Today, a world without the internet is unthinkable. The internet has taken over. By 2021 almost 60% of the world’s population has some access to and uses the internet through various channels. Thus, the internet is a powerful tool that connects people and one that has reduced the world to a global village. Thus, the internet has ushered in a new era of marketing and created new opportunities in marketing and advertising.
Also known as online marketing, internet marketing is a branch of digital marketing that focuses on employing strategies that aim at marketing oneself, brand, or products online to create awareness and build an online presence. From the word ‘internet,’ marketing has to be done online via the internet for it to qualify as internet marketing. Internet marketing will employ different mediums and strategies that drive and convert traffic into leads and sales. These mediums are usually tools like social media platforms tools, search engine optimization, and others.
What are the benefits of Internet Marketing?
The primary goal of marketing, both traditional and internet marketing, is to try and reach potential customers. Internet marketing makes it a lot easier by reaching out to the potential customers in their favorite spots, for example, on book and book review sites for those that love reading, on social media sites for those that like socializing, and shopping sites for those that like shopping. Several other valuable benefits come with internet marketing, including:
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It is cost-effective
Internet marketing allows you to experiment with various marketing channels at a very low cost without binding contracts. This way, you will be in full control of your marketing spend and be able to customize and optimize your strategies for maximum return on investment.
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Reach your audience where they are
Internet marketing is targeted marketing that will yield more valuable results and ROI. It allows you to connect with only the potential clients who may be interested in what you are offering. This is by establishing the potential audience and then channel marketing and advertising efforts and resources to them.
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Effectively track the performance of marketing campaigns
Being able to undertake targeted marketing that focuses on very specific leads as well as monitor and evaluate the performance of your marketing strategy in real-time using available tools like advanced analytics are online marketing advantages that cannot be overlooked.
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Internet marketing eliminates geographical boundary limitations
Your entire market is found online whether they are abroad, in different cities, or locally near you. This makes promotion easier and faster since you can reach your existing and potential customers with a single online campaign.
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Enables two-way communication
Compared with traditional marketing, online marketing makes it possible for you to reach your customers while also giving them an opportunity to engage with you through the avenues that you have provided. These could be e-mail, live chat, or social media comments on your post.
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Personalized marketing
Personalized marketing creates a personalized experience for your customers and customers to be. Before launching a campaign, you will have already established your target market well enough to create tailored campaigns that build memorable personal experiences. Other businesses, those with a variety of products, usually create multiple tailored campaigns to deliver a meaningful experience to their target audience.
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Enhances visibility
Every effort to drive traffic and engage with your target audience is a step to increasing your business visibility. Online marketing exposes your business to thousands, perhaps millions of potential customers online who will engage with you any time on your website or social media pages.
Also Read: Learn How to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Site
Types of internet marketing
Internet marketing is one of the most profitable and rewarding marketing strategies. To understand how internet marketing works and how it can benefit your business, we need to first look at various types of internet marketing strategies.
Here are some popular internet marketing strategies.
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Email Marketing
Email marketing involves using email to promote the business to both existing and potential customers on an email list. It is an effective way of building lasting relationships with existing customers and gaining new ones as the business engages them individually in their email inboxes.
Emails are sent in the form of text, display, or native ads.
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Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) is the process through which a business or brand engages its customers through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. SMM allows a business to reach a wide customer base. SMM can either be organic (non-paid strategies) or paid.
Organic SMM relies on creating a following through building relationships by engaging with consumers using various means. Paid SMM, on the other hand, involves using paid strategies like ads to promote the business.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO means search engine optimization. Driving organic traffic by applying strategies targeted at improving search engine rankings. This can be achieved by improving the quality of the website for instance publishing quality content with relevant keywords, making the site easily navigable, improving the page loading speed, and use of metadata.
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Content Marketing
This involves the creation and distribution of content with the aim of promoting a business or product. There are various forms of content including blog posts, videos, studies, surveys, reports, infographics, ebooks, webinars, and virtual events on various platforms to engage and convert a target market.
The best example is the short videos that appear on youtube for a few seconds before your selected video starts playing. Video ads have proved more effective than tv ads because they allow one to monitor viewer engagement in terms of click and conversion rates.
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Display Advertising
Display advertising, as the name suggests, displays ads in the form of texts and graphics on web pages.
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Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
Have you ever clicked on websites tagged ‘AD’ that appear at the top of your search results?
These are paid ads. Advertisers bid on a particular keyword that appears on their ads. Anytime someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser is charged a fee.
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Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of online referral marketing in which advertisers use affiliate links to drive traffic, increase conversions and sales. The affiliate links are URLs with the affiliate’s username and ID which is used to determine their commission on the sales they generate from their websites or the traffic they drive to the product site.
Conclusion
Internet marketing is a broad term that comprises several marketing strategies as we have seen above. They are a source of customer information and offer a means for tracking consumer behavior and market trends. This is important for marketers to apply strategies and design targeted campaigns that can maximize their ROI. If you are interested in becoming a digital marketer yourself, you can enroll in a digital marketing certification course and learn the various digital marketing techniques to implement in your business.