Internet Marketing

A successful internet marketing strategy will see you extend your reach, build brand loyalty and increase conversions.

Marketing has always been about meeting your target audience where they are, but traditional marketing was all about selling. The internet has turned that on its head. Today, online marketing is about creating trust, positioning yourself or your brand as an authority in your industry and guiding customers on their buyer journey.

Here, we explain what internet marketing is, why it is crucial for your business and how you can create a killer digital marketing strategy that drives traffic with buying intent to your website.

Internet marketing is an umbrella term for the myriad ways brands connect with and convert their audience online. Digital marketers use it to promote products and services in a way that targets their intended audience. It includes:

But it’s far more than simply posting content online.

Your internet marketing campaign must be consistent and on-brand to ensure it feeds into your wider business and sales goals. It requires a well-planned strategy that identifies who your audience are, which digital spaces they inhabit, and what type of content engages in them.

Many businesses see hiring an internet marketing specialist as the best way to design and implement a digital marketing strategy. Others find freelance social media marketers or bloggers to take care of internet marketing tasks that take a lot of time or require particular expertise. And some choose to take care of all their own digital marketing.

Which is right for you will depend on the size of your organization, target market, budget and the time you have available to dedicate to marketing your business online.

But with 89% of B2B purchases and 40% of all product searches globally starting with internet search engines, it is clear that internet marketing is the future.

The four I’s of internet marketing are:

Two-way communication is a great way to build trust. Sure, you want to get your blogs, videos and socials out there for all to see, but be mindful that consumers may want to communicate with you too. That communication could be a Facebook reaction, a comment on your blog or a complaint about something. 

In any event, you can instantly gauge the opinion of your target market and create a positive user experience (UX) by replying in good time and showing you care.

Making your internet marketing interactive shows you value your customers' needs.

Ok, sometimes users will share a joke, meme or video you posted. And there is a place in your marketing mix for ‘entertainment with a purpose’. But be careful not to bombard your audience with meaningless content. And use this type of content sparingly. A few on-brand jokes are fine on Twitter or Instagram, but blogs or case studies need to be relevant and informative. 

Content that answers a users’ question will encourage them to come back again next time they have a similar query. It builds trust and shows that you are knowledgeable. Keep in mind that there is a marketing element to them and include opportunities to collect data (eg email addresses or mobile numbers) for future marketing efforts or links to landing or sales pages. But remember that internet marketing is an ongoing process. 

Don’t be overly ‘salesy’. Do focus on high quality content. It’s always worth keeping in mind that at the forefront of your consumer's mind are their own needs. Their focus is not on your product or service per se, but what it can do for them. 

Don’t just wait for consumers to contact you – reach out to them. The internet provides numerous opportunities for engagement that can help connect you with your audience. 

Ask for feedback on blogs and videos, encourage followers to get involved in hashtag games or with online polls to generate conversation or involve consumers in selecting questions for a podcast. 

The opportunities to get people engaging with your digital marketing content are endless and will be largely determined by your own knowledge of your audience. The important thing is that you are prepared to try things out and see what works. If it makes you feel more confident, speak to a digital marketing specialist before getting started with an internet marketing campaign. But remember, provided it is not controversial, content that fails to land will simply disappear into the ether and not be in any way damaging so feel free to be a little experimental and come up with unique ideas that will help you stand out from the competition.

Your TikTok audience is likely to be different from your Facebook audience. Indeed, it may be that one (or neither) of those platforms are relevant to your internet marketing strategy. 

There is no obligation for you to have a presence on every social media platform going. If your target audience doesn’t use Instagram, there is no point in you wasting time and effort posting content on it. 

But even the most basic of internet marketing strategies will require more than one medium and it’s vital that the disparate parts of your digital marketing come together to form one consistent brand message. 

Each type of internet marketing serves a different purpose:

Brand identity starts with your website. It is the fulcrum of all your internet marketing efforts and must provide the UX that consumers want. Fail to deliver with your website, and everything you did to attract someone to it becomes pointless.

Before starting a digital marketing campaign, audit your website and make any changes required to make sure it complements your promotional efforts. 

Is it up to date?

Have you checked it for content errors? It’s not advisable to check your own writing for spelling and grammar errors so consider finding a freelance proofreader to check it over and rectify any mistakes.

Is the color palette and logo consistent with your current brand image?

Is your site easy to navigate?

Is it SEO optimized? This is one of the most fundamental aspects of internet marketing.

You can optimize SEO by:

For a full SEO audit and optimization, you will need the services of an SEO professional. 

Blogs are a great way to create a bank of meaningful content on your site. They provide an opportunity to add fresh content to your site and encourage interaction. You can also use them to help you rank highly for a wider choice of SEO keywords to help drive more organic traffic to your site.

Blogging requires you to pre-empt problems your target customers may face. The key is to focus each blog you write on one aspect of what you do and get into the details of it. Blogs should resonate with readers by describing a specific pain point and subtly explaining why the features and benefits of your brand make it the ideal solution.

Blogging is a fantastic tool for improving SEO but it takes time to craft a piece that connects with your audience, includes relevant stats and links, and drives conversion.

If writing is not your forte or you don’t have time to create meaningful blog content, you can hire a freelance blog writer or copywriter.

Source: Unsplash

27.5% of social media users across the globe say they use it to help them research products before buying. That’s 1.25 billion people actively searching for or responding to social media marketing every day.

But social media marketing encompasses a plethora of platforms, and each has its own demographic. These are a few of the most popular sites for social media marketing:

The most appropriate platform for your social media marketing campaign will largely depend on our target demographic but it pays to carry out some industry specific research before making your decision.

This encompasses everything from Tweets and Instagram posts, to member-only Facebook groups that allow users to chat and communicate with you and with like minded people (possibly from all over the world). 

Again, how you use social media is up to you and will be decided by what your target market expects from you, so you need at least a working knowledge of your audience and the various social media sites available to you.

Use social media to post links to your web pages or to articles or blogs you publish. And include a link to your home page in your social media bios. But don’t forget to use other internet marketing tools to attract people to follow you on social media. 

Include buttons that link to your socials on:

Email marketing is about nurturing relationships with those most likely to buy and is still one of the most successful forms of internet marketing.

You can capture emails at point of sale, when offering a freebie (perhaps an e-book) in exchange for contact details, or when consumers sign up to receive a regular newsletter or special offer. However you obtain email addresses, it’s important you use them and don’t just leave them festering on a spreadsheet doing nothing.

It is a great way to check-in with customers and keep your brand at the forefront of their minds for when they are ready to buy.

Source: Unsplash

Email marketing includes:

Google continues to lead the way in search engine marketing. It boasts 94.88% of mobile searches and 86.19% of desktop searches worldwide. So, your efforts should be focused on appealing to your target market and to Google’s crawler bots.

SEO is a mainstay of search engine marketing and helps with organic reach, but there are also opportunities to pay to rank highly on SERPS.

Paid advertising on Google is generally the preserve of major corporations with smaller businesses best advised to hire an SEO specialist to audit and improve search engine rankings.

Case studies are similar to blogs and online articles but they focus on how you helped a particular client with a problem they faced. This can be an incredibly impactive form of online marketing as it demonstrates your skills and is validated by the client.

A case study begins by describing the issue your client was faced with and why this was holding them back or was otherwise detrimental to their business. It’s usually best to use quotes from the client at this stage as the first person speech is more likely to resonate with your audience. It also helps to highlight that the problem existed before your intervention.

Having established the major issue, move on to how you tackled it. This section of your case study should focus on the steps you took to not only understand the problem but to identify the underlying reasons for it. It’s not uncommon for you to be blasé about your role in honing in on the nub of the issue as it may be something you do every day. For example, an SEO expert may be able to read a short excerpt of web content and spot some basic errors straight away. Don’t play this down. The fact that your knowledge and experience allows you to identify issues almost immediately shouldn’t detract from you describing your review as ‘thorough’ or ‘comprehensive’. If you say you ‘had a quick look’ you will not inspire confidence in your approach.

Source: Unsplash