Using Online Marketing To Improve Your Business
Search engines started becoming more relevant in the late 1990s when it started becoming harder for people to get information on the internet due to the increasing number of websites. Since then, even as the number of search engines has increased, it has also become harder for websites to stand out from the fray.
This is where online marketing comes in. Individuals, businesses, and organizations are increasingly turning to online solutions so as to increase their sales and overall visibility. For a business to maintain its relevance in today’s commercial landscape, it must appeal to the increasing number of tech-savvy users.
What is Online Marketing?
Online marketing refers to a wide range of powerful techniques and tool utilized to market goods and services via the online media, most popularly the internet, but also including email and mobile phones among others.
The development of online marketing through the 1990s and 2000s has transformed the way businesses use emerging technologies to promote their products and services. This shift has also been exacerbated as people eschew going to physical shops in favor of online shopping. Numerous online marketing agencies have come up to help businesses optimize their online presence.
Some of the more modern online marketing techniques are: SEO, SEM, SMO, Content marketing, influenced marketing, content automation, SMM, campaign marketing, direct email marketing.
More popularly known as SEO, this is a process of influencing a website’s visibility within a search engine’s organic (or unpaid) results. Results that appear higher up in search engine result pages (SERPs) receive more traffic and convert more users to customers.
SEO involves knowing a target audience’s popular searches, specific keywords, as well as preferred search engines, and incorporating this in how a website is structured and how its content is written. It may also involve other strategies like increasing a site’s back links, and ensuring it has a responsive design
SEM involves utilizing paid advertising to drive up a website’s visibility and popularity within SERPs. By 2007, SEM had become a more popular option for ad campaigns than traditional marketing options: advertisers spent more than 20 billion dollars on paid online ads.
As people became more reliant on the internet, search engines began developing business models to take advantage of their notoriety. One such program is PPC, or Pay Per Click. Made popular by the Google AdWords service, 2007 year-end financials showed that PPC services were many search engines’ top earners.
This refers to the use of various social media platforms to increase public awareness of a product or service. The main goal of SMO IS to create and strategically share compelling online content so as to increase engagement with current and potential customers.When a business creates interesting ‘viral’ content, its online community will share the content with their individual networks, increasing the brand’s visibility and reach. SMO is also a useful tool for business to manage their online reputation.
Social media has taken over from traditional media sources as the main source of news. Business must strive to take advantage of social media to drive sales, increase their reach, and improve customer loyalty.
Businesses will benefit greatly from hiring experts to run their online marketing efforts, so as to take advantage of the full range of marketing options available. One has to do extensive research and find a reputable company that has a group of professionals with extensive experience in online marketing.
Go for Companies that specialize in SEO, SMO, PPC, branding and online marketing and are committed to help propel businesses to the top of their respective industries.