Online Marketing - The Key To A Successful Business

Have you heard of Chandler Bolt? If you know online marketing, he is like the light bringer who earned millions from Internet Marketing and is helping others to make money as well.

If you don’t want to step out of your houses for your business / blog promotion, you don’t have to.

Nowadays even introverts can earn hundreds of dollars sitting back at their sofa.

Like the old days, connections hold similar value for business promotion. But now, one can get involved in networking with their computers. Now working with online marketing is fun as you get to do your work at par with your own sweet time.

Not sure how you can earn tons of money from the comfort of your home?

I will take you through the different steps of digital marketing that helped me achieve this position. Here in this article, I have described internet marketing in detail. This blog is the ideal usher for people who seek success in blogging and e-business.

What Do You Understand By The Online Marketing?

Are you new to the world of internet marketing?

If yes, first understand the concept that makes it clear that online and digital marketing are different platforms with certain similar features.

So what is it exactly?

TNMedia defines online marketing as, “any tool, strategy or method of getting the company name out to the public. The advertisements can take many different forms and some strategies focus on subtle messages rather than clear-cut advertisements.”

We can simplify the term and describe it as the efforts taken with internet support to establish your company’s brand name and reach-out to more people online.

Any activity you do over the internet to grab your target clients’ attention can be considered as this type of marketing.

In this article, we will discuss all 7 sub-categories of e-marketing. Know them, understand them, and apply them in your business.

An Overview on Online Marketing

We come across 7 different sub-categories of e-marketing when we promote a website, blog, or e-business site.

Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the way of optimizing your web content to secure a high rank in the search engine.
Search Engine Marketing: SEM is nothing but SEO’s paid version. This process is limited to Google and similar competitors.
Content Marketing: This is the process of reaching out to target clients with potential content and media files.
Social Media Marketing: It is the process of connecting and engaging with the target audience with different channels on social media.
Pay Per Click: PPC advertising works very similar to SEM. There is no limitation here. Here, you create advertisements on social media platforms and integrate your content with their feed naturally. Every time a person clicks on your web link, you receive payment for it.
Affiliate Marketing: It is a process where marketing happens with reference. You get potential leads from your affiliates and share your profit percentage with them.
E-mail Marketing: This the oldest form of e-marketing. For over two decades, people have been using e-mail to promote their products, share deals with customers, and converting them into business.

Clearly, you can understand how vast the topic is. Consider Social media platforms. It is just one sub-category with so many options – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and so many more.

The list is long. Try not to drown in it.

To excel in this field, you need strong handholding, which I am here to provide. Here you will get examples from every category and for various niches.

1. Search Engine Optimization

While we discuss Search Engine Optimization techniques, one name is worth mentioning -Brian Dean, the SEM ninja. He dominates the SEO space with his site Backlinko, outranking all other major sites like Wikipedia, Copyblogger, etc. He has shared valuable information on step-by-step guides to improve your SEO performance.

He doesn’t discuss what SEO is and how it works. His blogs at Backlinko give you an actual insight into SEO implementation and backlinking for monetizing your website.

So what exactly is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO is the online content-optimizing process that improves your rank on the search engine based on the result of certain keywords searched by users.

If you are not thorough with the SEO process, you can always refer to the guide given by Brian. He asks people to use a simple 5-step process to get your rank-

Issue a mind-blowing infographic
Choose simple yet an effective link prospecting
Display the infographic to your viewers
Induce prospects by providing them content free of cost
Arrange for the contextual links

The process looks very simple, isn’t it?

But it’s not as flowery as it appears. It’s a time-consuming and difficult process to follow.

Backlinking is definitely an effective option, but its complexity makes people avoid it. But those who know the trick to it have benefitted a lot.

But backlinking alone is not sufficient. You need to know about the two major constituents of SEO.

1. On-Page SEO

Did you know Google changes its algorithms almost 600 times in a year? Along with that, the user behavior changes as well.

It can be a tough affair to cope with such frequent changes and maintain your rank on the search engine.

don’t panic about the changes. There is always a constant factor – on-page SEO. They are not directly responsible for your rank but play an indirect role by estimating the average time spent on the website, the click-through rate. etc.

On-page SEO commonly optimizes title and meta description. For example, if I optimize the meta description and title tag of this blog and people type the keyword “online marketing”, my blog will appear on the search engine automatically.

Adding keywords to your title or meta description navigates the net users to your site. It plays a vital role in deciding the click-through rate. The higher CTR you get, the better are your chances of ranking high in the system.

Google focuses on user experience. So, they promote blogs with higher CTR to higher ranks.

If you want success in your business, you need to be aware of the elements of on-page SEO

Keyword Research
Crawl errors
Optimization of the page
Speed

Keyword Research – The Fundamental Online Marketing Strategy

The keyword is the word that you type on the search engine to look up a particular niche of content. There are two different forms of keyword used in the online field-

Short-tail Keywords: Short-tail Keyword or as otherwise called Head Keywords are short keywords of two or one words. But they are highly competitive. There is a predominance to search for such keywords in general.
Long-tail Keywords: When you have a keyword of 3-5 or more words, it is called a long-tail keyword. These keywords get you less traffic but have a better conversion rate.

If you want your website to draw more attention, SEO strategies require you to mix both the type of keywords in your content.

Not sure what keyword is best for optimizing your content?

Try using keyword research tools like Google AdWords Keyword Research or Moz Keyword Explorer. When you enter a keyword in their research panel, each of these tools expresses the keyword search volume on the search engine, the competition you are expected to face, clicks expected from organic search, and suggestions for a better keyword.

Crawl Errors

Crawl errors occurring from identical content or broken links are common. You will often see errors like “404 error” on the internet when you open certain websites. Such errors are likely to induce-

Reduced speed
Low ranking
Google penalties
Higher bouncing rate

You are likely to lose out on your web traffic if you have broken links for your blogs.

Do you want to heal such errors fast? Screaming frog is the fastest SEO tool that will fix all the harmful crawl errors in your content. The tool will tell you the source to crawl errors and the remedy to fix the problem.

Optimization Of The Page

Page Optimization is critical for SEO. Here you optimize the page based on certain keywords and the search engine requirement.

Always remember that your page’s performance can be affected by anything from internal links to the URLs used on the page.

Page optimization happens smoothly when you have the on-page SEO checklist for your reference.

Grasp Permalink URLs that are SEO-friendly
Try to start your content title with the Keyword
Impact with multimedia files
Add outbound links to the content
Place the keyword once in the first 100 words of the content
Use the H1 tag for your Title
Optimize the loading speed
Use H2 tags for your subheadings
Write keyword-rich meta description for SEO purpose
Optimize the content URL
Add internal linking to the content for better effect
Optimize the media files you add

Following these guides will surely help you in adding context for Google and structuring it in a user-friendly manner.

Enhance The Page Speed

One of the major factors that affect your web page’s traffic is page speed. If your content is not loading fast enough, your rank is sure to dip. For better SEO, you need a higher speed. Google prefers websites and its content to load at a speed.

Google Analytical reports show that when a page takes 1-3 seconds more time to load than the required speed, their profitability dips by 32%. If your page is running 10 seconds slow, it can even drop down to 123%.

Google has set the standards of page loading time at 3 seconds or lower. However, the majority of the websites you come across on the internet run slower than the established standard.

How can you improve your speed?

I suggest, go for the free Google tools like PageSpeed Insights and Test My Site. These tools dramatically improve speed by reducing the bounce rate.

2. Off Page SEO

Off-page SEO works in just the opposite concept as that of On-Page SEO.

To elaborate, these are the activities and factors which when done off-the-page, improves your website’s rank.

From social -media promotion, link development to content organization, everything enhances your Off-Page SEO.

The Off-Page SEO process involves-

Link development
Sharing over social platforms

Link Development

Building a link is a critical job. The Search Quality Senior Strategist of Google, Mr. Andrey Lipattsev, says that content and links are the two pillars of search engine ranking for any website. Even Brain Dean confirmed in Backlinko that website with good backlinking dominates the search engining rank.

Google recognizes a website as a strong authority based on the number of backlinks you have with other websites. It shows that the content you share on your website is relevant.

You must remember here that every link will not earn you the same rank. You need backlinks from 100 separate websites to earn the position. Apart from the number of links you earn, you also need to focus on the quality of those links.

Moz explains link building as a 90/10 rule where 90% of your time should be dedicated to developing strong and relevant content, whereas 10% should go for link development.

Everything is linked here. You need good content for quality links, quality links help you get more leads, and an increasing number of leads indicates higher sale value.

I feel adding influencers’ names from social media and your field is the best way to link with target audiences. You can earn more praise that way. Praises from influencers help in driving sales to your website. Mentioning and praising an influencer on your content helps in fast backlink development as the influencer shares your content repeatedly in different forums.

Sharing Over Social Platforms

Though it might not directly affect your rank, sharing your content over various social media platforms is great for Off-Page SEO. It is the best way to reach out to new audiences and spread awareness about your brand or blog.

However, when you share your content over social media, you need to do it regularly to keep people engaged. Or else, people are sure to lose interest in your content.

I understand it’s not always possible to get online and post new content daily. But what if, there was a tool to make your life easier?

Buffer is one such option where you can schedule content in advance.

Don’t simply post your content or share your website link over social media platforms like LinkedIn. I always find it more engaging when you write a crisp article against each share on your timeline. When you do so, all your connections get an alert on your new update. So, now they don’t have to come across an article while scrolling through their wall posts. People mostly tend to ignore wall posts, unless they are from relatives and colleagues. But when they get an alert from influencers, it is something like to go through.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

As I said before, SEM is a paid alternative for SEO.

While SEO is time-consuming, you can pay for your rank on the search engine. You don’t need to optimize the content, indulge in marketing, and slowly get the organic SEO effect. In fact, SEM results are the first options viewers get o see when they search for keywords on the search engine.

Naturally, you are likely to get more traffic. But it’s good to remember that you have actually paid for that traffic.

The rates for SEM varies with the keyword you choose. competitive keywords are of course more expensive here and can cost beyond hundreds of dollars.

If you can regain your advertisement costing, SEM is the best strategy for a higher rank on search engines.

If you want to score by using SEM, get ready to provide paid services and products.

It is not difficult to track your conversions here. You can set your goal and use the analytics to determine who bought your product, at what price, and check the profit level from your expenditure.

People who spent thousands on Google AdWords have successfully emerged with high ROI. Investors say that it is better than any stock market.

If you want to learn how to use Google AdWords to monetize your business with paid products, refer to the free YouTube courses by Jerry Banfield. This man managed to earn 4700% ROI from his investment in Google AdWords. Clearly, there is no better person to teach you SEM.

3. Content Marketing

Content marketing is nothing but timely providing your target audience with relevant valuable content.

So far, we spoke about the achievements and courses offer by Jean in SEO and Jerry in SEM. Jon Morrow is my choice when it comes to content marketing. He provides the best guidance on how to drive more traffic to your website with relevant content. Jon Morrow earns a million in a month from his blog. Clearly, he knows what he is talking about.

Similarly, if you want high revenue on your blog, you need to know your product or the content.

Jon knew he can attract readers if he shared his online marketing experience and lessons learned. He used focused on his blog content as a part of his marketing strategy. But he also knew that the count of readers will increase if he showed them how to implement those strategies and earn from blogging.

So, what tactics does he use for marketing.

Jon says the best way to promote your website or blog is to build a strong relationship with your readers. Engage with them, try e-mail marketing, and track your progress with Google Analytics. If you are not sure how to do that, refer to his step-by-step guidance from his blog SmartBlogger.

Why Opt For Content Marketing?

I regularly come across this question.

The answer is simple because it is directly related to SEO and hence your rank on search engines. In fact, content marketing is one of the two major factors responsible for the rank.

If you want popularity with organic SEO, you must focus on your content first.

HubSpot says, companies that post more than 16 pieces of content in a month, get higher traffic drive than the ones posting less.

More traffic at your website means more leads to convert, and the more your engage with these leads, the higher conversion, and revenue you get.

Content marketing has proven to be more efficient in driving sales than page optimization techniques. It will help you acquire new leads along with the repeat ones.

However, one should not expect overnight success. Your cost per lead is expected to drop by 80% in the first month of marketing. It can be a slow process, but if you seek viability for long, this is your chance.

Don’t think content marketing is only meant for blogging. Various forms of this marketing strategy exist around us.

Types Of Content Marketing

Content marketing doesn’t necessarily have to be blogging or writing. Starting from images, GIFs, compelling videos, blogs to Podcasts, everything falls under this category.

Some important forms of contents that boost marketing are-

Viral campaigns
E-books
Articles and blogs
Infographics
Commenting on blogs
Slideshare
Audio and video bites
Case Reports
e-mail subscription, and many more

Your content can be anything that explains your motive and is relevant to your niche. It can be photography or videography, reports, and even blogging.

Contents are meant to serve certain purposes. Whatever you choose for your content, must serve that purpose fruitfully-

Create brand awareness: Content marketing should be able to create brand awareness among the target audience so that they recognize you by name.
Remains as social evidence and builds credibility: You can earn instant credibility from content sharing if you share valuable and relevant content.
Drive more traffic and sales: The main aim of good content is to drive more traffic to your website or blog and generate high ROI.

another important aspect of the marketing strategy is to understand the market demand. You need to select your niche accordingly.

Customer’s Journey For Mapping Your Content

You must be confused about how you get traffic on your website? Well, the process is complicated so, to get a clear picture, I suggest mapping your content from the customer’s journey.

There are 3 steps to a buyer’s journey from the moment to search to the final final payment.

The phase of awareness: It is the initial phase of searching where you learn about different brands from your search results and makes up your mind.
The consideration stage: Where you shortlist products and check for their relevance. Buyers generally consider products that meet their requirements in their budget.
A final decision: This phase comes once you are convinced about the credibility of the brand.

To win your customers, you need to align your marketing strategies along with this journey. That’s why experts say building a relationship is important for marketing. It helps you gain new customer’s confidence.

There are a total of 41 types of content that sell in the market. The common ones being, articles and blogs, video marketing, Product guides, analytical tools, etc.

Publishing And Organizing Content

Creating relevant content is not sufficient alone to create an impact. Your content needs publishing and syndication on different platforms.

The best way to boost traffic is by sharing your content over social media.

You can schedule a post by using tools like Buffer to ensure that is a constant flow of content.

This leads us to the next phase of online marketing – social media marketing.

4. Social Media Marketing – The Platform For Advanced Online Marketing

There are over a hundred social media platforms on the internet that can help you get high revenue. The growth prospect is pretty steep when you try this mode of online marketing.

Gary Vaynerchuk is one influential name in Social Media marketing. He has earned over 1.64 million followers on Twitter, 2.5 million likes on Facebook, and 2.8 million followers on Instagram with his witty and engaging posts.

How do you think he achieved that?

Simple. He follows the “content follows context” strategy. He believes in respecting customer context to prepare his content. He understands which social media platform is suitable for which category of content and publishes his posts accordingly.

An important point to remember here is the time you get to create an impact. It is only 6 seconds! Yes, you get 6 seconds to express yourself in your content, and in these 6 seconds, you need to grab leads and convert them. Clearly, you can understand what kind of compelling content you require for social media.

Gary says its best to tell a story on a context that matches the forum.

Social Media in 2020

Your consumers’ behavior alters with the change in technology. So does social media context. Currently, Instagram Marketing is winning over Snapchat and Twitter Marketing. But Facebook so far remains the leading platform for marketing with more than 2 billion users.

Organic SEO over social media is no more the reality. Even Facebook’s organic reach is declining.

This change started 5-6 years back. The new trend calls social media a “pay to play” forum. These platforms have realized the revenue they earn from ads and have started withdrawing free organic SEO features.

Currently, social media marketing is a combination of paid advertising and organic SEO.

Paid Advertising On Social Media

Every social media platform gives you the chance to sponsor different content and customize your target audience. Such sponsored ads reflect on your target client’s news feed, increasing the chance of higher traffic.

Facebook no doubt provides the best platform for sponsored ads. But, I would always suggest LinkedIn Marketing. You can reach the otherwise invisible CEOs of big companies over here and create an impact on your post.

5. Advertising with Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is similar to SEM where you pay for each of the clicks you receive on your published ad. SEM is only a type of PPC. Nowadays, even social media platforms display ads with the PPC concept.

So far, Facebook and Google AdWords had been the best platforms for PPC advertising.

With PPC, you get to choose your own target audience, set a budget for the marketing, and publish your ads in the sidebar of the platform as well.

Why is PPC so famous?

The reason is very simple – it seamlessly gets integrated into the social media platform where it is displayed.

When it comes to PPC, the best platform to process your business is Google AdWords. The platform has successfully generated net revenue of 45 billion dollars in 2019.

Google AdWords Options for Advertising

Google AdWords comes with several forms of ad options.

Search Network – a text-based advertising option that searches with keywords.
Display network – This is an image-based advertising platform. AdSense is the best option here.
Remarketing – The process to bring repeat clients for your business.

6. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a vast concept where you sign-up with an affiliate, display their product and earn a commission on every sale. The other way round option is also possible.

Here you get paid the commission every time viewers go through your link and buy a product.

The concept came to relevance with Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income in 2008.

How to earn with affiliate marketing?

By now you have understood that affiliate marketing is more of referral business. Let’s understand how to earn from it.

The most common way of generating affiliate business by blogging about a certain product. You can add the product link to your content and publish it. when readers click on it and buy the product, you get paid.

7. E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing is the oldest form of os online marketing prevailing in the market. It completely survives on your contacts. You need to have a list of e-mails of your target clients to reach out to them with offers.

This is the form of marketing that will allow you to directly communicate with your customers and audiences. You can create compelling content and share it with them over e-mail. It is a promotional procedure with a personal touch.

Study reports show that you are 40 times more likely to get new customers with e-mail marketing than any social media marketing platform.

It is a long-term contracting prospect.

The E-mail address is valuable contact information, as people rarely change their e-mail addresses. But they can change their social media profiles easily. Hence, it is better to communicate with them over e-mail and share engaging content.

2020 Trends in E-mail Marketing

By far, e-mail marketing has remained the most valuable online marketing tool. It has evolved over the years and earned its place.

The recent trends call for-

Segmentation
Personalization

Personalized campaigns are the ones that earn higher ROI to the companies. It has been proved that your open rate increases by 26% when you personalize your e-mails. Whereas, segmentation increases revenue by 760%.

Segmentation splits up the customer e-mail list into different groups to ease your targeting. Now you send specific e-mails to a specific group of people with a personalized touch.

Final Thoughts About Online Marketing

Online marketing is a tool that has made every entrepreneur successful and independent. It is the real deal where you yield high revenue if you work a little hard towards building a relationship with your content.

The market is ever-changing. New technologies are coming up. You need to have an idea of what you are selling, who are your target audiences, and what they seek. Then the rest is very smooth.

FAQ

What are the difference between online marketing and digital marketing?

Online marketing is a simpler version of digital marketing. Their differences can be pointed out as-

When you use a digital platform to promote your blog or business or your brand, it is called digital marketing. In comparison, online marketing is the concept of using the internet to market yourself.
It is not necessary to have the internet to strategize digital marketing.
Every online marketing is digital marketing, but not all digital marketing strategies are similar to internet marketing.
SEO, SEM, social media advertising, etc. are common for both types of marketing. Whereas TV advertisements, SMS marketing, Digital billboards, etc., are exclusive to digital marketing.

How to use the internet for marketing online?

If you want traffic at your website, internet marketing is a 13-step process-

Focus on your customers
Create a marketing-framework for the business
Build a story behind your brand
Get traffic to your site with SEO and other organic marketing techniques
Optimize your conversion rate
Use content marketing to connect with your audience and build a strong relationship
Use paid channel advertising to get customers
Connect with the audience through 1:1 e-mail marketing
Use affiliate marketing tactics to boost incremental sales
Improve your rank with SEO
Develop PR with customers and spread brand awareness
Launch new strategies to earn more
Optimize your site to make it mobile-friendly

Online Marketing – The Key To A Successful Business