What does online marketing mean for your business?
If you’re new to integrating digital into your marketing strategy, you might not be sure what online marketing might look like for your brand and what the Return on Investment will be.
The truth is digital adoption is rising and more and more consumers are using technology and the internet to educate themselves on their buying decisions.
So if you’re sitting there wondering, ‘Does my business need online marketing?’ - the answer likely points to yes.
Online Marketing and Inbound Marketing in particular has a vast array of benefits for your business.
And in this article, you’ll discover why your business needs some level of online marketing to make an impact with your consumers.
Why Traditional Marketing As a Stand-Alone Is No Longer Effective
If you were born any time before the early 90’s, you probably remember the time and energy it would take you to make a major purchase decision.
The information you’d typically seek out was not as easily available by the click of a button as it is with today’s modern technology.
You’d have to put in the work to research about the product or service you were seeking. And on top of it all, often you’d be putting your trust into a salesperson to provide you with accurate information.
The buying journey was very simple then but your options were limited and brands didn’t always have the consumers’ best interest in mind.
Along with billboards, newspaper ads, and other traditional print marketing, consumers had very little access to the full spectrum of information to inform their purchasing decision. The other caveat of all these traditional marketing methods is that they do not allow two-way communication.
Once digital adoption came into the marketplace, everything shifted and consumers began present to the power they truly held at the end of the day: choice.
Take search engine leader, Google for example.
Google alone receives ‘over 63,000 searches on any given day’.
Consumers no longer have to scramble through yellow pages or flyers to find their product. They have instant access to educate and inform their purchasing decisions through search tools, social media platforms, and popular blogs and forums.
These are just a few types of online marketing that has allowed consumers to research and communicate directly with the brands and businesses they have chosen to purchase from.
How Online Marketing Improves and Elevates Your Business Growth
The transition to digital can be daunting to some, but when you work with an agency such as Chirp Media, we work with you to make sure you feel empowered in your decision to use online marketing.
Your business can grow beyond the capacity of what traditional marketing could deliver through a few simple avenues of online marketing made more accessible and affordable than ever.
Online marketing provides a variety of layers to your consumers’ Buying Journeys, that can provide a more holistic customer experience that will in turn build greater brand awareness, nurture customer loyalty and increase your overall sales.
The reason Online Marketing is so effective is because the types of tactics and tools used provide consumers with a more personalized experience, tailoring options to their needs and allowing two-way communication to be accessible every step of the journey.
We chose our top three Online Marketing tools or types that we use with our clients at Chirp Media that have proven to:
- Increase customer engagement
- Boost audience reach
- And improve brand visibility
Types of Online Marketing
Content Marketing
Definition
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
SOURCE: Content Marketing Institute
Feature
Content marketing focuses on attracting visitors, converting visitors into
leads, closing leads into customers, and reducing customer churn (or increasing lifetime value) with retention focused campaigns driven by compelling and genuinely helpful content.
Advantage
Content marketing works in tandem with other Online Marketing types as it can be useful to build up original content for your business, that can be indexed and repurposed along the way. The more content you produce, you more likely your audience will see you as a reputable source of information and a thought leader in your industry.
Benefit
The best part of content marketing? It is incredibly cost-effective. Unlike other marketing tools or services, content marketing lies within creation, which businesses and brands can do independently at a fraction of the cost.
Paid Advertising
Definition
Paid advertising is any kind of advertising that you have to pay for, versus owned or earned advertising. With paid advertising, marketers pay the owner of ad space in exchange for use of that space. The price paid for the ad space is often settled through a bidding process between marketers and the ad space owner. There are several categories, including pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-impression (PPI), and display ads.
SOURCE: Track Maven
Feature
The type of paid advertising your business utilizes can vary, but ultimately the feature that all paid advertising provides businesses is the opportunity to expand their reach to audiences they wouldn’t traditionally be able to target.
Advantage
Paid advertising tools, although does incur some cost for the business, are able to be placed in a variety of areas on a website, search engine or social platform that can grab the consumer’s attention. The combination of these paid advertising tools can create a fully customized journey for consumers, ultimately retaining more leads and establishing more rapport with consumers.
Benefit
A key benefit through paid advertising tools like social advertisements has allowed our clients to retarget consumers and even create similar audience groups to expand their business’ reach into new territory. Paid advertising offers more flexibility to new customer bases, something that’s not typically accessible through traditional marketing efforts where you can be limited by geographical location.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Definition
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
SOURCE: Moz
Feature
SEO is executed through a combination of tactics of online marketing and development through a business’ website, citations and social platforms. A strong SEO strategy can boost a business’ online authority organically to drive traffic to their site, establish thought leadership through link building and drive consumer engagement through content and copy.
Advantage
When done right, SEO provides businesses an opportunity to be a step ahead of the competition online. Quality content, correct keywords and link building all attribute to the success of a well-executed SEO strategy to increase a site’s search ranking which in turn, puts your business up front and center of your target audience and potential prospects in search of your product or service.
Benefit
SEO is a long term play for businesses that can pay dividends in terms of driving traffic and leads to your website. The more your site is favoured by Search Engines like Google, Yahoo! Or Bing, the more prominent placement and position your business will take in your consumers’ search queries - which has your business become top of mind to your potential prospect.
When to Make the Move to Online Marketing
If you're still on the fence about embracing online marketing for your business, consider the last time you decided to make a purchase online:
- Was it out of convenience?
- Was it because you wanted to know more about what you were buying?
- Or was it because you simply loved a good story the brand was sharing with you?
Whatever the motivation, it worked and that’s how your business can benefit from online marketing too.
Online marketing makes things simpler for you serve solutions to your consumers. With the right team to guide and empower you along the way, you can create a full-proof plan to fortify your brand and business to get the engagement and sales you’ve been searching for. Scale your business with online marketing today. Start with our [FREE] marketing assessment here.
Article by Richard Walsh
As a certified inbound and content marketer, Richard believes in the need to create high-quality compelling content, that drives engagement and interaction. Richard has been developing brands and high-quality web experiences since 2001. Book a meeting with Richard to talk about your branding and marketing efforts.
