Internet marketing: 6 effective ways
It’s safe to say that marketing our brand in 2017 is no piece of cake. In the era of high-technology smartphones and interconnected web portals, the majority of our customer base lies in the world of the internet. As the number of competitors keeps increasing, we need to constantly search for new ways and effective marketing strategies to come into the limelight and stay on top of the game. That’s why internet marketing is crucial for businesses to thrive both online and off.
We often forget things and easily get distracted. As a marketer that is not good news, as it makes our job a lot harder. But if we can appeal to our customers on a deeper level, there are chances to be able to leave a lasting impression on their minds.
Internet marketing strategy
Even though each business strategy has a different set of tone, there are some ground rules that all internet marketers have in common. So, let’s discuss some strategies that we should integrate into our internet marketing campaign to make our job easier, better and obviously more effective:
Focus on video marketing
Although it is not a unique approach, video Marketing is the thing that will give our business the extra boost it needs. Video is the most effective medium of communication if we can grab the attention of our viewers in the first 8-seconds. The overall impact an audio-visual has on our minds is unparalleled to any other media.
We have conducted the following case study on how George’s cafe, a premium coffee shop in Dhaka city, have enhanced their sales and brand awareness through a successful video marketing campaign. Here’s an interesting fact, 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store[1]. Creating appropriate and well-targeted video and visual content will increase customer’s interest in a way we cannot imagine. Want to know how video marketing can do wonders? Click on this link to see an in-depth analysis of how video marketing works.
Make your business mobile friendly
In this era, the dominance of mobile phones over all other smart devices is evident. That is why it is time to focus on developing mobile app-based content and website. People spend more time looking at their phones than looking away from them. Moreover, a study has shown that 87% of people who use smartphones access the internet with their device[2]. Now, we can communicate with our customers even on the go, thanks to the growing trend of using internet-enabled devices. To utilize this opportunity, one important thing to keep in mind is to use mobile-friendly emails and web content. The best way is to keep the message subject-line short, mention the brand name & offers, and add a call-to-action.
Mobile SMS can also be used in a similar way. Did you know 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their smartphones?[3] (Google, 2015). Today’s app-savvy customers want the information to be short, concise, and less time-consuming. If we do not develop our website for mobile users, the risk of losing potential customers will be higher.
Increase presence on social media
One of internet marketing’s vital tools is social media marketing. Creating content for social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram is a proven method of attracting customers. When our customers will want to research further into their problem, social media content will help them find the available solution. Social media content gives an increased chance to catch the attention of our targeted audience. It also gives us the fantastic opportunity of engaging with our audience directly while they share their thoughts and experiences on different platforms. The interactive two-way communication will help build a long-lasting customer relationship like no other. Responding to all kinds of customer reviews and feedback is also extremely important. One of the greatest advantages of social media is that we get to stay active all the time. It also gives us an insight into the customer’s tastes and preferences, which helps us to create effective content that will be more relevant and relatable to them. We have to try to incorporate visual effects and videography into our content to gain more shares and views. Also, there are various social media publishing tools that help us stay active and constantly connected.
Increase blog content
Blogging is the latest marketing trend to jump on at the moment. It makes it easier to reach out to our highly active Internet users. There is a strong chance of attracting our target audience through keyword search and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Creating quality blog articles with relevant information and video content have a much higher possibility of effectively communicating with customers. We can increase conversions by including more CTA (Call To Action) on our blog using different types of CTAs, in different formats, to address different parts of our marketing funnel. We have seen companies that published more than 16 blog posts per month got about 4.5 times more leads than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts. Here is an article on how to increase blog traffic on your site[4].
Know how to build website traffic
The key to our online presence is online traffic. But to build that we need quality content. It takes time and hard work, but it is a sure way to help our customer base grow. There are certain tools to increase website traffic. First and foremost is to publish the right content. We can publish countless things on our website and still not get the expected response. It is essential to know what to publish and what our customers want. So, no matter what our business is, we need to know our target audience and what really ticks the right boxes. Again, keyword optimization comes into play. We can rank the most used keywords that customers search every day. Then we have to try to incorporate them into our content. One other sure way is to get shares from influential bloggers or journalists in the market. Influencer marketing can also be used to get a jumpstart which will help our business now and even in the future. One other trick to draw traffic is to incorporate videos on the website.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is an integral part of internet marketing which focuses on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo can determine the visibility of our website to a great extent. The search engine is the main source that will generate traffic to any website. The best part is, we can easily attract our targeted audience through SEO. If we are able to develop our site content to optimize search results, then it can generate even thousands of visitors to our website. Search Engine Optimization basically helps boost our website ranking in such a way that whoever is looking for similar content can easily find it. The right SEO gives us higher visitors whereas the wrong kind may bury our site deep within the black holes of the internet. Using frequently used keywords on our site content (visual, video, infographics, and blogs) helps bring our business into the sight of the target audience. Through research, we can also find out where the brand names of our competitors are being used, and using that information we can develop our content as well as strategies.
Overall, there is no particular strategy to follow when it comes to internet marketing. The most we could do is learn as we develop and go forward. But we have to always be sure to look for what our customer wants than to only focus on our products. Successful internet marketing sometimes even creates the need within people which they are not aware of beforehand. So, why wait, the world of internet marketing awaits us!
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