How Internet Marketing Can Help Grow Your Business Online

In today’s markets, getting your product or service across to your customer can be a tough game as it is becoming harder to attract new customers with each passing day. Today, it has become essential for even the best of products and services to be advertised before they can really make an impact on your target audience.

It is possible to advertise through traditional means such as via magazines and newspapers or even billboards, but sometimes the costs do not make sense. Hence, the alternative medium available to you currently is the Internet, and surprisingly, Internet marketing can reap wonders if worked in the right direction and that too at a fraction of the costs.

With the help of Internet marketing or an internet marketing company, it is possible to optimize your marketing and advertising campaigns more effectively with the data that these campaigns yield. So before you go for online marketing services from a professional, let us examine some of the Internet marketing techniques available today to help your business grow online.

1. SEO

"Crawling is not a guarantee you’re indexed.”—Rand Fishkin, Moz

With the help of thorough Search engine optimization (SEO), it is possible to make your website rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). According to studies, 75% of the people never get past the first page. With the help of a thorough SEO program, you will be able to perform key tasks such as competitor analysis, identification of key phrases that you want your website to rank for and even submit your website to search engines. Many companies provide SEO marketing services, so it’s better to figure out the right professional company for your needs.

2. PPC Advertising

“Before you create any more "great content," figure out how you are going to market it first.” -Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett

According to https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics, 64.6% of people click on Google ads when they are looking to buy an item online. (WordStream, 2016) PPC advertising (Pay-Per-Click) is yet another Internet Marketing technique through which you can bring new visitors to your website. PPC ads get displayed along with search results which entice users to click on the ads so that they can find what they are looking for. Thus, the ad at the very first spot can expect 59% of all ad clicks if placed at the very top above the unpaid search results. Despite what you could be thinking now, it does not cost you the moon. Although PPC ads can be a time consuming process, the end results can be worth all the trouble.

3. Social Media

"I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress." – Mark Zuckerberg

With the proliferation of social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, it is now possible to grow your business using these social media channels as a platform for Internet Marketing. In fact according to hubpsot.com, in the past two years, content consumption on Facebook has increased 57%. You can easily set up an official brand page or open an official account on these websites and post updates about your products and services to your fans. Growing your fans thus means growing your business. Although managing a social media account and keeping it updated may mean a very time consuming process, if you are large company or brand, it can be really with the time and investment. As part of Social Media is Facebook advertising.

Facebook advertising is yet another way of promoting your website. Actually, it can be considered as another form of PPC advertising. According to https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics, 73% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes. With the help of PPC Advertising, it is not only possible to increase your site traffic but also drive new fans to your Facebook business page. Since your fan base already exists, you get the opportunity to target them directly without the need of investing a lot of money.

4. Email Marketing

"When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar." - David Ogilvy

With email marketing, it is possible to grow your business by leaps and bounds. If you have a dedicated email list, there are studies which indicate that for every dollar spent, there is a potential to earn more than $40 with an email marketing program. Since the email lands directly into a customer’s inbox, which is one of the most frequently accessed locations online, email marketing in the form of periodic emails about new products and updates to your website can drive customers back online to your web property for repeat purchases.

5. Content Marketing

“The reason we struggle with content marketing is because we haven’t started with ‘Why?’ Customers don’t care about your vanity metrics. Ask them, ‘How can I help?” - Kristina Halvorson, CEO and Founder, Brain Traffic

Marketing to different customers using different types of content such as blogs, articles, whitepapers, and eBooks is called content marketing. These various content types have a common strategy – to market the idea to your potential customers that they should partner with you for the products or services you provide. The company blog forms one of the oldest methods of content marketing to an interested audience. It’s not essential for blogs to concentrate on just products or services; these can explore the industry that the company caters to or explore trends and ideas that are prevalent in the industry.

6. Link Building

"The objective is not to ‘make your links appear natural’; the objective is that your links are natural.” — Matt Cutts

Customers online also discover your website through your links placed on other websites. If a customer visits a reputed site online and finds your website’s link there, they are more likely to trust you than stumbling upon your website in any other manner. The process of getting good links is therefore called link building. This process involves building links from other sites to your website manually. Thus, if you build a lot of high quality links, this means to search engines and shoppers that you can be trusted. This process will not only improve your ranking but also increase the amount of traffic your site receives online.

7. Go Mobile

"If your plans don’t include mobile, your plans are not finished. - Wendy Clark" (Senior Vice President Global Sparkling Brand Center Coca-Cola)

Traffic to websites from cell phones as well as tablets is increasing every day since more and more customers are now turning to mobiles to research, browse and even shop while on the move. According to a report by US Consumer Device Preference, 65% of all email is opened on a mobile device. Hence, if you are planning to grow your business, then why not include a mobile website or a mobile version of your website? This method will surely increase your conversion rate dramatically.

The bottom line is that Internet marketing forms the platform for the success of your business or online venture in today’s times. With proper implementation, you can ensure the success of your business in a relatively short period of time compared to conventional marketing means.