What is Internet Marketing?
Any form of information or content that is disseminated over the internet with the aim of promoting a brand or a business is internet marketing. As the explanation shows, internet marketing can involve any media, platform or any type of content.
Lets go through some of the most common methods of internet marketing.
1. SEO Marketing.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is targeted at ranking a website or webpages on the search engines like google. Google has become the worlds biggest information gateway. Most people consume their information from google. Whenever people want any information, they go to google and search. Some of these people searching on google are potential customers. Imagine being able to position your website at that top position on google. That alone can bring you thousands of sales per day. Hence why SEO has become a cutthroat competition.
SEO is done by writing keyword optimized articles on your website. The websites with the most and the best articles on their website rank higher on google. In addition to writing content, there are other things to do to rank on search engines such as backlinks.
2. Content Marketing.
Content marketing involves production of all kinds of content and publishing it in an attempt to promote your brand. Such involve videos like YouTube content, articles like blog posts, podcasts and other forms of audio. Even other forms of content such as social media posts, videos and pictures all make part of content marketing.
These content marketing methods do not operate in isolation as the content marketing can also form part of SEO. Similarly, SEO can form part of content marketing since it involves writing seo articles.
3. Social Media Marketing.
Many people just think that social media is just about some funny videos. What they do not realize is that social media forms a very large part of content marketing. Actually most of internet marketing of many companies and businesses today goes through social media. Almost every company/business these days has a social media profile. Social media presence symbolizes the business is active and available. It also helps relate with people by being close to them on the social media.
Many businesses these days get a lot of customers from social media. There businesses who even run almost all their businesses on social media. They inform their followers of their products and do the sales on the same social media. Platforms like Facebook even have inbuilt marketplaces.
4. Email Marketing.
Email marketing is another major internet marketing strategy. These days almost everyone has an email. Gmail from google is today’s the worlds largest email service provider. There are very few people in this world today who do not have Gmail. Being able to get to these people’s email inbox, can be a great strategy of marketing. Imagine being able to land an email into the inbox of at least 10 million people per day.
Yes email marketing has a very small open rate and even a smaller conversion rate. If you send a hundred emails, you could only get 5% email reads which means 5 emails only opened. This could mean out of a hundred emails, you can end up with 2 actions taken. Say for-example you want them to click a link, you could get only 2 people to click on the link from 100 emails.
5. Pay-Per-Click Marketing.
This is when you pay platforms like google ads to show your ads and you pay per every click that people make on your ads. You normally create an advertisement and publish it on the advertising platform then pay for it. Once you pay the advertising platform like google ads starts promoting your advertisement allover the internet.
When anyone clicks on your advertisement, you pay for that click. Many argue that pay-per-click is more expensive than other ads such as pay-per-mile PPM. However, others argue that PPM has lower conversions/ROI than PPC. It all depends on you and what you want. If you want more awareness of your brand then PPM is the best. If you prefer more actions like sales, then go for PPC.
6. Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate marketing is another form of internet marketing. If you have a big line of products or a lot of products that you want to sell, you can go for affiliate marketing. Go to affiliate platforms like ClickBank and list your products. From there, affiliate marketers will see your products and start promoting them. They will drive traffic as well as customers to your products and you start making sales.
You just need to note that in your pricing, you need to consider the commission for the affiliate marketing. You need to leave room for the affiliate marketers to markup their price. Or in other platforms you can include their commission yourself.
7. Influencer Marketing.
An influencer is a famous person who uses their fame to promote a certain brand or product. As the name suggests, the influencer influences the opinion of the people when it comes to that specific brand or product. For example if they want to promote a certain smartphone, they tell their audience that that smartphone is good. They make their audience buy that smartphone.
Even you can use the influencers to help you market your products or your brands for you. Just keep in mind that you will have to pay the influencers for their services. The amount you pay them depends on the influencer. Some are expensive others are cheaper. The more the followers they have, the more expensive they are.
Conclusion.
Now that you understand what is internet marketing, you can be able to grow your business. You also know the various internet marketing methods that exist. It is upon you to go for the method that actually works for you. If all work for you then go for all. If you are a big business then you can try them all. You also realize that some of these internet marketing methods are more expensive than others. So it is upon you to come up with the right budgeting so that you don’t fail along the way.