With each passing day, companies' adherence to digital marketing - or online marketing - becomes a matter of survival! That's right. Those who do not create actions on the Internet to publicize their services and products to attract and generate more sales are falling behind competitors, losing market share, and - very importantly - time and money! (I hope you don't fit in here!)
Another common mistake is understanding the importance and starting online marketing, but it all comes down to website, social media, and e-mail marketing. These actions are valid and generate results, but they are not the only ones, and you need to know that!
Among the possibilities, we can also mention the sponsored campaigns on Google (Adwords), campaigns on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram), remarketing, SEO, creating relevant content (blogs), and so on. But, regardless of the strategy used over the Internet, your brand must be relevant to your target audience. And this is your challenge!
So that you do not commit any of these failures and succeed in digital marketing actions, we have put up this blog. In it, we will deal with what online marketing is, its goals, and other things you should know before venturing into this universe and creating the right strategy for your company.
Are you interested? Then check it out below!
Table of Contents
What is Online Marketing?
Online marketing or digital marketing is nothing more than the set of actions carried out on the Internet to publicize the brand, create relationships with its audience and attract new business. The great advantage of this new marketing over the traditional one is that it is much easier to measure and has obvious metrics, such as number of visits, campaign performance, number of clicks on ads, etc. Just like PPC Marketing.
According to Highfive list, a very useful metric for evaluating the results of your digital marketing is ROI or return on investment. It allows you to identify the result of all the investments made and know for sure how much you have earned compared to how much you have spent. Very efficient, isn't it?
The four most important goals in online marketing
"What is the goal of your company website?" We ask every new customer this central question. It is almost always answered differently by the participants in the first meetings.
Goal 1: We want to win more customers
Directly or indirectly, this is undoubtedly the most frequently mentioned goal. However, many companies take the wrong action. I want to give you an example:
If you use energies to get more likes on your company's Facebook page, you will not directly generate customers. It supports the process, but you will not be successful by doing this alone. At least when you compare the revenue generated against the cost of social media activity.
We had to learn a year ago: Even writing blog articles is not aimed at generating new customers. Just because someone reads your blog post doesn't mean someone will buy from you. Of course, there are exceptions. You shouldn't sell aggressively in blog articles; otherwise, your blog article will be labeled as "advertising."
Google AdWords, Google Optimization, Facebook Ads, etc., would be methods for Goal 1.
But let's take a look at Goal 2.
Goal 2: Create more visibility
Here we are talking about increasing the visibility of your company on the Internet. Writing blog articles is a very promising method for this if used correctly.
But doesn't visibility automatically create new customers?
Let’s say we have a customer who surprised me at the beginning. He hired us to write blog articles for him. For now, that's not unusual. However, he rejected all other suggestions for generating customers directly (e.g., Google AdWords). His goal and our task are to create greater visibility for this company. We also managed to do that very well.
Many Facebook likes on your company page are also a typical method to generate more visibility.
This goal and the success of online marketing campaigns are, of course, to be measured differently at this point than for goal 1.
The most sustainable way to create visibility is to create blog articles and collect e-mail addresses with lead magnets.
Goal 3: Get backlinks and media exposure
There are methods in blog article writing to generate backlinks. So links from other websites to your website. Backlinks still influence the value of a website. They are one of the deciding factors in whether your competitor or your company is found in first place on Google.
I now also know a few examples where a blog article triggered an avalanche of press articles. Good ways to do this are to provoke or deal with hot topics. If you have already done an excellent job in Goal 2, newspapers, bloggers, companies will notice you.
But this goal is easy to measure. You only measure the number of newly built backlinks or press articles per month. The business impact of these actions is then more difficult to assess (apart from targeted backlink building as an SEO measure).
Goal 4: Strengthen branding
Sponsoring events would have the same goal. Obtaining direct customers through sponsorship is unlikely. (Goal 1) The visibility can only increase indirectly because the focus is on the event and usually not on the sponsors. (Goal 2) Backlinks and press articles are possible but cannot be the primary goal. It's about making people aware of the brand, the brand of a company.
No matter how good a company's products are, when the customer needs to buy, they have to think of the right company at the right moment—namely yours.
Sponsoring and working with influencers online are the most effective methods for this. Influencers are people who have an extensive reach and influence on their community online.
We are currently working with a fitness center chain. We specifically address influencers to train in this fitness center chain and mention this to their readers. In this way, the influencer's fans learn something about the new fitness center. You will be able to guess the rest.
In my opinion, the success of Goal 4 is the most difficult to measure because it can work in different ways—more customers, more visibility, more links, more press articles, etc. An Influencer marketing agency that deals in fitness and celebrity management can help you design an effective IM strategy for your business.
The similarities and differences between PPC marketing and Online Marketing
Online Marketing is a big umbrella of many advertising and marketing media that we do online. One of them is PPC Marketing.
Online Marketing/Digital Marketing and PPC Marketing are pretty similar to searching for potential clients. Both media is on the basis of research and data on the geographical location.
The clear difference between both media is their strategies involved. While PPC Marketing will use Pay-Per Clicks (pays a fee to the publisher for every time a user clicks on their online ads), online marketing can decide to use several media such as:
- WLAN-Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Content Marketing
- E-mail Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Inbound Marketing
- Innovation marketing, etc.
What is the difference between online marketing to traditional marketing?
With the invention of the printing press and the possibility of producing leaflets cheaply, the opportunity arose for the first time to inform people in writing. This ability to get messages and information among the people has contributed to the spread of the Bible. Not just that, business people also recognized the opportunity to spread their advertising messages and thereby reach a far greater number of people.
With the invention of the radio and television, the possibilities of informing people about products and ultimately of getting your advertising message to everyone through marketing increased many times over.
It didn't take long until the first advertising, i.e., marketing strategies were developed, on the one hand, to outdo the competition and, on the other hand, to convince even more people of their products or services more effectively.
The disadvantage of these offline marketing methods
It all happens to this day without people even looking for the products or services. Thus, the range is large, but a large part of the budget provided for offline marketing goes to nothing to a not inconsiderable extent.
Advertisements in print media are no longer consciously perceived due to the sheer volume. People perceive Advertisements on radio and television as disturbances or annoyance, and the channel is changed.
It's different in online marketing.
Conclusion
With all we have shared here on online marketing, I believe you now know how to get started and what to expect.
This blog showed us what online marketing is, what online marketing goals are, online marketing similarities and differences with PPC marketing. Finally, we shared what makes it different and more efficient from traditional marketing.
Online marketing is indeed an activity in its own right, to consider and develop whatever your activity. There are many things to know and take in hand. So, keep educating yourself on the subject and get started!
