Marketing has always been an important part of any kind of business — but internet marketing has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Nowadays, businesses can reach audiences across the globe with a simple touch of a button. However, internet marketing is not just for big corporations. In fact, family businesses can often benefit the most from turning their marketing efforts to the internet.
Consumers enjoy supporting family-operated organizations. After all, these companies have a unique story to tell, are rich in history, and contain family values that people can relate to. All in all, your family business has a huge advantage in bringing your story online.
The key is to leverage digital marketing to generate more leads, build more awareness, and, of course, sell more products or services. Here’s what you need to know to master online marketing.
The Benefits of Internet Marketing
First things first: What are the advantages of marketing to the online masses? The biggest one is the reach you have online. After all, there are nearly 5 billion internet users worldwide. Not only do people go online for entertainment, but many go on the internet to get information on where to shop. According to Think with Google, 83% of U.S. shoppers who visit a store have done online research on the organization before ever setting foot in the building. Quite simply, if your business is not prominent on the internet, you are missing out on an enormous audience.
Of course, your potential reach is not the only benefit. With internet marketing, you can also:
1) Build Brand Awareness
Building brand awareness is key to making an impact on online users. With brand awareness, you make people more aware of your company, including what it stands for and what offers it has. On a broader scale, you can also develop deeper trust with customers and increase your buyer loyalty. Consumers tend to be more loyal to a brand that is open and personable over a large, more faceless corporation.
2) Target Local Reach
Yes, having global audience reach is great — but having local reach is just as good. With internet marketing, you can create locally-based advertisements and campaigns for shoppers in your community. Doing so piques the interest of nearby shoppers who are looking to support family organizations in their neighborhood.
3) Enjoy Lower Marketing Costs
A big misconception about internet marketing is that it’s an expensive route to take. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Many digital marketing strategies are completely free to use, including social media and content marketing. Even creating digital ads on search engines like Google won’t break the bank, thanks to daily budgets and pay-per-click advertising.
4) Learn Marketing Easily
You don’t need any advanced degrees to master marketing online. Thankfully, learning internet marketing is not as hard as it may initially seem. Social media sites like Facebook offer guides on how to advertise online. Alternatively, you can even outsource your digital marketing to marketing agencies that can help you develop effective strategies unique to your business.
5) Access Insightful Analytics
Lastly, thanks to online marketing, you have access to a plethora of data and analytics. Each campaign you launch gives you information on what types of customers engage with your content. This leads to its own abundance of benefits. You can use the data you collect to create more targeted campaigns that appeal to individuals interested in your products and services. The result? Even more profit.
Now that you know the benefits, it’s time to explore the different types of digital marketing available to your company.
Types of Digital Marketing
When it comes to internet marketing, your company has an endless amount of marketing options. This is great news because every company will have its own unique way of speaking to its audience. Some benefit from a more visual take, such as posting videos or photos, while others thrive on written content like blogs or articles. Here are the most popular and effective types of internet marketing.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about providing value while at the same time telling your story. With this strategy, customers are more inclined to request more information about your organization and even become loyal followers of your brand. The most common type of content marketing is blogs. By blogging, you can share stories, provide a deeper insight into how your organization operates, or even offer free tips and tricks for your audience to learn from. The key here is to provide valuable content for free — proving that your brand is invested in the intrigues of its customers.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, or SEO, goes a bit deeper than content marketing. With SEO, your goal is to rank highly on search engines like Google. Why does this matter? Because 93% of online searches begin on a search engine. People turn to sites like Google to make informed decisions on where to spend their money. Develop good SEO, and you can enjoy much higher traffic to your website. To master SEO, you’ll have to use keywords and phrases through blogs and articles that reflect the interests of your online audience. While this does take a bit more effort, the rewards are often far worth it.
Social Media Marketing
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok — these are just some of the countless social media websites and apps out there. People don’t only turn to social media to keep up with family and friends — they also trust these platforms to find new brands to follow or even do their shopping directly.
On social sites, you can create text or visual content that takes on many different strategies. For instance, you can show a behind-the-scenes look at how your company operates. Alternatively, you can post polls, ask users questions, or encourage people to share their experiences with your brand.
Email Marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most powerful ways to keep your audience engaged. This is because you can target audiences at every stage of the sales funnel. For instance, you can send welcome emails to new subscribers to open communication with them. For regular customers, you can send steady promos or discounts to keep them coming back for more.
For those who haven’t purchased from you in a while, you can send follow-up emails to regain their interest and make them excited to buy from you again. There is an email message for everyone.
Paid Digital Advertising
Paid digital advertising is a great way to ensure your internet marketing efforts are easily visible to online audiences. One of the most common forms of paid advertising is pay-per-click advertising or PPC. A typical example of this is the ads that pop up on Google when you perform a search. With these ads, you only pay money when an online user clicks on your ad.
Another option is to pay for boosted posts on social media. These boosts will show up on users’ feeds as they scroll through the platform. With boosted posts, you can target the exact audience you want to see your content, meaning you have a better chance of impacting those who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.
Video Marketing
If one thing is for sure, it’s that online users love video content. There are 244 million video viewers alone in the United States. People love videos because they’re easy to consume. On the business end, you have plenty of different opportunities with video. You can create live streams, tutorials, behind-the-scenes looks, video blogs, interviews, or ads (to name just a few). It’s a fantastic chance to get creative and even go viral as people share your videos with their friends and family.
Of course, there are plenty more internet marketing strategies you can pursue, though these five remain some of the most successful.
Internet Marketing Best Practices
It’s clear that online marketing is the future. However, such a new form of marketing means businesses must keep up with new trends as they emerge and be willing to adapt when necessary. If you do internet marketing right, you will remain competitive and stay in front of the eyes of the right audience at the right time.
To ensure you get the most out of your online marketing, follow these best practices.
1) Have Clear Goals
While there is a lot you can accomplish with internet marketing, you won’t succeed unless you enter the game with clearly defined goals. Ask yourself, what exactly do you hope to get out of marketing online? Is it to make people more aware of your brand? Generate more quality leads? Increase your ROI? Moreover, having a clear goal gives you metrics to measure your success. For instance, if your goal is to get more leads, you can track your performance by measuring the number of requests for more information, calls, or messages.
2) Optimize Automation
One of the great tools that internet marketing offers you is automation. With automation, you can have the various online tools and platforms you choose to market on do the heavy lifting for you. For instance, on Facebook, you can schedule posts to go out at certain times, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to post. This lets you focus on other aspects of your business while making certain you still get your marketing done.
3) Invest in the Right Channels
When you first begin internet marketing, you won’t know what will bring you the biggest ROI. Many companies make the mistake of trying to market on too many channels from the start. For instance, they try their hand at social media marketing, paid advertising and content marketing all at once. As a result, they put out lower-quality content and have a difficult time tracking their performance.
Instead, choose one online marketing strategy to start and see what results it brings you. Over time, you can branch out to other methods. Once you’ve found the best-performing internet marketing strategy for you, put your investment into the channel and maximize your potential.
4) Interact With Your Audience
A great aspect of internet marketing is the ability of users to engage with your comment. Individuals can like, share, or comment on the posts you share. It’s vital for your business to keep up with the engagement you receive by responding to comments. This way, users see that your company has an interest in its audience, is appreciative of their engagement, and is willing to answer questions. It also gives you the chance to ask for feedback from your audience, which you can use as testimonials for your business.
5) Never Stop Trying Something New
The true beauty of internet marketing is the ability to try something new with each and every post. When starting marketing online, don’t limit yourself to telling only one kind of story. Every new piece of content is an opportunity to find your company’s voice that will draw in new audiences.
Over time, you will be able to see what kinds of posts have the best effect on your online audience. From there, you can retain a more consistent message that you know will speak to your customers. Like traditional marketing, digital marketing takes some experimentation to start.
Nail Your Internet Marketing Today
If you’re not using digital marketing, you could be missing out on a wide, untapped customer base. At the same time, running a family business does require an enormous amount of time and effort, which can make it hard to focus on implementing the best digital strategies. That’s where marketing agency Redstitch comes in to save the day. Redstitch uses ConvertIQ®, a powerful AI algorithm, to boost your company’s online presence through search engines and paid advertising.
You can take advantage of automated content recommendations, SEO page scoring, and data collection and analysis. Armed with these features, you can ensure you’re getting the most from your internet marketing without the worry of whether you’re doing enough. Check us out to get started!
