If you build it, they won’t come unless they can find it. What is it? It is a wonderful product or service you’ve chosen to offer the world.
Modern businesses can’t rely on the same tactics used 100 years ago or even 20 years ago. Technology continues to change the way we do business and the way we market to our target customers.
To reach your target customers, you have to take major steps to ensure they can find your product amid the millions of websites.
Does that sound daunting? Don’t panic.
Here’s a guide to online marketing for beginners to help you reach your target customers and promote your product.
When you build a business, especially an online business, getting your first customer is exciting. Even the fact someone is remotely interested in what you have to offer is a huge milestone.
You want to take it a step further and finalize that sale. You want to reach more people and get your name out there.
You’re in business to make money. That’s what we’re here to help you accomplish.
Online marketing gives you a chance to reach your target customer and finalize those first sales. Online marketing isn’t a whole lot different from traditional marketing.
What makes it different is the context, the competition, and the pace. Online marketing will expose your business to the world of internet searchers looking for stuff to buy.
Targeted traffic can be thought of in terms of a particular buyer interested in a particular product. For example, someone interested in aquariums is more likely to search for the “best type of aquarium salt” than the average person.
Targeted traffic generates higher sales compared to browsers who stumble upon your website. When you’re just starting out, this may be the area of online marketing at the top of your priority list.
To gain targeted traffic, you’ll need to understand who’s interested in your product. After that, you need to find out in which corners of the internet they spend the most time and what they’re searching.
One of the ways you can drive traffic to your website is to create a blog. This is where you offer potential customers free and valuable content related to your product or service.
You and your customers alike can share blog posts on social media. This helps drive traffic and boosts your search engine rankings.
Content marketing allows your content, website, and products to be visible on the search engine results page (SERP). Haven’t you ever wondered how pages get to the top of the SERP?
The answer to that question is content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO refers to the range of different techniques used to get your content to the top of the SERP. SEO relates directly to your blog content and any other web content you produce.
SEO focuses primarily on gaining organic traffic. This means someone searching for “ways to save money in 2019” might stumble upon your blog post titled “Ways to Save Money as a Young American in 2019”.
You can’t expect, though, for people to find your website by happenstance. You need to do a bit of research and hard work if you want that to happen.
SEO involves extensive keyword research. This means you create quality content related to what people are searching.
If you offer accounting services, your target customers might search for topics related to accounting or personal finance.
Creating quality and relevant content for your site is one of the most important SEO techniques. However, SEO is more complicated than creating content with specific keywords.
You may know nothing about how search engines operate. They “crawl” pages and look for how different pages on different websites relate to each other. The search engine spiders collect information regarding links embedded within web pages.
You’ll need to start link building. This involves integrating inbound and outbound links into your blog content.
You can think of links as votes in support of your website. More links to your website indicate a higher approval rating.
It doesn’t stop there, though. These inbound links from other sites need to be of high quality. Higher quality sources lead to better search engine rankings.
The opposite is true. You need to link to external sources to improve your trustworthiness in the eyes of the search engine. The idea is trustworthy sites tend to link back to other trustworthy sites.
SEO is largely about user experience. You want to give your users a reliable and trustworthy experience.
When you think about your own experience with the internet, how do you feel about a page that takes a century to load?
The internet has come a long way, and many young users don’t remember a time when they had to wait longer than two seconds for a page to load. This means a large portion of your target audience may click away from a slow-loading site.
For that reason, page load speeds are a major ranking factor for search engines. If your page takes too long to load, visitors leave and never make it to your product pages.
Mobile browsing first overtook desktop browsing in 2016. This was a huge mile marker in the game of online marketing.
Mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, are the device of choice for the majority of internet browsers. As you can imagine, a page optimized only for desktop browsing will be a nuisance to mobile browsers.
Google’s algorithm changed with this change. The SERP will display websites with a good mobile interface before those without.
Don’t forget the user experience.
You need to make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices. If your website is responsive or friendly to mobile browsing, you’ll rank higher.
In order to operate as a business, you need to perform analytical research. Web analytics is straightforward, as it is a means by which you collect and analyze web data.
However, some people can get bogged down in the many terms used to describe types of data and how to collect it.
Data analytics is much like performing market research for your product. Proper market research will reveal who’s searching for your product, where they come from, and how they get there.
The data is used to track incoming traffic and improve the user experience. Some key aspects of web analytics include the following:
Although the idea is straight forward, the nuances of web analytics can get complicated. You need to understand the basic terms and tools used to turn web analytics into valuable business information.
This information will help you develop an effective business strategy.
Any business, large or small, needs to care about its reputation. This means knowing who says what about your product or service.
If you’re aware of these comments, you can make an effort to improve your business. This shows customers you listen and care about enhancing the customer experience.
There are different platforms to which you should pay attention. You should pay attention to Google reviews and even mentions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
There are tools available to help you monitor your online reputation. Stay in the know and give back to your customers.
The easiest ways to monitor your reputation include setting up alerts and checking your social media accounts.
Almost everyone in the technological world has at least one social media account. This gives you an opportunity to reach customers while they browse social media content.
Social media marketing is an increasingly popular form of online marketing. Social media allows your company to build a strong brand and image.
Like any other aspect of online marketing, you can’t start an account and expect your customers to flock to you. It will take time, and you must do research and listen to your audience.
When customers share your amazing content, they share it with their own circle of friends. When you take into account the level of potential exposure, social media offers huge returns.
Make an attempt to reach the radar of social media influencers. These are people with massive amounts of loyal followers. You can provide them with free or discounted products in exchange for advertising space.
Online marketing doesn’t have to be a completely foreign concept to your business. It provides you with valuable information and drives traffic to your site. There are many different aspects of online marketing you should consider.
The above guide should give you some basic information about online marketing for beginners. There’s so much more to understand. For example, you need to find a server to host your website.
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