The growth of Internet over the past twenty years has made it possible for thousands of businesses to grow who previously might not have had that opportunity. The low costs associated with online marketing make it much easier to compete with big business and their advertising budgets than ever before.
Internet marketing is more than simply registering a domain name and creating a website, however. It’s about getting you noticed and driving visitors to your site. Unlike a traditional brick and mortar store, which might attract customers who randomly walk by, a website is completely invisible to anyone who isn’t specifically looking for it. How can you market products online? Here are some of the online marketing channels explained:
Search engine optimization (SEO)
There is no more cost effective method to get people to come to your website than to have them do a simple search in Google, Yahoo! or Bing for your topic. Having a website that is designed with the search engines in mind can increase your chances of getting that coveted top spot and bring lots of traffic to your site. SEO can be complicated, but tools and professional help are available.
E-mail marketing
Not to be confused with spam, e-mail marketing is the process of sending offers for products directly to customers who have chosen to sign up for your mailing list. Such lists are often obtained from specialized Web pages called “squeeze pages” that usually provide a free report or ebook in exchange for the customer’s name and e-mail address.
Pay per click advertising
Pay per click advertising, or PPC as it is often known, is a form of advertising on a search engine’s results pages where the advertiser’s ad is shown when a customer searches for something relating to the advertiser’s product. The advertiser pays the search engine a small fee, ranging from several cents to several dollars, for each time a customer clicks on their ad.
Social networks
Social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin just to name a few have become very popular in the past few years, and some marketers have found ways to promote products to the millions of people who have profiles on those sites.
These are among the online marketing channels which are very effective to use on the web for really increasing the traffic to your online business. For any business to succeed using these channels means knowing what you’re doing or working with a digital marketing agency. The ROI makes it well worth your while to work with a digital marketing agency.