However, online marketers are usually confronted with so many options that at times, it becomes difficult to decide which online marketing strategy to prioritize. What can help the decision about the most effective online marketing strategy to use is to factor in the brand you are promoting, the product and the demographics of your target audience. It is only by doing so you can decide better on an online marketing plan that will be most effective to achieve your marketing goals. Here are the most effective online marketing strategies which most experienced online marketers do not hesitate to recommend.
Content Marketing
As most experienced online marketers like to say, in online marketing, content is king. Marketers effectively use good content to disseminate informative, educational and even entertaining information to gain consumer trust and increase brand awareness. Content marketing is quite popular among digital marketers because it is typically less expensive than most other forms of marketing and it gets better results too particularly in terms of good traffic and more leads. To get these results, your content must be of high quality and valuable to users.
Search Engine Marketing, SEM
Search engine marketing, SEM is a type of online marketing where you increase your search ranking in the SERPs of search engines. Marketers do this by using paid advertising techniques. If you know the techniques and have the experience in Google Ads and display/search ads, you can do it yourself. But, if not, it is best to hire the services of digital marketing experts to do it for you by tinkering with how your business uses text-based search ads, YouTube video ads, display ads and mobile ads. What you expect is for Google to rank your business high in its SERPs. If it does, you’ll receive more and better organic traffic to your online business.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is especially very effective in online marketing largely because of the visual captivation of videos as marketing tools. This is more so when used on YouTube which is the most effective online video distribution platform most marketers like to use. YouTube is not only a social media platform; it is a search engine too. Marketing with videos on YouTube is one great way to harness its search influence and vast audience to promote your products. On YouTube therefore, you can effectively use engaging infomercials and instructional how-to videos to market your products and with impressive results. You can in addition host a Google Hangout with your customers/consumers as an entertainment option and with good results also.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a business model that requires the engagement of affiliates to help promote products for a product merchant and the affiliates receive compensation by way of commissions from the sales they generate. You can recruit affiliates directly to help promote your brand, or you link your e-commerce store to a reputable affiliate program like Strong Future International, SFI which has millions of affiliates on roll ready and willing to help promote your products in exchange for commissions on the sales they generate. If however, you choose to recruit affiliates yourself, it is best to use affiliate recruiting software which can help to automate the process somewhat to save your precious time and resources.
Email Marketing
Email marketing has been around for quite a while and it is still very popular with digital marketers. This is largely as a result of its continued effectiveness as a reliable marketing strategy with very impressive Return On Investment (ROI) for marketers. The ROI from email marketing is about 4x higher than many other marketing channels like paid search, direct mail and social media marketing which digital marketers also like to use.
Search Engine Optimization, SEO
If you have a good SEO on your e-commerce website, you get free organic traffic from search engines. That simply equates to free advertising. There is therefore no better way to get free advertising online than through SEO. A good SEO on your website helps to increase the ranking of the website in the SERPs of major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo because of the relevant keywords and search terms you have used on the site. The moment you have this digital marketing technique in place on your website, the organic traffic to it will increase significantly. What that means is better online business going forward and you will see a huge increase in the sales your e-commerce store will start to generate. SEO technique simply entails optimizing your website and getting relevant links and citations on it. The more relevant and plentiful these links and citations are, the better its chances of ranking high in search engines. And, a high ranking means more and better organic traffic to the site. That ultimately means more leads and sales on the website.
Pay-Per-Click, PPC
Unlike SEO which requires a lot of technical work on your website before it ranks high, PPC allows you to start ranking on the first page with almost no downtime and less requirements from Google. However, it comes with costs. Your business will have to pay for the clicks generated on your website. PPC technique is quite effective because only the clicks matching your keywords and search terms are directed to your website. PPC directly compliments SEO because SEO may not solve all of your keyword ranking challenges. PPC helps to save up on time as well since SEO even though an effective strategy in its own right is time wasting and highly technical to get in place. With SEO, getting high rankings for each search term takes a lot of time and effort, including strong content writing, keyword research, link building, and a strong website. PPC does not require all that to get you the traffic you pay for.
YouTube Video Marketing
Aside the huge effectiveness of marketing with videos, YouTube is also a very large search engine where people quickly go to look for solutions to their problems. Searchers go to YouTube to find solutions to their problems and the captivating videos on the platform if optimized well enough help to increase views and clicks. That means good traffic, more leads and sales. When you create good how-to/demonstration videos on topics related to your products and recommend the products, if the videos are optimized well enough on YouTube, they help to attract leads/buyers in significant numbers.
Social Media Marketing, SMM
These days nearly everyone is on social media 24/7 around the world. With about 4.65 billion active users worldwide, now that’s one huge market out there. Marketing on social media is therefore a very smart thing to do. Social media marketing is simply the strategy of promoting products/services using social media networks or platforms. But first you must have accounts on the most popular social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. Depending on the products you are marketing, you can use these platforms to make good promotions most times for free. Some of the platforms like Facebook and Instagram for instance have in-house tools specifically designed to aid marketers to achieve their desired branding and marketing goals. However, that is possible only if you can consistently develop content designed specifically for each social media platform by way of good content in form of articles, photos, videos, or any other type of content that your audience is interested in. If however you have the means, you can pay for ads to run on social media. As your social media marketing grows, you can take advantage of automation by using social media management tools to post and schedule content across multiple social media channels. The results can be very encouraging in terms of leads and sales generated therefrom.
Paid Search Advertising
Paid search advertising is typically pay-per-clicks where a marketer is required to pay for each view or click their ad receives. You can however not get the most out of this hugely effective advertising and marketing technique if you are unable to craft compelling ad texts. This involves the use of powerful headlines and intriguing snippets that are short and concise. You also need to use the right search engines or websites that are relevant to the ad market. Paid search advertising even though it comes at a considerable cost, has the potential to boost your business significantly. If as a marketer you are unable to study and master it perfectly, it is advisable to hire the services of an expert to handle it for you. That comes with a bit of costs too.
Influencer Marketing
People who have a sizeable, responsive and active audience on their websites or on social media and they have the ability to influence their audience to act in a certain way are usually known as influencers. On that premise, Influencer marketing can be rightly described as the marketing practice of working with influencers to promote a brand’s messages, products and or services. Through influencer marketing, marketers can easily get their marketing messages to a wide variety of audiences and at times together with the endorsement or recommendation of the Influencer. This is why it is one great and effective way marketers can take advantage of many digital channels to reach their target audience. It enables businesses to work in close association with Influencers while leveraging the huge popularity of celebrities and experts in their field who share similar values. Businesses can thus easily reach the large followers of Influencers with their branded offers and content. This in addition to Influencer recommendations and endorsements that usually help businesses to get more leads and make more brisk sales.
Local Search Marketing
Most online marketers know that every business is first and foremost local. This is why many e-commerce stores usually latch on to Google for their local search marketing through Google-My-Business, GMB. If your e-commerce store is optimized for local searches on GMB, Google usually throws up your business in search results using the searcher’s keywords particularly with a “near me” clause. Optimizing your business on GMB helps to increase the visibility of your business on Google Maps. So, when anyone is searching for a local business nearby, your business benefits from Google local search results. That can be great for local organic traffic, more local leads and more local sales. You can boost your local search results with inbound marketing from your conversations and sharing relevant material on your social media handles. By doing this, instead of panning out wider to find customers, inbound marketing strategies bring them to your website steadily.
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