What is Online Marketing?

​Online marketing is anything you do that brings online brand awareness to potential customers. A good marketing plan is one that benefits your efforts. Read below to see what those benefits are!

Benefits of Online Marketing:

Growth Potential - Exposure is one component of good marketing; the more people you reach the greater your number of potential customers. Be sure to target your audience strategically, so your business is exposed to the right people in the right areas and maximize your opportunities for new clients.

Reduced Expenses - Many types of online marketing cost little to nothing. It starts with knowing the right keywords and learning a few tricks of the trade. Take advantage of your free advertising options to avoid unnecessary or overspending on advertising.

Better Control - When you begin marketing online, you can choose which audience is best to target on each platform. So, you have a larger number of choices on where and how people see you.

Improved Customer Service - Being more present online gives you a flexible availability. The more available you are online, the greater opportunity you give customers to interact with you. A timely response goes a long way as an online professional. Learning to keep consistency in replying to people is important, for the sake of your brand.

Competitive Advantage - Many small businesses do not invest in online marketing. By starting now, you have the advantage over competitors who do not understand the concept of online marketing.

But what exactly is online marketing? Let's look at several of the things that constitute online marketing.

Major Forms of Online Marketing

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing involves providing people with useful information. Most often you present this information on your website or through your blog. You can also do this by writing articles that get posted in places around the Internet. Our team loves reading articles on medium.com and svbtle.com. If you submit your blog content on these sites, it's another way in which readers can find you. The idea of content marketing is to identify a problem your would-be customers have and providing them with solutions to that problem. You should write your content with the goal of giving free help to those who need it whether they will be a customer in the future or not.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves optimizing your website content for search engines. This means finding what keywords potential customers are using to get to the kind of product or service you are providing. Once you determine those keywords, you need to make sure they are in places such as your content and headers. SEO takes time to learn, but it is one of the best ways to make your presence known to search engines and new customers.

3. Paid Advertising

This is what most people first think about when you mention online marketing. These ads can take the form of pay-per-click (PPC) ads, such as Google Adwords Ads, Bing Ads, and Facebook ads, or ad space on other websites. Paid advertising is the closest to traditional marketing methods in content and form. Paid ads return massive numbers when it comes to the number of people you've exposed content to.

4. Social Media

This is one of the most subtle forms of online marketing. What happens in social media is you get personal with potential customers. They get to see you as human, learn to trust your authority and learn to think of you in association with your brand. A good example of social media marketing would be having a Twitter or Instagram account, as well as running ads of your existing posts to reach a wider audience on those platforms. 
Hard-selling (asking someone to buy your product right then) is not involved in most cases. In fact, if you focus on hard selling in your social media marketing, it can damage your reputation more than help it.

5. Email Marketing

This includes your newsletter and any special advertisements you send to the people on your mailing list. Email marketing usually involves a newsletter where you give at least one informative article, any special offers, and your website URL. From time to time, it involves sending out special mailings to your subscribers mentioning new sales.

These are not the extent of what you can do in the way of online marketing, but they are the major things. 

Final Words

In today's world, anyone who wants to see their business thrive must have some type of online presence. You can achieve this through a combination of online marketing methods. There is no set combination. Each business must use trial and error to see which methods work best for their particular business. Taking the time to create an online marketing plan will help you in the long run.