There’s a lot of talk about “internet marketing.” But what does it mean? And where do we start?
Internet marketing is the process of driving online traffic to your website in order to increase sales, leads, and whatever else would be considered an improvement to your business’s ROI (return on investment).
From understanding the difference between digital marketing and traditional advertising to identifying your target market, we break down every aspect of internet marketing into easy-to-understand terms.
Whether you’re planning to launch a new product or expand your current offerings, internet marketing could be the key to ensuring the success of your brand-new launch.
What Is Internet Marketing, Really?
Internet marketing is the process of creating and distributing online content that attracts visitors to your site. This could mean writing blog posts, posting videos, or developing social media profiles. Content marketing works because it provides value to potential customers. If you’re able to provide information that helps them solve problems or answer questions, you’ve got a good chance of converting those readers into buyers.
The term “internet marketing” encompasses a variety of different tactics used to promote products and services on the web. These include email marketing, affiliate marketing, display advertising, search engine optimization, and many others. In general, though, we can think of internet marketing as the collection of methods that businesses use to connect with customers via the internet.
A Brief Explanation Of Internet Marketing
The term “internet marketing” is often used interchangeably with “online marketing,” but it actually refers to many different types of marketing activities that take place across multiple platforms. This includes email campaigns, display advertising, mobile app development, paid search ads, social media marketing, and much more.
While some might think of internet marketing as simply buying ads, that’s not entirely accurate. There’s a lot more to it than just throwing money into Facebook ad groups. In fact, there are several ways to use the internet to promote your business without spending a dime. Here are three of the best ones:
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective forms of marketing out there because you know your customers’ habits. If you send them a newsletter every week, you’ll find yourself building trust with your clients over time. You could even offer discounts for signing up to your mailing list.
2. Social Media Marketing
Social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest aren’t just fun places to hang out; they’re powerful tools for driving traffic to your site. By posting regularly, sharing interesting articles, and engaging with your followers, you can grow your following and increase brand awareness.
3. Content Marketing
Content Marketing involves creating content that speaks to the variety of topics that your niche entails. By making sure that your content marketing strategy is comprehensive, niche-driven, and resolves your audience’s problems, you give your site an edge that others lack.
Content Marketing and Traditional Advertising: What’s The Difference?
The days of the salesman knocking on your door are long gone. In fact, most people today wouldn’t even let someone come to their house unless they knew them personally. But what about those salespeople who still do exist? What does the future hold for their profession? Will they become obsolete?
Today, many companies use digital channels to reach out to potential customers and prospects. This includes social media, email, web sites, text messaging, mobile apps, etc. These methods provide businesses with a cost effective way to connect with consumers and build relationships. However, some companies are finding that the old ways of reaching customers still work better than digital channels. For example, one study found that 56% of respondents preferred getting a call from a friend or family member rather than reading about a product online. Why? Because people want to feel like they’re talking to a real person and not just a faceless entity.
Another reason why cold calling works is because it helps humanize the brand. People care less about brands than individuals. If a customer knows that a salesperson cares enough to take the extra step to contact them, it makes them feel cared for. They’ll be more likely to buy from the brand in the future.
So how can marketers find success in the face of competition? One answer lies in understanding the difference between content marketing and traditional advertising. Content marketing focuses on creating valuable, relevant, and consistent messages that help educate and inform audiences.
It uses different mediums such as blogs, videos, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, etc. to attract and engage prospective buyers. Traditional advertising, on the other hand, is focused on pushing products and promoting specific events. It often involves paid advertisements on TV, radio, print, and/or outdoor spaces. While both types of marketing strategies can be used effectively, they each have their strengths and weaknesses.
For example, content marketing is great for building awareness and establishing trust among target audiences. However, it can be difficult to measure ROI since it relies on qualitative data. On the other hand, traditional advertising can be measured quantitatively, but it requires large budgets and high production costs. So, while both approaches have their benefits, neither is perfect. Ultimately, the best strategy depends on the type of audience you’re trying to reach, the budget you have, and the type of product or service you offer.
Why Does Internet Marketing Have All The Hype?
Internet marketing is one of those things that people either love or hate. There are plenty of articles about it online, but most of them seem to focus on the negative aspects of it. In fact, there are even entire books written solely about the subject. But there are many benefits to internet marketing, especially for businesses. So let’s look at the pros and cons of internet marketing.
The Benefits of Internet Marketing
1. Reach
One of the biggest advantages of internet marketing is that you don’t have to be based near where your customers live. This allows you to market directly to them and target specific demographics. For example, if you’re selling pet food, you might want to advertise specifically to dog owners, rather than targeting everyone. And because you’re reaching out to people across the world, your potential customer base is much larger.
2. Cost
Another huge advantage of internet marketing is that it costs less than traditional advertising methods. If you buy ads in newspapers or magazines, you’ll spend money on production, printing, distribution, etc. With internet marketing, however, you pay for hosting, bandwidth, and maintenance, and you don’t have to worry about print runs or ad placement. Plus, you can use tools like AdSense to help monetize your site without having to invest a lot of money upfront.
3. Flexibility
Because internet marketing is so flexible, you can create campaigns that work with any budget. You can start small and grow from there, or you can scale up quickly when you get more traffic. Either way, you won’t have to worry about spending too much money on something that isn’t working.
4. Targeting
With internet marketing, you can also target specific groups of people. For example, if your business sells pet food, you could target only dog owners by using keywords related to dogs. Or, if you sell clothing, you could target women who wear size 10-12. By doing this, you can make sure that your message reaches the right people and helps you build relationships with them.
5. Speed
When you do internet marketing, you can usually see results within days instead of months. That means you can test different ideas and strategies faster and learn what works better, before investing additional time and money into it.
6. Scalability
If you’re not looking for a long-term solution, then internet marketing may not be for you. It takes a significant amount of effort to maintain an active presence on the web, and it’s easy to lose interest over time. However, if you’re just starting out and need a quick boost, then internet marketing can give you exactly what you need. Creating a scalable internet marketing strategy is hard, and in some cases it can take longer than implementing the original strategy.
7. Data
When you do internet marketing, all of your information is stored online. This makes it easier to track how well each campaign is performing and which ones are bringing in new leads. Plus, you can easily share data with other websites and social media accounts.
8. Security
Since everything is done online, there’s minimal risk of losing sensitive information. And when you utilize SSL with a secure certificate properly, you can protect sensitive information on your site from prying eyes. In addition, having the right https:// implementation means that your site can get a very small ranking boost also. So, it makes sense to make sure that you implement a secure https:// protocol.
9. No Need To Be A Pro
While some internet marketers have years of experience under their belts, others are still learning as they go along. Since there’s no physical product involved, you don’t have to deal with shipping or returns. You just need to know about your topic with enough in-depth knowledge in order to write comprehensive articles on your chosen topic areas.
10. Low Risk
You don’t have to worry as much about making mistakes. Instead of wasting money on products that aren’t going to work, you can try things out first and find out what will bring in customers.
Clearly, internet marketing has many benefits compared to drawbacks. And, while some niches can be challenging, others are easier. This means that you can get started today for little to no upfront costs, and it can create a source of income for you in the years to come.
What Is the Role of Internet Marketing?
First things first – what exactly does “internet marketing” mean? For starters, it’s simply another way to refer to digital marketing. In fact, there are several different types of digital marketing out there, each with their own unique purpose and target audience. So let’s break down some of the most common ones:
Search Engine Optimization
This refers to how well optimized your site is for search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Search engine optimization is typically focused on things like keyword research, the technical side (everything involving the server and code), and link building, but there are many facets to making sure that your site is well-optimized for search engines.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is essentially creating great content that people want to read, watch, listen to, or otherwise engage with. This could include blog posts, ebooks, infographics, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc. Content marketing is one of the best ways to grow traffic to your site, increase brand awareness, and ultimately generate leads.
Social Media Marketing
The term social media marketing encompasses everything from posting quality content to engaging with followers. Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and others allow companies to connect with potential customers.
Within an online ecosystem for a company, the role of internet marketing can be rolled into a single goal: to drive rankings, traffic, and conversions for a website.
Attracting New Customers Using Internet Marketing
You know how it goes: You’re shopping around for a new pair of shoes, and suddenly you find yourself staring at a screen full of options. Maybe you’ve seen something on Instagram or Pinterest, or maybe you just googled “shoes.” Either way, you end up looking at dozens — even hundreds — of different pairs of shoes. And while some are cute, others look like crap.
That’s where online marketing comes into play. By focusing on paid advertising, search engine optimization, and web design, you can attract new customers to the brands you represent. In fact, there are many ways to do this. But depending on what type of customer you’re trying to reach, you may want to focus on one method over another.
Marketing strategies are often used to bring in new customers, whether it’s via advertising, email campaigns, or even social media. As digital tools become increasingly important, however, many companies are turning to internet marketing to attract new customers. Online marketing includes everything from paid social media to search engine optimization.
By making sure that you focus on certain strategies, it’s possible to attract new customers and increase your sales. These are called “conversions.” Every person who lands on your site ends up being “converted” to a customer when they take action and buy from you.
By making use of these methods, it’s possible to increase your sales exponentially. However, you’ll want to conduct some market research and A/B test different approaches before committing to one strategy, just to make sure that the strategy you chose works for you.
Cultivate Brand Loyalists Through Internet Marketing
In today’s digital age, we’re all about keeping our customers satisfied. But there are many ways to do that besides simply providing good products or services. One way is to keep your customers engaged, especially those who are already familiar with your brand. This includes communicating with them via email, social media, and other channels.
To effectively communicate with customers, you’ll need an audience. And for that, you’ll need an opt-in email list. If you don’t have one, then you need to create one.
You’ll also want to make sure you’re using every tool at your disposal to promote your brand. There are plenty of free tools out there, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, that will help you manage multiple accounts at once. These apps allow you to schedule posts across different platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
LinkedIn, etc., without having to log into each account individually.
Finally, you’ll want to establish a presence on social media. While some businesses choose to focus solely on Facebook, others prefer to spread their messages across various networks. For example, you could post daily deals on both Facebook and Twitter, while sharing photos and videos on Pinterest.
Internet Marketing vs. Content Marketing: What’s The Difference?
Content marketing and internet marketing are both extremely important parts of digital marketing. They each require different skill sets to execute well, but together they form a powerful combination.
The key difference between the two is that content marketing focuses solely on the creation of content while internet marketing encompasses everything else involved in reaching audiences. So, if you want to build great content, you must first understand how to write compelling copy, optimize your blog posts, and make sure your website functions properly.
If you don’t know what makes a good piece of content, you won’t be able to produce much value. And without quality content, you won‘t be able to effectively market your business online.
Content marketing and internet marketing are both important parts of digital marketing, but they aren’t exactly the same thing. To further understand how the two differ, let’s take a look at some of the similarities and differences between the two:
- Both focus on the creation and distribution of content to reach audiences
- Both require expertise in writing, editing, graphic design, etc.
- Both require a budget
- Both are part of broader strategies like SEO, paid ads, social media, etc.
However, while content marketing focuses on creating and distributing the content itself, internet marketing focuses on everything else involved in reaching those audiences. This includes things like:
- Paid ads
- Social media management
- Search Engine Optimization
- Web Design and Web Development
- Email marketing
- Branding
So, while it’s true that both content marketing and internet marketing can be used to create engaging content, they serve very different purposes.
Internet Marketing is a Critical Component of Any Brand’s Digital Media Marketing Mix
Clearly, internet marketing is a critical component of any brand who wants to operate online. Without it, you could be left for dead as a result of poor sales and an ever-shrinking client base.
By ensuring that you work on executing your internet marketing strategy correctly, it’s possible to right that ship and make sure that you continue experiencing sales and profit improvements in the years to come.
When do you plan on implementing a brand-new internet marketing strategy for your business?
