Are you investing or developing an online marketing strategy or internet marketing for your business? You feel confused, overwhelmed because you do not know where to start?
Don’t worry, I’ll help you. Here are instructions on the online marketing strategy that you are looking for. There are many different opportunities for you to start a business or grow a business. And I will help you to take advantage of these wonderful opportunities.
If you do not know how to develop an effective online marketing strategy, you are missing out on the potential for great sales. So, right now don’t waste time, start building them right away.
Let’s find out what online marketing is first!
What is online marketing?
Online marketing is the marketing activities of businesses or brands that are done on the internet. You may have heard of other terms such as “internet marketing”, “online marketing” or “digital marketing.”
In contrast, marketing activities of enterprises which are not conducted on the internet are called as offline marketing. Currently, the implementation of offline marketing is mostly to direct users to online marketing.
You should also note that online marketing is much broader than online advertising. Offline marketing is, too. Paid advertising is only a small part of the overall online marketing strategy.
How Online marketing works
For most businesses and brands, online marketing is the same as most other types of marketing and advertising.
The main goal of online marketing is to attract and maintain people’s attention.
Once you get someone’s attention, they will know you. When they know you, the next step is they will like you. And after they like you, your own goals will make them trust you.
This is called KLT (know, like, trust – known, liked and trusted). And it is a recipe made over time to turn potential customers into buyers.
The only difference is that online marketing is done in a virtual world instead of the real one.
How Online marketing takes place
Instead of trying to get someone to the point of displaying your product, just try to take them to your website.
A certain percentage of people who come to the site you will purchase. The main challenge is that you cannot talk to them when they are reviewing the product. You didn’t even know they were there.
So how to build KLT when you can’t talk to people?
That’s why blogging and content marketing on Google are so popular these days.
You can build KLT with your content, or attract customers to subscribe to your email list and keep in touch with them for weeks, months and years. This is a popular way to build KLT.
I will have a more in-depth article about this knowledge. All you need to know now is how to get people to visit your website and:
- Buy your product or service
- Leave their email or information so you can keep in touch with them in the future.
The above is preliminary for how an online marketing strategy works.
What are the benefits of online marketing?
- Online marketing is much cheaper than traditional forms of marketing and advertising.
- You can easily find markets – target customers and get in touch with them.
- Easy to use
- Used to generate revenue and even run the entire business without having to have a real office.
- Usually extended on a large scale and with little hassle
Although online marketing brings a lot of great value. However, it also brings many obstacles. Strategies and tactics are constantly being changed.
Today, technology is developing at a rapid pace and it’s hard to keep up, especially when you’re not familiar with it. This is evident in smaller businesses that are large companies. However, it is also quite common.
Building a website: The first step in online marketing plans
For most Vietnamese businesses, online marketing usually starts with a website. This is considered the base of the business, the place where the transaction takes place, where people contact you to buy products. Building a website today is a lot easier.
However, it also hides a lot of difficulties for beginners.
One of the common mistakes people make is trying to build their website as a product PR page instead of providing value for converting traffic.
Building a website is only a very small first step in implementing an online marketing strategy. The real value of a website lies in the user’s traffic and the ability to convert that traffic into leads or buyers.
Another common mistake is to build on a closed-box platform without scale. Website builders like Wix and Squarespace are well known because they promise to make the platform easy. However, they still have many disadvantages and limitations.
In most cases, if you are building a serious online marketing strategy you should build it on the WordPress platform.
By reading this, surely you have a better picture of what an online marketing strategy is. So, are there any online marketing strategies that you should know? Let’s explore the following 6 online marketing strategies!
Different ways to have effective online marketing strategies
It’s time for me to give you a detailed guide on specific online marketing strategies. The important thing before you start is to determine the goals for choosing a specific online marketing strategy and focus your efforts on that strategy. Start…
#1: Content marketing
One of the core online marketing strategies to drive traffic to a website is content marketing.
You need to create content that is engaging, entertaining, and useful enough to grab the attention of your target market.
Content marketing is quite popular nowadays because it is extremely effective. Not only that it also helps to expand the scale, add value and most importantly, but also it does not cost. The article you are reading is a way of content marketing.
If you are a business owner or an online marketer, what you need to do is find out what type of content works best to attract the attention of your audience and convert them into potential customers and sales.
Next, I will show you some of the most common and core strategies. This will help you understand and choose an appropriate online marketing strategy.
1.1 Search engine optimization (SEO) and blogging (SEO)
Blogging means posting articles on the internet. SEO is a way for website posts and pages to rank in search engines to attract more users.
3 basic steps for blogging & SEO strategy
- Write and publish blog posts that attract your target audience in different ways.
- The target audience finds posts by searching for related topics or viewing articles on social media channels and on other websites.
- The target audience gets a lot of value from the article. From there, they decide that they want to buy products from you or get more advice from you (register email for more information, contact directly)
Optimizing SEO and blogging is not easy
However, that is not really easy. It is not simply that you need to sit down and write a post and publish them on your website. To get started, you need to know the exact topic to write. To do this, you need to determine what your target audience is looking for and how much traffic it needs to achieve.
This is when SEO begins to take effect.
Because the target market will use search engines like Google to find content, you need to make sure that people are looking for what you are publishing.
You also need to write the highest quality content to attract users. The reason is because there are so many competing contents around the world today and there are many websites that are created to compete and attract the attention of people.
If you think this is hard work, you’re right. However, if you do well in blogging and SEO, you will find tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of targeted visitors to your site every month. Especially it’s free.
1.2 PodCast
What is a podcast?
Podcasts are like making your own radio programs. However, instead of streaming on the radio or internet, it is usually pre-recorded and published into a folder like iTunes or SoundCloud.
Millions of users are listening to podcasts and most of them use mobile applications to subscribe to their favorite podcasts.
If your podcast is published in the iTunes folder, anyone can subscribe from anywhere in the world and listen to your content. In particular, the iTunes folder acts as a search engine. So, if you have the right keywords, it is possible to significantly increase conversion rates.
When you publish a new episode, the directory will be updated and the new episode will automatically be sent to all of your subscribers.
3 Basic steps for podcasting marketing strategy
- Start a podcast with a topic that attracts the target audience.
- Publish these files and promote the program to build a suitable subscriber platform.
- Use calls to action in your podcast to convert listeners into leads and buyers.
Podcasting is now booming in popularity because of its effectiveness in converting listeners into leads and buyers.
If you create a successful podcast, it will generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of downloads every month. It is a great opportunity.
86% of podcast listeners listen to all or most of the episode. On average, they listen to 5 shows a week. This proves that if your content is good, you can push your competitors away from potential customers.
Alternatively, there’s another way to reach your target market without creating your own podcast. You should join existing podcasts with the audience you are looking for. And then, join them as guests.
However, you need a reason for the host to get you into their show. Having a book is the best way for you to easily get involved. Because surely, they want you to bring value to their audience.
1.3 Youtube
Youtube is the largest video platform in the world on the internet. It also works as a search engine for hundreds of millions of people.
Anyone can start a YouTube channel, publish videos, and get subscribers.
Like podcasting and iTunes folder, Youtube acts as a search engine. Therefore, you can build and attract an audience directly through the platform without any other platform.
3 basic steps for online marketing strategy on Youtube
- Start a free YouTube channel.
- Publish high quality videos that appeal to your target market and display them in YouTube search.
- Use a variety of ways to call to action, convert viewers into leads and sales.
What do you get from this platform? Youtube has an average of 1.5 billion monthly active users. They watch videos on average more than an hour a day (and that’s just on mobile devices).
Youtube viewers tend to be very loyal. If they like your content, they will subscribe and keep coming back to your channel again and again. That is a great way to build KLT.
Another advantage of Youtube is the ability to stream directly to your audience. When you go live, Youtube will prioritize your content and let people know that you are going live. This can get you more attention and allow you to attract a suitable audience.
1.4 Webinars (webinars online)
Webinar is a previously recorded presentation.
This might sound super tech, all you need is a webcam, a microphone and basic Webinars software.
3 basic steps for webinar marketing strategy
- Create a free class on the topic that the target market is interested in and get them to sign up.
- Teaching (usually 30 – 90 minutes).
- Get close to your product through indirect mention
Many people have achieved great success through online marketing with webinars and indirect sales. There are no sure and fast rules. You need to test which way works best for your audience.
It also depends on the product you are selling. If you have a software product, you can teach a concept that requires your software and the audience will naturally see the power of the software and want to buy it.
If you sell an information product, you may need a harder strategy to get good results. It is not uncommon for webinars to have sales of up to tens of thousands of dollars or even hundreds depending on audience size.
Some notes about webinars
Unless you already have a potential audience, you probably have to pay to attract potential customers to your conference channel. Webinars have an impression share of about 30% online. To get 100 people live on your workshop, you need to have about 300 subscribers.
You don’t always get sales during the webinar. It may even come from those days. What you need is a good tracking system. There are many different formats on webinar. You need to experiment with many of them to see which formats, topics, and ways of conveying content are best suited to your audience.
Webinars tend to work better if they are well combined with email marketing. Another benefit of webinar is that if you do it well, you can create something called “evergreen webinar”. You can even automate pre-conference emails and post-conference follow-up emails.
When you’re done, you will direct traffic to the webinar channel automatically and be able to sell stably without any additional work.
# 2: Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective online marketing channels. For many businesses, this is the number 1 motivation for selling online.
The reason online email marketing is effective is because it gives you the ability to nurture potential customers over time.
For many businesses, such as those selling software or information products, the sales cycle is often longer and requires significant KLT. That means that you need to stay in touch with your potential customers for a long time. Email is the best tool to do this.
3 basic steps for email marketing
- Create an account with an email service provider.
- Build your email list and use email segmentation to reach the right customers.
- Email your list with messages that appeal to them and nurture them. Along with that is the use of a call to action to drive sales.
How effective is that? 80% of retail experts point out that email marketing is the most effective way to maintain their largest customers. According to VentureBeat, email marketing generates an average of $38 in revenue for every $1 of expenses.
Of all marketing strategies, email marketing is my number one choice. That’s what you absolutely have to do if you don’t want to leave money on the table.
# 3: Social media (organic)
At the end of the content and email marketing section, I’ll take you to social media marketing.
Technically you can do content marketing on social media. But social media has even more benefits than that.
One thing to keep in mind is that on each social media platform there will be a different audience group so they require a unique strategy.
3 basic steps for effective online marketing model
- Establish your presence on social media platforms where the target market is located.
- Get the attention of the audience in many ways such as entertainment, useful content, …
- Create comments directly to your audience, capture them and add them to your email list. Thereby generating indirect revenue from branding.
The secret to success through social media is to first think like a user, then think like a marketer.
Some disadvantages of social media
One of the drawbacks of social media is that most platforms which are outside Pinterest aren’t built to be a search engine. Therefore, content on social media has a very short life cycle.
For example, when you create a Facebook post, you can get 72 hours of interaction for the post before it disappears.
This is in stark contrast to blogging, where posts can be ranked and attract thousands of unique visitors over the years.
Another drawback of social media is that you are building your strategy on a platform you don’t own. This is always a potential problem, as these platforms can restrict your access to your users or even charge you if you want to reach them.
This happens on many social media channels in which Facebook is the most popular.
Despite its disadvantages, social media still offers a lot of effectiveness as an online marketing channel.
Here is a brief overview of some of the most popular social media channels today:
Facebook users are 53% female and 47% male. 87% of users are between the ages of 18 years old and 29 years old. This is one of the most flexible and dynamic platforms for content and how to interact with people. This is also the largest and most popular social platform today.
Personal profiles and Facebook groups are very effective aspects of the platform (there are also Facebook ads that I will show later).
Instagram is used by 31% of American women and 24% of men. 59% of users are between the ages of 18 years old and 29 years old and 33% of users are between the ages from 30 years old to 49 years old.
The platform is primarily focused on photos and videos and the ability to create public posts, live videos and send private messages.
Social network Twitter has 37% of users ages 18 years old to 29 years old and 25% of users ages from 30 years old to 49 years old. 24% of users are male and 21% of users are female.
In recent years, LinkedIn has expanded its platform and it is now a powerful channel for effective online marketing if you want to reach businesses and employees.
28% of Linkedin users are male and 27% are female.
According to research, 44% of Linkedin users make more than $75,000 per year. Linkedin now has a “wall” and a “feed” similar to how Facebook works. In addition, there are groups for you to join and post as a powerful private messaging system.
Meetup
This is not a traditional social media platform. Instead of 100% online interaction, Meetup.com facilitates offline interaction by allowing you to create local groups. I still see Meetup as an effective online marketing channel because most of the organization and recruiting takes place online.
All of the above statistics are provided by Omnicore Agency.
# 4: Paid Online Advertising
Paid Online Advertising is a traditional form of online marketing. Instead of looking for traffic, leads and sales through conventional methods like content marketing and social media, you just need to buy traffic.
Russell Brunson, an excellent online marketer, has repeatedly made the point that businesses can spend a lot to get a customer.
He built a huge empire worth millions of dollars in a very short period of time mainly through paid advertising channels (with zero venture capital).
My mistake was when I first asked the question, “What do I have to spend to get the least amount of advertising money?”
I should have wondered, “What can I spend the most on advertising?” – Russel Brunson
The reason is because marketers are willing to invest to get customers even if they lose money on the first sale (it brings a lifetime value).
4 basic steps for effective Paid Online Advertising
- Determine where the target audience who usually spends time online
- Pay to appear in front of them
- Build a relevant offer to generate sales, leads or brand awareness.
Remember that building a paid advertising funnel is much harder than you think.
Not only does it take a long time to test, it also takes a decent amount of money to set up and scale up.
However, if you have the money and take risks, this is definitely an online marketing strategy that you should pursue.
Here are the most effective types of online marketing you should try.
- PPC Advertising
I talked earlier about content marketing and SEO with the goal of gaining high positions in search engines like Google.
Yes, if you have the money, you just need to buy good positions.
PPC stands for “pay per click”. You buy an ad position based on keywords and pay for each time someone clicks on a specific page you want them to visit.
You can buy PPC ads on most major search engines like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.
Facebook is a particularly popular place to run PPC ads because of Facebook’s very advanced targeting options and ad types.
- Social media advertising
If you are working to increase your social media audience, you can use paid online social media advertising to increase your followers.
For example, you can run ads to get more subscribers on Youtube.
Once upon a time, people would pay to appear on Facebook and build followers of their Facebook page. However, I do not recommend doing this because it can reduce the organic reach of pages.
You can use this method if all you care about is your brand image. It will not have any other purpose.
- Re – targeting advertising
One of the most effective and easy to get started is re-targeting advertising, also known as remarketing.
Facebook and Google are the two most popular platforms for re-targeting advertising. This is an advertising method that allows you to show your ad content specifically to people who have visited your website.
You can even run ads only for people who have visited a specific page on your website.
If you’ve ever visited a big page like the Victoria Secret or something. Then their ads start following you on the internet (on news sites, Facebook, …), you have seen the re-targeting works.
Re-targeting is as simple as placing a line of code on your website, setting up some custom audiences, creating ads and setting your budget.
You can re-targeting for as little as $5 a day and it works great because you’re running ads with a better audience – at least once interested in your brand.
- Sponsor Podcasts
I told you how to use podcasts effectively to build KLT, and I also recommend you, if possible, be a guest of certain podcasts in your market if you don’t want to start with your own podcast.
However, that is not the only option. Most major podcasts on the market have sponsorships that you can spend on them.
They will make an ad to bring your product or service to their audience as a proposal.
It is one of the highly effective forms of online marketing that the essence of podcasts is that their audience is organized and nurtured.
One more thing that I recommend when using this method is that instead of calling the audience to your website, ask them to text a code to the company’s phone number to receive preferential details. The reason is because most users are listening to podcasts on their phones and on the go.
So, this is not only convenient but you also get their phone number, email. You can then use SMS marketing and email marketing to track until the sale.
- Influencer Advertising
We live in an era of online technology. This is an era where anyone can build a large following on social media or the internet in general.
If these people tell their audience to buy something, their audience will buy it. If they tell their audience to follow someone, their audience will follow that person.
Of course, it’s not 100% true but they do have a lot of influence. Understanding this, it’s no surprise that influencers sell their influence to marketers. You can pay some influential people to mention your product or brand thereby generating sales.
The two most influential platforms are Instagram and Youtube.
Influencers who have a large following are often very expensive. However, you can pay those who have less followers but still have an impact on certain audiences for very cheap prices. Sometimes you just need to give them free products in exchange for their mention.
# 5: Joint venture
Although paying influencers is a good idea to motivate you and generate sales. However, besides that you can also build relationships with them to open the door of cooperation.
The goal here is to borrow the audience of others to develop their own brand and generate sales.
Why build a large audience in the first place without borrowing them from others? That is the power of the venture – Kevin Michael Geary
3 basic steps for joint venture strategy
- Connect with influencers to build meaningful relationships
- Create a product or piece of content together (webinar, instructions, …)
- Co-advertise what you have created (mostly via email, social media, but can also be paid ads, …)
Joint ventures may be one of the fastest ways to grow and scale.
If you have an audience of 50,000 and collaborate with someone who has an audience of 100,000 or 150,000, you will see huge profits in your followers and much higher sales.
However, famous influencers will not want to collaborate if you are nobody. It doesn’t make much economic sense to them (unless they like you).
- If you have 1000 followers, find someone who has 3,000 – 5,000 followers and collaborate with them.
- Similarly, if you have up to 5000 followers, look for people with 10,000 or 15,000 followers.
Each time you implement this campaign, you will have a large number of followers on your own project.
Tip: Creating a podcast is a great way to connect with influencers. Start by getting them involved in your shows and introducing them to your audience, then start building relationships.
- Take advantage of Affiliates
One of the common ways the joint venture model is affiliate marketing. It gives you the percentage of sales to promote the product.
For regular products, the commission is usually less than 20%.
For digital products, the commission is almost never lower than 25% and can be up to 100% (a lot of people offer 100% commission for certain products because they only want potential customers to boost sales).
It’s easy to create an affiliate program, but it’s not always easy to run. Finding the right affiliate can be difficult and requires a lot of time and requires certain expertise.
However, if you create a successful affiliate program, you will bring your product and brand to the audience of others as they work to promote you and earn commissions.
- Contest Marketing
Another part of the venture is contest marketing – approaching and taking the lead by offering an online contest.
Although you can run the contest yourself, it will be much more successful if you work with influential people. You give your own gifts, products from other brands or a combination of both.
If you can create a truly successful contest, other brands will often contribute so they can participate. At that time, not only your audience but also their audience will follow along and give you a big push.
I ran contests to build social networking sites, grow email lists, and collect, analyze, rate podcast reviews and get results.
#6: Mobile App Marketing
I also frankly and let you know that I have no experience in online marketing in the field of mobile apps.
However, I understand the basic strategy with it. At the same time, I also realized that mobile app marketing is one of the top effective online marketing methods in 2019.
Google, iTunes, Pinterest and YouTube, Apple App Store and Google Play Store are search engines. If you create an app that’s right for your business, users will be able to search for it.
If your app is super useful or entertaining, people will talk about it and from there it will spread.
You can blog about your application. Sometimes you are invited to talk about podcast applications and use them for joint ventures.
It is not just marketing. That app could be a direct source of business revenue. Even a free app can potentially generate tons of revenue with ads or in-app purchases. It is an add-on or upgrade utility for paid versions within the application.
3 basic steps for Mobile App Marketing strategy
- Plan, design, and develop a useful app in your market (usually via free app purchases)
- Get your app accepted into the App Store or Google Play Store and start adding new users.
- Use the app to gain visibility through various marketing channels and drive sales from in-app purchases
The two drawbacks of this mobile marketing app strategy are that it is extremely costly and hard to find a quality developer you can trust.
Before you start, you should check out the other available apps, do a series of market research to make sure your ideas are helpful.
Use the necessary tools
There are many tools to support you in deploying your online marketing depending on the marketing channels you use.
Each type of tool will give you lots of different options.
For example: You need to find an email marketing service provider to implement this method properly. However, they all have different features, options, and prices, so which one should you choose?
You should seek advice from those who came before to make the best decision.
How to build online marketing
Currently there are many online marketing templates that I think are too bulky. In my opinion the best way to do this is:
- Know what all your options are – market survey
- Get advice from someone who truly understands your business and goals to get you on the right track instead of wasting too much time and money.
Above is an overview of online marketing. It gives you an overview of everything. However, many of you will feel overwhelmed by this.
Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments. I will help you answer it.
Conclusion
Hopefully through this article, you understand exactly what online marketing concepts are and the 5 benefits that online marketing brings to your business. And more importantly, you can apply 6 effective online marketing strategies to your marketing campaign.
Good luck to you!