Marketing strategies for online businesses
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the various marketing strategies that you can take as an online business. This is the process of optimizing and streamlining your content on the internet in such a way that it shows up in an organic manner on top of search engine results whenever a keyword relevant to your business is used. Normally it takes around a few months for your search results to show up. For this purpose, you need to find out and choose keywords that are the most perfect for the kind of work that you are doing.
You can use tools such as Google keyword planner tool for this purpose. For example, you could own an e-commerce store that deals in fashion and accessories. In that case, you should look for keywords that match your product line and core business. You can easily get the top keywords for your search results. For this, you can learn the best SEO techniques and get well versed with them so that your business can skyrocket.
Search engine marketing (SEM)
SEM happens to be the paid form of SEO. Here you adopt inorganic methods in order to make sure that your result comes on top of the search engine page results. Here you basically pay the search engine in question to make sure that your results appear on the top of the search engine results page as and when it is typed. In any case, most of the people never look beyond the first page of the search engine result page while surfing the net. Adopting SEM means that you get perhaps more than your fair share of hits.
Content marketing
This is primarily about making sure that your audience gets relevant content on a timely basis depending on their requirements. It is very important that as an e-business you need to know what your audience wants to read. Do they want to read a blog or see a video? You might as well use an infographic in order to convey your message to your audience. SEO is an important part of such endeavors. In your content, you can use keywords that are highly searched and thus make sure that you push your website to a higher place on the search engine. All these marketing tips can come in really handy in order to make sure that your online business achieves progressively better results.
Social media marketing
There are several facts regarding social media that you need to take into account. As a country, the maximum number of Facebook users comes from India. It is estimated to be somewhere around 195 million. Compared to that, the United States of America (USA), which is a much bigger country and has a much better internet connection and other technological facilities, has around a puny 4 million users! In social media stakes, Twitter is the second biggest name after Facebook. After that comes LinkedIn, a social network for professionals. This should give you all the reason that you need to utilize social media in a proper way.
It can be the best online marketing tool that you ever had. Apart from the ones that have been mentioned already you can look at some other options such as Instagram and YouTube. If you still have any doubt regarding how useful social media can be for your e-business here is another statistic for you. Around 77 percent of the people on the internet buys their products on social media. There are ways in which you can promote yourself on social media. You can create meaningful advertisements with the help of a social media agency that will help create awareness about your product or service among people that matter – your target group.
However, before that, you need to know the various mistakes that people make while trying to advertise on Facebook. It is also important that your business profile page is active at all times. It is very important that you share exclusive content on your page as that would help you to reach out to your audience. In case they like what you are doing you can be sure that you would be flooded with likes, comments, and shares that would, in turn, make your product or service even more credible than it already is. It is also very important to interact with your fans and others who like the content on your business Facebook page.
You should be highly responsive to their questions, messages, and comments to name a few. This would make them feel that you value them and thus they would become your loyal customers as well. You can also share content that you get from your audience. Relationships on social media may be anonymous but they are not ambiguous at all. As far as you and your customers are concerned there is always a give and take happening. In case you wish your content to be spread around by your users you have got to do them that favor as well.
Pay per click advertising (PPC)
PPC works in coordination with SEM. You may have already put some money in SEM in order to make sure that your business feature on the top of search engine results in an instant. Now along with this, you need to pay for each click that happens on your website. SEM may be there in just one form but there are different kinds of PPC out there. A number of social media websites indulge in such practices with the latest entrants to this league being the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
The first thing that you need to do in this regard is whittle down your target. As an example, it can be said that if you are a fashion and accessories e-commerce site you would like to target women who love such things. There might be a certain demographic that you wish to capture through such a practice as a geographic area for example. You can choose your target accordingly and run some ads on Google and Facebook search. You also need to decide on a budget for this purpose and for each click that you get you spend that amount. Among all the online channels available to you in this regard, Google is the undisputed leader.
E-mail marketing
E-mail marketing is also a viable way in which you can get in touch with your customers and audience. The best part of this strategy is that this communication happens on a one to one basis. Normally, whenever a person signs up to be the subscriber of a business there are three things that they are supposed to provide – his name, e-mail address, and contact number. The major reason for that is the fact that businesses know that contact details such as phone number can be changed a million times. As such they may not even include it in their database.
However, the same cannot be said of the e-mail address. This is because changing an e-mail address can be a serious pain in the wrong places. It is a long process as well. As a business owner, you would rely a lot on such information to make sure that you are able to make business-related communications with your customers. You might think that e-mails are a hackneyed way but they are a resourceful way nonetheless as far as reaching out to one’s audience is concerned.
With the help of e-mails, you will be able to perform so many functions at once such as informing them about the latest developments in your business that might excite them. You can provide the detailed information on various products and services as well. You can always engage with them and also ask them to perform actions like subscribing to your newsletter. There are, however, ways in which this can be done though. The basic idea is that you need to make the entire process an effective one. You need to sell your ware.
You need to remember that if you are to be exclusive you first need to be inclusive. You need to include your audience in the decisions that you take as a business entity. The same can be said of various moments and celebrations as well. However, one thing is for sure. You need to track them at all times. If you want help in this regard you can always look up the various consumer insight tools available online. This will help you understand the way your customers behave and why they do so. You will be able to gauge their activity cycle in an accurate manner.
The best tools in this regard would be tools such as Facebook insights and MailChimp, which can be used in order to track e-mails. With the help of these tools, you would be able to check things such as bounce rate and open rate to name a few. On the basis of the data thus received you would be able to shape your business plans as well. In the end, though you need to keep in mind that these are just some strategies and you need to find the best combination of these to make sure that your online business achieves its true potential.
