Online marketing is using the internet to build brands, promote and sell your products and services. It is synonymous with digital marketing, a term we also use frequently.
The marketing industry has undergone a huge transformation in recent years and is still undergoing. Some of the promotional tools have moved or transformed into the online space. But this is not surprising, as marketing has followed, or rather dictated, the evolution of trends and the ever-changing buying habits of consumers. The number of online purchases is steadily increasing, i.e. more and more consumers are starting and completing their online shopping online.
While we used to find out about the latest promotions from print magazines, newspapers and leaflets, we now receive coupons in newsletters. While radio advertisements were often irrelevant to us, we are seeing more and more personalised ads on YouTube.
You’ve probably thought of a product, or said it out loud, or even written it down for someone, and a few moments later it’s already appeared in the form of an ad. This is essentially remarketing, which can be daunting for the average user, but in the vast majority of cases is still effective.
And these examples go on and on.
So in this post, we’ll look at what online marketing is and what the most important online marketing tools are these days!
The meaning of online marketing
I have already briefly described the concept of online marketing in the summary of this article, but let’s explain it a bit more. Let’s take a look at what online marketing means!
According to Seth Godin (one of the most renowned) marketing experts, online marketing is not just the online use of traditional offline marketing tools, but a qualitatively new activity.
ONLINE MARKETING (OR DIGITAL MARKETING, OR INTERNET MARKETING / WEB MARKETING) IS THE USE OF THE INTERNET AND OTHER ONLINE CHANNELS TO BUILD YOUR COMPANY’S BRAND, PROMOTE AND SELL YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.
Every business has a well-defined target audience who are present on different online channels that they use on a daily basis.
THE AIM OF ONLINE MARKETING IS TO REACH YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND ENCOURAGE THEM TO MAKE A CONVERSION.
The online marketing professional’s job is to intervene at the right stage of the buying process with the right message to ensure that a conversion is made.
Online marketing tools
The following is a list and brief description of online marketing tools.
Website
Owning your own website is becoming increasingly valuable as it is the only channel that (better still) depends on no one but yourself. Its visual and textual content can be fully tailored to the needs and expectations of your target audience. Our goal is to get our website found and converted (i.e. converted into paying customers) by users across all online marketing channels.
Content marketing
The evolution of user needs has also meant that traditional paid advertising has become less effective. Links and banners on websites sometimes give results as if they were not there. This is called banner blindness.
Content marketing goes against classical advertising. It is about creating relevant, valuable content to engage and activate users. The short message is to provide value rather than hype.
What content do you mean?
Traditional blog posts, professional articles: these articles will reach your readers through different marketing channels. In particular, you should write articles that provide a solution to a problem. These can be very popular both on Google and social.
Case studies: in the classic sense, a case study is an informative article, a study that summarises the research methodology and strategy of a business outcome. The receptive audience simply loves this kind of content. Case studies are one of the best ways to demonstrate your own professional knowledge.
Images, charts, infographics: visuals are very important. Visual elements can go into articles, but they can also stand alone as a post.
Podcasts: think beyond visual content in your content marketing. Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular these days. If you can, produce your own.
Videos: more on this in the next subheading.
It’s important to aim for relevance, quality and regularity when setting up your content marketing strategy, so that you can really achieve results and build a quality relationship with your target audience. To do this, of course, we need to assess the market through market research and continuously collect and evaluate customer feedback.
Video marketing
I think video marketing is definitely worth a special mention in the context of content marketing, which can be a great tool for your online marketing goals. The first step is to choose the most suitable platform for you (there are platforms other than YouTube), then remember the content marketing criteria and start producing quality content strategically.
What type of content is your target audience receptive to? This is also primarily a function of the product or service you offer.
If you are selling products online, product demonstrations and tests will work,
if you offer a service, showcase your service,
if you’re in the SaaS (software as a service) market, create training videos for the platform.
Besides, consumers also like to connect companies and businesses to faces, so you can also think about starting a vlog.
Email marketing
If your content is good, users will be happy to return to your website. And one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get people to come back is email marketing. Email marketing is considered by many to be a dead technique, but it’s one of the best value for money online marketing tools if you know what to do with it.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Just because your content is professional doesn’t mean that it will be found by Google – if they even search for it at all.
Search engine optimisation helps you to rank as high as possible in search engine results for certain keywords. I don’t think it goes without saying that the first few results are the most valuable, as you probably only click on the top 3 results when you search for something. So do your potential customers and clients.
So it’s important to get as high a ranking as possible through SEO and increase the organic (natural, i.e. not paid) traffic to your website.
I do this on a daily basis at The Pitch SEO Agency.
Paid advertising (PPC)
Besides organic results, Google also distinguishes paid results, which are always labelled with an “ad”. These ads can be created using the Google Ads (aka Google AdWords) advertising platform.
Ads also allows you to advertise on other sites using very slick banners, called display campaigns. If we want to spend part of our website on advertising, we need to sign up to Google AdSense, which essentially sells advertising space online.
However, paid advertising does not only exist on Google, but also on other platforms such as YouTube (video ads), Facebook, Instagram or even LinkedIn.
Click-based advertising (PPC, or Pay-Per-Click) is made more exciting and effective by remarketing. This is because remarketing allows us to advertise to users on different online marketing channels who have already visited our website or performed an event/conversion.
Footnote: Paid (PPC-based) advertising in Google search and organic search engine results (SEO) are collectively referred to as search marketing.
Social media marketing (SMM)
What social media sites are your target audience on? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat or TikTok?
The goal of social media marketing (social media marketing) is to promote your brand, products and services by building a fan/follower base. This is how we can activate our target audience and stay in the public eye.
PR and influencer marketing
Online marketing campaigns can also include online PR campaigns. If you are just about to launch a new product or service, you will definitely benefit from being present on the platforms read by your target audience through PR articles, banners and other media appearances.
To do this, you need to know what types of sites, online magazines and bloggers your target audience reads. It’s usually a good idea to contact an online PR agency to get better rates than if you were to promote the media yourself.
I would also include influencer marketing campaigns among the PR campaigns. These are mainly done on social media (e.g. Instagram), but you can also be featured in YouTube videos and blogs produced by influencers.
The stages of an online marketing plan
Now that you know what online marketing tools and channels are useful these days, think about your strategy:
Define your goals
Decide your goals
Determine your marketing strategy and define your online marketing strategy
Optimise your processes (this is called conversion optimisation)
After point 4, the cycle starts again. Conversion optimisation creates new goals, plans and strategies to make you more effective.
Analytics
Little has been said about it in this article, but digital analytics is the key to online marketing success. Be sure to set up some analytics software on your website.
For general analytics, Google Analytics is recommended.
For search engine optimisation and monitoring organic results, Google Search Console.
For Facebook remarketing, the Facebook pixel tracking code.
In addition to these, you can also include other codes, such as heat-mapping software. For example, Hotjar.
If you want to add more code to your website, I highly recommend you dive into Google Tag Manager. With GTM, you can put all the measurement codes you need in one software. If you want to read more on the subject, you should also familiarize yourself with the concept of UTM parameterization.