The Internet has taken over, and its evolution shows little signs of slowing down. People use the Internet for many reasons, such as for meetings, personal talks, entertainment, and gaming. According to a statistic by Broadband Search, approximately 5.25 billion people have access to the Internet. In other words, 66.2% of the population uses the Internet. It just goes to show that Internet use has increased massively in the last two decades.
Since everything is within the realms of the World Wide Web, online marketing provided companies with a great opportunity. They can use the Internet to provide quality customer service or inform their audience about their products, services, and brand. If you want a solid reputation for your business, you must include the Internet as part of your marketing strategies.
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing, also known as online marketing, describes the marketing activities that are conducted online. Internet marketing is a combination of many tactics and strategies, such as:
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Internet marketing allows you to develop strong relationships with your audience and attract more relevant business leads.
Types of Internet Marketing
1) Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is getting attention or attracting sales through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. It is one of the most popular types of Internet marketing because it is widely used in all social media platforms. Social media marketing can be broken into two marketing camps, i.e,. organic and paid.
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Organic social media marketing helps in developing long-term working relationships with customers to induce interest and maintain customer loyalty. The best way to do that is by creating an authority of your brand in your niche. You can engage with different community members and contribute essential insights to conversations.
Another vital step is to take advantage of strong customer relations. If your customers are satisfied, you can ask them to share your social media content on their timelines. This can attract more followers to your platform.
On the other hand, many businesses use paid social media marketing to promote their business. For example, Facebook allows you to create a dedicated Facebook ad that fulfills your marketing objectives.
2) Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is Internet marketing that allows you to improve your search engine rankings. Users optimize websites and digital content, which increases the number of visitors to a particular webpage.
When we talk about SEO, we usually talk about Google because it is the most popular search engine in the world today. Search engines work like “crawler bots” as they go through the entire website and build an index of available online content. Whenever people type a keyword on the search engine, Google provides the best and the most relevant results.
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There are two types of SEO strategies, i.e., on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is when you optimize your website content to improve your search engine ranking for targeted keywords. Here are some of the on-page SEO examples:
- Increasing your website speed
- Having a responsive website design
- Including your targeted keywords
- Structuring website content with title tags
Off-page SEO is when you increase your search engine rankings through methods outside your website content. It includes external links, such as brand mentions or social media shoutouts. The most important part of off-page SEO is the building of backlinks. If numerous websites link to your platform, Google would assume that your website has reliable content.
Strikingly has also played a part in helping users to maintain the SEO standards for their websites. We provide our users with an SEO checklist, which allows them to optimize their website from an SEO perspective. The checklist contains numerous factors, such as meta-titles, meta-descriptions, title tags, alt tags, etc.
3) Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of developing, distributing, and promoting various forms of content in an organized way. The primary objective is to attract, engage, or convert your target market into customers. This is one of the most popular types of Internet marketing because many businesses use it as part of their marketing plan. Content marketing is used in the following ways:
- Blog posts
- Videos (usually shared on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube)
- Industry reports and studies
- Infographics summarizing reports
- Ebooks
- Podcasts
- Case studies
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Content marketing also works with other forms of Internet marketing, such as SEO and social media marketing. You can promote your content on multiple social media platforms. Ensure you include hashtags on your social media poststo expand your reach.
On the other hand, SEO-optimized content is the best way to increase brand awareness and appear high in search engine rankings. For example, let’s say you write a blog post on “Best Online Games of 2022” and optimize your content with the keyword “online games.” When a user types online games in the search engine, your blog will have more chances to appear on the first page of Google search results.
4) Influencer Marketing
An influencer is any individual with a huge fan following on the Internet. Here are a few of them:
- Mainstream celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan
- Niche personalities such as Swiss tennis champion Roger Federer
- Digital marketing experts
- Micro-influencers
Influencer marketing is the process in which you work with influencers to promote a product, service, or brand. For example, influencers can create a story on their Instagram account dedicated to your brand.
If you study Internet marketing guides, you will realize that influencer marketing is only associated with more prominent brands. Larger brands could work with big-name celebrities. However, every brand is now using Influencer marketing to promote their products. According to the statistics of Influencer Marketing Hub, micro-influencers with 10,000 to 50,000 followers charge $100 and $500 for one Instagram post.
5) Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is also referral Internet marketing. It is a process in which a business creates a program that pays commissions to external websites for every online sale they generate.
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Strikingly has an affiliate program open to everyone. Anyone can join and earn commissions. Whether you use your website like a pro or not, you can join our affiliate program and earn up to 30% commissions upon every referral you make.
6) Email Marketing
Email marketing is using emails to send marketing messages to individuals. You send marketing emails to retain existing customers and attract new ones.
Although email marketing is not the most popular Internet marketing, you shouldn’t ignore its influence. It has an average return on investment of 122%, four times more than other online marketing types such as social media and paid search.
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If you want to start email marketing, you must have a list of email addresses of your customers. You can get them through the contact form you can display on your website. After capturing the email addresses, you can nurture your subscribers through quality content, discounts, and coupons.
You can also increase your leads through email segmentation. Segmentation allows you to create groups of subscribers based on their buying preferences. You can create email campaigns for each segment that:
- Welcome new subscribers
- Ask happy customers for a review
- Engage consistently with inactive subscribers
- Gather valuable feedback from current customers
Steps to Develop an Internet Marketing Strategy
1) Identify Your Goals
The best Internet marketing plan revolves around a set of goals. If you don’t establish your goals, your online marketing strategies will fail to produce the desired results.
When you develop your online marketing strategy, you must understand what you want to achieve. The possible objectives you can set are as follows:
- Driving traffic to your website
- Boosting social media engagement
- Earning calls
- Encouraging downloads
- Increasing subscribers
- Netting online sales
2) Define Audience
To create an appropriate marketing strategy, you must identify your target audience. You must identify the set of audiences who are likely to convert to your website or are interested in your products and services. You can document the information regarding your target audience in terms of the following attributes:
- Demographics
- Socioeconomic status
- Interests
- Hobbies
- Occupation
- Buying habits
You will cannot generate satisfactory results with your marketing campaigns if you don’t target the right people.
3) Identify Strategies to Use in Internet Marketing Campaign
Once you have identified your target audience, it is time to look into the marketing strategies that can benefit your business. As a marketing person, you would like to use those strategies that help you get to your target audience.
Your target audience will engage with your business through search engines. You must check out some of the most competitive keywords in your industry. Moreover, you should know what social media platforms they use.
You must also consider your business budget while prioritizing your internet marketing strategies. You must look for marketing strategies that fit your budget. Otherwise, you will be overspending on unnecessary business factors.
4) Monitor Your Strategies
To drive the best results from your marketing strategies, you must analyze the data properly.
Online monitoring tools, such as Google Analytics, can help you track the record of your data from your online marketing strategies. Through Google Analytics, you can track the following aspects:
- Number of people visiting your website
- Number of people clicking your ads
- Conversion rate
These metrics will help you understand the performance of your online marketing strategy. By monitoring these metrics, you will understand what is working and what is not working in your business plan.
You can use Strikingly’s built-in analytics on your website to check the performance of your marketing strategies. The reports provided by our website analytics give you the statistics of the current and new visitors to your website. You can measure the traffic sources, i.e., direct traffic, social media platforms, or from other websites.
Conclusion
People are spending more time on the Internet than ever before. All you need is a quality Internet connection and a portable device and you are ready to go. With technological evolution, they have involved Internet marketing as part of their business plans. They manage their business through a business website on their respective laptops or mobile phones.
Even though physical stores are still relevant in today’s marketing world, it doesn’t have the reach that you can get from an online website. If you want to promote your products and services on the Internet as well, you can start by building a website on Strikingly. By registering yourself on our platform, you can create a basic website with all the necessary website features for your plans.
