search results, all ads go through an ad auction. The auction takes into account several factors, including the cost of your PPC ads, the keyword relevance, and advertisement quality. Not all paid ads for a certain keyword appear every time that keyword is entered.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the key part of any online marketing strategy that involves a website. There are hundreds of special tricks and approaches to making a website appear on the top 10 pages of a Google search.

Search Engine Optimization involves improving search rankings, driving traffic to the website, and increasing its authority level. Content optimization, link building, keyword searching, and website architecture are just a few components of this science.

Driving the right traffic to your website and keeping it there is the main goal of search engine optimization.

4. Social Media Marketing

The popularity of social media allows many companies to choose social media marketing over other strategies. Over 1,870 million users visit their Facebook accounts every month. Twitter gets 317 million active users per month.

Social media platforms put the target audience at the marketer’s fingertips. There are many different approaches to increasing the brand awareness through social media. They mostly have to do with creating and sharing interesting content.

Each platform offers its own marketing and advertising tools, both free and paid, to improve the campaign. Social media provides marketers a useful opportunity to interact directly with their target audience.

5. Email Marketing

This digital marketing approach has been around longer than all the above methods. Even though social media and messengers are trying hard to push email out of its niche, it remains the most popular method of online communication.

About 150,000 emails are sent every minute, making this method a grand opportunity to offer products and to attract customers. Email marketing strategy involves creating engaging messages to appeal to clients.

Email newsletters, direct emails, and transactional emails are a part of the strategy. The trick is to create an email that appeals to the reader since, in the modern world, people are much pickier about emails than before. At the same time, email engines have gotten good at identifying spammy mail.

6. Referral Marketing

For many businesses, such as house cleaning firms or dental clinics, referral marketing is one of the most important advertising strategies. Referral marketing is essentially the word-of-the-mouth approach. A client who already uses your services refers a friend or family member.

Referral marketing strategy includes stimulating the current customers to make new referrals. Usually, a company offers some incentive for bringing a friend. Even the most perfectly designed ad can’t attract a customer as well as a friend’s recommendation can.

7. Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay Per Click advertising is part of the search engine marketing strategy. You create an attractive ad and make a bid for certain keywords. If you win the ad auction, your ad will appear alongside the search engine results containing the keyword.

Making the highest bid doesn’t guarantee your add being displayed. Other things such as relevancy and design are considered. A search engine gets a payment every time a user clicks your advertisement. PPC advertising is the fastest digital marketing strategy.

8. Content Marketing

Content marketing is using content to generate traffic to your website and lead the potential clients to take advantage of your products. Content marketing campaign involves using keywords and the right content structure to assist search engine optimization.

Creating viral, well-structured, and keyword-rich content is one of the best strategies for marketing a website. The goal of content marketing is to get the target audience interested in your product. The content can include texts, images, and videos.

Engaging content is vital for promoting a website and increasing the conversion rate. When it comes to search engine optimization, content is “king”.

9. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of referral marketing. You pay another website a commission every time it makes a referral to your website. Many companies opt for creating an affiliate program, which allows anyone to sign up and become an affiliate.

When a user clicks on the affiliate link and buy something from your website, the person who placed the link gets paid. The size of the fee can vary depending on the authority level of the website. Obviously, the more popular your affiliate is, the more money you would have to pay for the referral.

One of the most popular companies using the referral program to attract customer is Amazon.

10. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing involves creating a strategy to attract the ideal customer to your business. As opposed to outbound marketing, it doesn’t look for a customer but helps a potential client find your business through the channels you create.

Inbound marketing is the most effective way of converting a complete stranger to a customer. The content you create for your inbound marketing strategy helps the person make a decision about buying even before he or she is ready to make a purchase. The key to this strategy is the right content.

<<Difference between content marketing and inbound marketing>>

11. Video Marketing

This strategy is part of content marketing. Video marketing involves creating an attractive video to promote your brand.

In the recent years, video content has been earning popularity. Videos boost an audience’s attention since many people process visual information much better than text.

 

Why Is Online Marketing Important

The advantage of web marketing are straightforward. You get a chance to advertise your business to a huge audience at the lowest cost. In the 21^st century, business that doesn’t employ an internet marketing campaign is going to lose out to its competitors.

Web marketing allows your company to:

• Global Outreach – Internet marketing allows you to reach target audiences all over the world without spending a fortune on the campaign. The more prospective customers you reach, the more chances you have for profit boosting and business development.
• Multitasking Options – Web marketing allows you to employ many different strategies simultaneously to attract several groups of potential customers.
• The Right Timing – Digital marketing works around the clock, even when you are asleep. This brings you twice as many opportunities as other marketing campaigns. The web marketing erases borders and time zones.
• Customized advertising – Web marketing tools allow you to customize advertisements for each potential customer group without any effort on your part. Personalized ads work better than general campaigns.
• Improved Communication – Web marketing helps you build relationships with your clients in a way you could never achieve offline.
• Result Tracking – A big variety of online marketing tools allow you to track the results of your campaign. They can help you understand whether you are going the right way and make changes timely.
• Demographic Targeting – Online marketing allows you to search for clients based on demographic factors. You can define and find your ideal clients for inbound marketing. You can also improve your targeting methods for certain regions.
• Automation – Digital marketing is highly automated. A variety of marketing tools allow you to automate the marketing process to free up extra time for other important issues.
• Simple Adjustments – Web marketing campaigns are easy to adjust by spending a minimal amount of money.

 

The most important reason to use web marketing is that it’s not going anywhere. Internet marketing is developing at the speed of light and it’s becoming impossible not to take advantage of it.

How to Develop and Implement A Internet Marketing Plan

Developing a marketing plan requires seven simple steps:

• Determine what services you can offer and the problems you can solve for a client. Define reasons why a customer should choose you over the competition.
• Identify your target audience. Determine what your ideal customer’s traits and interests are in order to appeal to his or her needs.
• Learn about the competitors, who target your ideal customer. Check out what they are offering. What do you have to offer that they don’t?
• Create a brand statement. What are you offering? How is your company different from others? How can you solve the problems your potential clients face?
• List your marketing goals. Write down what you are planning to achieve with the marketing campaign and divide it into stages. Draft the stages in such a way that they can be easy to evaluate
• Determine the marketing budget. The success of your marketing campaign heavily depends on how much money you are willing to spend. In addition, some of the tools may not be available to the companies with a strict budget.
• Identify the tactics you will use to implement your marketing plan. Which types of web marketing are suitable for your business? Which tools are you planning to use to achieve your goals? List the tactics you will use for each stage of your campaign.

 

Implementing it takes five more steps:

• Analyze the potential market for products and services and get insight about the competition.
• Gather details about the potential customers using the information you received when looking for a target audience.
• Manage the campaign by tracking success. Monitor the results of every stage of the campaign to make timely changes.
• Maintain the current customers in order to improve the campaign. Provide customer support and draft offers for existing clients.
• Use analytics software by monitoring the performance of the campaign.

 

Common Web Marketing Challenges and Ways to Deal With Them

Each year, web marketers face new challenges. Knowing how to deal with them before you start the process can help you create an optimized web marketing campaign. Here are some examples.

• Trying to Kill 10 Birds With One Stone

The variety of web marketing strategies is overwhelming. Many marketers are spreading themselves too thin trying to take advantage of all of them. As a result, they end up with mediocre results on all fronts.

What to do: Choose your strategies wisely. For social media marketing, identify your audience’s needs to find out which two platforms can bring you the best results. Don’t have too many customers? Cut down the time you spend on referral marketing.

• Keeping the Content Fresh

An ideally designed website with engaging content won’t bring any results in case you don’t update it. Keeping the content fresh takes up an immense amount of time and doesn’t allow the marketer to deal with more important issues.

What to do:  Hire an employee to deal with the content. If that’s not possible, leave 15 minutes a day for content refreshment. You can also take advantage of your readers. Allow them to post questions and answers on your website.

• Struggling With Low Conversion Rate

Many marketers struggle with turning a big amount of traffic into actual sales.  If your marketing campaign is attracting a big volume of customers but doesn’t bring any revenue, it needs to be tweaked.

What to do: Reevaluate your website optimization. Make the structure of a website work for you by leading the client to make a purchase. Reevaluate your target audience. Perhaps you are attracting the wrong audience. High bounce rates are ruining your rankings.

• Finding The Right Software for Your Needs

New marketing tools are appearing faster than mushrooms after the rain. The feedback about new technologies is scarce and hard to grasp. Marketers focus too many efforts on finding the right technology and often fail.

What to do: Getting feedback from the colleagues at professional forums is one answer. Another one is to take advantage of such reputable review sites as Crozdesk and Capterra.

Digital Marketing Careers

Web marketing is a niche that involves an impressive amount of work. There are many different career opportunities for web marketing experts. Some of the jobs related to web marketing are:

• Social Media Marketing Manager –Deals with all the aspects of social media marketing, including content creation, brand awareness increase, campaign planning and goal setting, and search engine optimization.
• Digital Marketing Manager – Responsibilities include development, implementation, optimization, and management of an online marketing campaign. Such expert improves brand awareness, increase website traffic, and finds potential customers.
• SEO Specialist – Analyzes and reviews the website content and structure to see how well it ranks on the search engines. This specialist makes changes to improve the traffic and page ranking within search engines.

 

Blogging vs eCommerce vs Affiliate Marketing: Which One Pays More?

Affiliate marketing, blogging, and eCommerce are the most popular ways to earn money on the Internet. If you want to make money online, which one should you choose?

Running a Blog: Advantages

• Easy to start and doesn’t require almost any investments.
• Allows you to create valuable information for an audience.
• With the right approach, the monthly income can be much higher than affiliate marketer’s.
• The more you work, grow the followers’ base, and improve SEO rankings, the more you earn.

 

Running a Blog: Disadvantages

• Requires a lot of time, research, dedication, and effort.
• Requires excellent writing skills and imagination.
• Can’t help you make money on the short-term bases.
• Not all niches generate desirable profit.

 

Affiliate Marketing: Advantages

• Doesn’t require dealing with customer service, taxes, payments, processing, and other matters required for eCommerce.
• You can get formidable amounts for just one successful conversion.
• Affiliate marketers make substantial amounts of money.
• You can achieve results almost immediately.

 

Affiliate Marketing:  Disadvantages

• Lack of control over your income since the partner can refuse your services at any time.
• The rules of your affiliate collaboration can change at any time.
• Affiliate partners can use the first conversion for further remarketing leaving you out of the loop.

eCommerce: Advantages

• You have complete control over your business.
• You set the prices, handle customer service, set the working hours.
• You can get profits much faster than from blogging or affiliate marketing.

 

 

eCommerce: Disadvantages

• The venture may fail entirely or start making profits after a year or more.
• Requires substantial investments.
• You have to provide customer service. Depending on the type of store you have, it may be extremely time-consuming.

Which one is better? Depends on your goals.

• Not afraid of making an investment and want to make money immediately? Choose eCommerce.
• Want to make passive money without too much effort and willing to abide by someone else’s rules? Pick Affiliate Marketing.
• Wish to become well known and have an audience with chances of high income in the future? Blogging is for you.

 

Free Online Web Marketing Courses

If you are planning to do some web marketing in the nearest future and need extensive information on the matter, these free web-marketing courses that include video and PDF content may be of some help:

• Google’s Online Marketing Challenge – Create online marketing campaign using Google AdWords
• Quick Sprout’s Content Marketing Videos – Choose between videos for beginners and experts.
• WordStream’s PPC University – Build and hone PPC and web marketing skills.
• Udemy’s Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises – Learn to create leads and sales by using content marketing.
• EDX’s Social Media Marketing – Learn how to develop and implement SSM strategies.
• Udemy’s Inbound Marketing Certification – Find out how to generate leads with inbound marketing.
• Allison’s Diploma in E-Bussiness – A ten-hour course on digital marketing.

 

Final Thoughts

Web marketing is a complicated science that requires a serious approach. Having the proper tools at hand can simplify the process. In the modern world, there is no way to avoid online marketing.

If you can’t fight them, it’s time to join. Learn how to develop and implement the best digital marketing plan today and watch your business grow.