Online Marketing 101
Online Marketing is just a new set of Marketing Tools developed to catch up with the new Internet reality. The web is the channel that many of your customers will use to find, understand and approach your company and services, and you need to make sure they will easily find you, get the right idea of who and what your services and products are. Are you sure that you are connecting with their needs in a way that will encourage them to take one step further and contact you, download your content, subscribe your blog, buy your merchandise or whatever action you intend to achieve with your effort?
Many different tools can be used to reach your clients on the web, and most of the time they work together. The web brings with it the chance of connecting with the public by offering information and solutions that the clients are looking for, without having to hard sell your products and services on paid ads. This is Inbound Marketing, and consists basically of making your presence on the web enough significant that your target pubic will "naturally" find you on the web and start a relationship with your company.
You can still accelerate things with paid ads and messages on the different web medias, like search engines, content adds, product listings, displays, video ads, social media paid ads, etc (PPC- PayPerClick). When we buy space (ads) on the media, we are using Outbound Marketing.
The beauty of using Inbound Marketing is to be able to educate the prospects, help them understand their problems and make an educated decision about the solution they will adopt, and a connection with your company. As I said before, the process of being noticed and create awareness about your products and services can be accelerated by the use of Outbound Marketing tools. This mix is what makes Online Marketing a management tool that is available for promoting business, ideas and people with any kind of budget and marketing team.
Start with a Website
A website is normally the best way for marking your presence on the web but is not the only way. A Blog, Yellow Page, Local Business Directory, Social Media Page may be sufficient for making people know you exist and getting the basic information on your company.
The layout, style, and messages on your website must reflect your company, and highlight what you have to offer to your consumers, or what you want to inform them.
A well-planned website is key for reaching good results on Search Engines and having success on your online marketing.
All my websites use responsive design, which means thy will adjust to different devices, like PCs, tablets, and phones.
Your website can do more than only let your consumers find you. Make it work for you! You can add a variety of apps that will make managing your customer's relationships easier, such as:
Social Media Links/ Feeds Display
Virtual Live Chat
Newsletter/ Email Sign Up Form
Testimonials
Customers' Reviews
Appointments Booking Calendar
Events Calendar
Open Table Reservations
Restaurant Menus
Coupons/ Social Offers Pop Ups
Surveys & Polls
Weather Forecast
Countdown Clock
Online Business Card
Birthday Club
Before/After Picture Slider
Promotions Slider
Like and Share Buttons
Store Locator
Members Login
Skype Call/ Chat Button
Job Openings/ Applications
Video Galleries
Know your numbers
Whenever you make an effort in life, you want to measure how successful you are! And it shouldn't be different with Online Marketing. You need to understand where each one of your actions is taking you, which benefits it brought, where it failed and how can it be fixed.
The way to do this is to measure and analyze the public interactions with your website. Where are the viewers coming from, which adds are more successful, what actions generate sales, quotes or another kind of interactions, how much it costs for you to get a customer or an order, and much more.
There are many statistics and analytics systems available on the market, and you can pick one for free or use more complex paid ones, as long as you always measure and analyze your website and online marketing actions. So, setting up your analytics account, goals and reports comes along with having a presence on the web, and should always e a priority.
Make Sure user can find you on the web
Search Engine Optimization is the set of tools and techniques used to make sure your website is easily read and indexed by the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc), and also gets good Page Ratings when people are looking for your products and services.
It is a matter of doing the right things on the right way. This includes a lot of planning on keywords and web design, and a constant effort to offer valuable information on different channels.
S.E.O. is the first effort on inbound marketing, and it is so important that I list it on the first steps for making a presence on the web. Getting relevant Page Rankings can take some time, it is a working process, just like your relationship with your clients.
