A Beginners Guide to Internet Marketing

Successful online marketing campaigns have to continually evolve to ensure they are using the most effective strategy against the competition. To understand what the most relevant and useful online marketing techniques are, a firm understanding of the basics is required. This guide is here to help everyone, from first-time marketers, small business owners to entrepreneurs, to ensure a fundamental understanding on which to apply critical thinking and specific business goals.

1. Know the Target Audience

Every successful marketing strategy begins by focusing on the customer: who they are, what they value and which products they are currently using. Really knowing a target audience is the foundation of everything from first-time sales to long-term customer retention. Once a target audience has been identified, a business should then create a marketing strategy with their prospective customers at its core.

2. Think Long Term

Gone are the days when shallow and gimmicky branding could reap a reward. This is why it is so important to consider not simply your upcoming marketing campaign, but how it will fit into the long-term strategy. This strategy should be sustainable, with a focus on ROI and potential business growth.

3. Focus on SEO

Since 93% of online activity starts with a search engine, any successful online marketing strategy needs to involve search engine optimisation (SEO). Successful use of SEO techniques will ensure a website is ranking at the top of search results for a relevant query. This is one of the best ways to improve brand visibility and to find new customers. Since search engine algorithms are continually being updated, you might want to speak to a company that has a mission to help small businesses with their SEO for a low price, like Spark SEO.

4. Build a Well-Structured Website

A well-structured website will bring a variety of benefits, both long and short term. Firstly, it will improve the user experience: a website that is easy to navigate, with fast loading speeds is likely to increase conversion rates.

A well-structured site will also benefit your SEO strategy (see point 5) as the easier a website is for a search engine to crawl, the more trust they will have in it, resulting in the potential for higher ranking on the search engine results page.

It is also essential to think about mobile visitors when structuring a site since 66% of searches are made from mobiles. If you don’t optimise for them, you face the potential for a significant loss of potential customers.   

5. Develop a Brand Story

Having a brand story available on a website and social media platforms is an excellent way of furthering a connection with a target audience. It will help to emotionally engage a customer and is useful when creating a longer-lasting relationship. 

6. Solidify Connections with Social Media

Social media is a great tool to use to preserve brand awareness and loyalty, as it gives instant access to customers in an informal setting. To ensure the most successful use of social media, it is recommended a business focuses on a few platforms, rather than trying to tackle them all. This is the easiest way of making sure a constant feed of content is always being uploaded.