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Internet marketing (online marketing) is one of the best and the most effective ways of marketing your business. Also, due to the pandemic situation, internet marketing is more effective than ever.
If you want to learn internet marketing, you’ve arrived at the right place. This blog is going to be a detailed guide on internet marketing.
Here are the topics that we will be covering in this blog. As the blog is a bit lengthy, feel free to skip to the part you want to read.
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing is otherwise known as “online marketing”. In internet marketing, the marketing takes place on the internet. If you want to market your business online, internet marketing is one of the best ways of doing so.Some might confuse digital marketing with internet marketing. Actually, there’s a slight difference between them.
In digital marketing, the marketing is done on all electronic devices. So, it includes both the devices with internet and without internet. In internet marketing, the marketing is done only online. So, unlike digital marketing, it doesn’t include non-internet devices. Internet marketing can be considered as a subset of digital marketing.
Types of Internet Marketing
There are various types of internet marketing. They are as follows:
- Affiliate marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- PPC advertising
- Social media marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing refers to selling a company’s products or services for a commission. This is one of the best and the most effective form of internet marketing because everyone involved will be in a win situation. Here’s how.
You, as a company, will be in a win situation because you’re going to pay your affiliate marketers only if they make a sale. If they don’t make a sale, you aren’t going to lose any money. If you hire a full-time marketer, even if he makes a sale or doesn’t, you’ll have to pay him his salary.
The affiliate marketer will be in a win situation because he isn’t paying any money for promoting the product. Also, he’s not involved in the risk of investment. The customer is also in a win situation because they’re getting to use a good product.
2. Content Marketing
According to us, “Content marketing is a long-term strategy of creating and providing highly relevant, consistent, and valuable content to people to convert them into customers.” Moreover, content marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways of internet marketing.
You can deliver the content to people through various forms, such as infographics, blogs, videos, statistics, interviews, e-books, webinars, guides, etc. Among these, I prefer delivering content through blogs and videos as I find them to be the most effective.
To create a blog, all you have to do is create your website through WordPress. Don’t worry; creating a website through WordPress doesn’t involve coding. Choose a domain name, and select an excellent hosting company like HostGator to host your website. Next, you can install WordPress on your website through HostGator itself.
Talking about videos, as you already know, YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform. So, once you have created the video, publish it on YouTube. If your videos are paid (for example, an online course), you can host them on dedicated video hosting platforms like Vimeo.
3. Email Marketing
Emails that are sent for promotional or marketing purposes are called email marketing. If you know the marketing side of a business, you’ll probably know the importance that big companies give to email marketing.
Do you know?!
People’s email addresses are like an asset. There’s a reason behind this.
If you have people’s email addresses, you can promote your products to them through the mail. As you know, people don’t change their email addresses often. So, even if you launch a new product, you can also promote that product to them. In general, email marketing is a long-term internet marketing strategy!
Now, we will quickly explain how email marketing works.
- If you’re collecting people’s mail addresses for marketing purposes, make sure to provide some value in return for collecting their email addresses. The value provided should be free, and it can be in the form of an e-book, online course, etc.
- Using email marketing software like Flodesk, create an opt-in form. The opt-in form is the place where people provide their email addresses.
- Using the same software (Flodesk), build your email marketing sales funnel.
- Once you build the funnel, Flodesk will automatically mail your subscribers, depending on your funnel setup.
4. PPC Advertising
In PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, you’ll pay each time your advertisement is clicked. Indeed, PPC advertising isn’t a cost-effective way of internet marketing, but it’s a quick way to sell your products or services.
If you’re a startup and want to make quick sales, set up your PPC campaigns well, and be ready to spend a good amount of money. If you do so, you can see money flowing to your bank in a short time. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are some of the best platforms to run PPC ads.
5. Social Media Marketing
As the name suggests, social media marketing refers to marketing through social media platforms. In this era, many people spend a lot of time on social media, and we can use this opportunity to display our products and services to them.
If the right strategy is used, social media marketing can be very effective. But, many businesses don’t use the right approach to market their products. Instead, they spam their products to the people. Of course, spamming doesn’t work!So, initially, through your social media posts, provide value to people. You can market your products once in a while.
Be noted that your goal should be to increase your brand awareness at the initial stage as a business owner. And, social media marketing is an excellent way to do so.
6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to optimizing content to rank high on the search results. According to us, Search Engine Optimization is the best form of internet marketing. It takes time to build pace, but you’ll be getting consistent results once the pace is created. Internal links, backlinks, loading speed, website optimization, keyword research, updating the content, etc., are some of the most critical factors influencing SEO. Now, we will quickly take you through each of the factors.
Internal and External Links
Internal linking refers to linking within your website. With linking can help Google to understand your website’s structure better.
Backlinks
The links that you get to your website from other websites are called backlinks. If you get backlinks from websites with high domain authority, your blog will start ranking high on Google.
According to many SEO experts, backlinks are among the essential elements influencing a website’s ranking on the search results.
There are two types of backlinks:
- Dofollow backlink
- Nofollow backlink
Dofollow backlink: If you gain a dofollow backlink from a website, their link equity (link juice) will be transmitted to your website. In other words, dofollow backlinks can help you rank better on Google.
Nofollow backlink: Nofollow backlink is the opposite of dofollow backlink. So, when you get a nofollow backlink from a site, the site’s link equity (link juice) will not be transmitted to your website. Nofollow backlinks are represented by rel=”nofollow” tag. So, the only difference between a dofollow backlink and a nofollow backlink is the nofollow tag.
Loading Speed
If you want your awesome website to rank high on the search results, it must load fast. Nowadays, many websites are providing the same content as yours. So, many people aren’t willing to spend more than 5-7 seconds for a website to load in this fast world. So, if you want to grab people’s attention by going to other websites, ensure that your website loads fast. You can check your website’s loading speed from Google PageSpeed Insights.
Website Optimization
As you all know, website optimization plays a vital role in the success of a website. An unoptimized website will damage the user experience of visitors. So, before publishing any content, make sure that you have optimized it.
More importantly, even in 2023, some websites aren’t mobile-friendly. Come on! In this era, many people are consuming content through mobile phones. As website owners, we have to provide a good user experience to visitors from mobile phones. You can use the Mobile-Friendly Test tool from Google to check whether your website is mobile-friendly. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile phones, we urge you to optimize it swiftly.
Keyword Research
For content to rank high on the search results, you should know to target the right keywords. Various tools can be used for performing keyword research, such as WordTracker, Ubersuggest, or even Google’s Keyword Planner.
Here’s what you need to look for when choosing the keywords.
- The competition should be less.
- The keyword should have a decent average monthly search.
- The top of the page bid should be high. The page bid is indicated for people wanting to advertise on Google. For SEO, if the bid is high, we can understand that the particular keyword will perform well when chosen.
Note: Choosing a ‘Low’ competition keyword with 400 average monthly searches is better than choosing a ‘Medium/High’ competition keyword with 5,000 average monthly searches.
Update the Content
It’s essential to keep your content up-to-date. Once your content attains the top spot, it’s vital to update the content frequently to retain it.
Some content might not need an update even after a long period of a year or even more. So, in those contents, you can add some additional value to keep it fresh. We suggest going through and updating your content at least once every six months.
Internet Marketing Strategies
The following are some of the internet marketing strategies to achieve success in internet marketing.
1. Utilize Forums
Yes, you heard us right! You can utilize forums for the purpose of internet marketing. You can promote your blog, opt-in form, etc., by answering the questions on forums. Now, to make your answer hit the top spot, you need to provide super-detailed answers to people’s questions.
In general, you should provide so much more value than what others have provided in their answer. As an additional value, you can ask people to click on your blog or something similar to gain higher knowledge on a particular subject. Trust us; this method works pretty well.
2. Go Live on Social Media
In simple terms, going live social on social media works wonders to bring in more sales. Keep posting valuable content on social media. Once you know that your posts are getting enough engagement, go ahead and conduct a live session.
In your live session, interact with people awesomely! In between the interaction, you can promote your product by using or demonstrating it. Here, since you’re directly interacting with people, you can get to know people’s responses to your product. Moreover, through live sessions, it’s much easier to convince a person to buy a product.
3. Guest Post
As mentioned above, backlinks are highly essential for good Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Usually, bloggers use the guest posting opportunity to increase backlinks to their website.
So, if you get an opportunity to guest post on sites with high domain authority, never miss it! Provide a lot of value to that website’s audience; also, utilize the chance to backlink content from your website.
Be noted that the content you backlink to should be relevant to the topic of the content you’re guest posting on.
4. Influencers
Nowadays, due to the increasing popularity of social media platforms, influencers are gaining good attraction from marketers. There are various influencers on pretty much all social media platforms. Depending on your niche and budget, you can choose the influencers that suit you the best.
Unlike PPC advertising, it’s possible to bargain the promotion rate with pretty much all the influencers. So, make sure to get a good deal. If you choose the right influencer, you can make a lot of money through them!
Conclusion
By now, you would have clearly understood that internet marketing is essential for your business. As explained in the guide, there are various forms of internet marketing, and all of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. If you follow the right internet marketing strategies, you can make lots of money through it. Budding internet marketers, your internet marketing journey begins today…!
