Fewer than 20 years ago, extroverts had a way better chance of becoming rich and successful. Why? It involved a ton of networking. For you to be successful, you had to hire employees and build a huge company. Even for a career in arts, music, or movies, you had to get every person in your industry to know you.
While connections are still a great deal to date, you don’t have to go looking. You can get them right from your couch, at the comfort of your home. That is online marketing. In a world where 93% of all marketing interactions start with a search engine, according to Inforza, you need to be on top of your game.
Online marketing is evolving at the speed of light. This is one huge reason why getting started in online marketing might seem like a daunting process if you are completely new. To keep up with the evolution, you need a strong foundation with the judgment to think critically, act independently, and be ferociously creative.
Not to mention the fact that it’s a huge industry with a lot of competition. But don’t worry. To get yourself started on this all-important marketing journey, there is so much that you need to know to begin online marketing, and we have you covered.
This guide starts at the beginning, to provide already-intelligent professionals with a healthy balance of a strategic and tactical online marketing process.
Determine Your Business Goals
Having a primary goal to measure your digital marketing efforts’ success might be the most critical and beneficial digital marketing step of all.
Before starting a business marketing plan, companies must determine their main achievable digital marketing objectives and have a predetermined marketing budget to go along with it. Great marketers think in terms of growth frameworks. And they take time to learn how to position their marketing strategy into a sustainable, ROI-positive revenue engine for the brand.
According to Nibusinessinfo, your customers, prospects, and partners are the lifeblood of your business when setting objectives for online marketing. You have to build your marketing strategy around them. The most important thing in marketing is understanding what your customers want, and working towards quenching their thirst, which can be challenging when you’re dealing with such a diverse audience.
Marketing is strategic. To succeed, you need highly focused goals. It is better to start a journey knowing where you are heading, that way it is easier to arrive at your destination faster.
Learn Traffic Acquisition
Even if you have the most amazing web storefront, blog, or product in the world, if you’re not getting traffic, your business’s growth strategy will fall flat.
Many brands are focusing all their efforts on getting higher conversion rates. Of course, that’s extremely important for the success of your brand. However, before people can convert, they need to find your website first. Growing a website takes time. It takes consistent sharing of great content for months and months on end.
Your growth is slow and steady just as the traffic coming to your site is slow and steady. While that strategy will work, it’s always nice to employ more effective strategies to get a huge jump in traffic every once in a while.
Improve Conversion Rates
In addition to bringing visitors to your website, you need to keep them there. Not only that, you need to transform them from interested prospects into customers. Conversion optimization is the practice of converting first-time visitors into customers and converting first-time customers into repeat buyers.
Interestingly, the outward look of your page is the first towards achieving high conversion rates. According to an analysis by Portent, the first 5 seconds of page load time have the highest impact on traffic conversion rates. So now you know that your website has to be deemed world class even at first glance.
After that, your website needs to move the relationship forward and seal the deal. Conversion rate optimization provides a significant opportunity for businesses of any size. It takes a scientific approach to optimize websites and to enable businesses to convert more visitors into subscribers or customers.
Conversion optimization isn’t rocket science. In many ways, it’s common sense. But you need to actively think about what you’re doing and know the best practices.
Routinely Create Quality Content
Are you blogging regularly? If yes, great job! Don’t have a blog yet? It’s time to share your industry knowledge with the rest of the world. Nothing makes search engines happier than websites that continuously update their content. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not just about search engines. The more you blog, the better for you.
However, it’s understandable that finding the time can be challenging. Research from Zazzle Media supports this. It reveals that 60% of marketers find it hard to produce content consistently. And even when they do produce content, they may not be happy with it. No pressure, just consider your schedule and try to remain consistent, whether that’s every day, every week, or several times a month.
Note that while creating this new content, it’s crucial to ensure it’s written for humans, not robots. Search engines have come a long way and, over the years, have gotten sophisticated enough to discern quality and spam-worthy content. To build your website’s credibility, your content should always answer the audience’s questions. Write for humans, then tweak necessarily to satisfy search engines. After all, your customers are humans, not robots.
Get Found With SEO
Search engines are a powerful channel for connecting with new audiences. Step one of a strong SEO strategy is to make sure that your website content and products are the best that they can be. The second step is to communicate that user experience information to search engines so that you rank in the right place.
Want your business to succeed in the world of SEO? It can be done, as long as you’re strategic. If you know nothing about SEO, taking up Clickslice SEO training and courses is just the best way to go about it. Investing in a long-term SEO plan for continuous organic search success is important. It can eat up a lot of your valuable time but in the long run, it is worth it.
Build a Robust Social Media Presence
The opportunity for direct face-to-face communication is currently limited, the more reason for growing brands to embrace social media to reach their customers.
Today, brands are riding the wave of social media marketing. According to Buffer, 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been effective for their business.
Social media has become such a functional and essential aspect of many marketing strategies and across all generations. It is the simplest and least expensive way to reach a huge audience.
Optimize Your Website For Mobile
Last but not least, you should understand that mobile marketing has become more relevant than ever.
More and more consumers browsing and making purchases with their smartphones or tablets, a mobile-friendly website is vital. According to a report from Hitwise, nearly 60% of all Online Searches are now carried out on a mobile device, with some sectors, like Food and Beverage, reaching 72%.
Although investing in mobile-specific marketing can require a substantial investment, especially if you’re just starting, you can take the first step by ensuring that your business’s website is optimized for mobile.
