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Data: 21-08-2023
Internet marketing is a big part of normal general marketing, which is becoming more and more important as the years go by. Often wanting to advertise on the Internet, we do not know which way to direct our steps and which way of digital marketing to choose. In this text, we present five of the most popular strategies, and suggest in what situations, you should use them.
Table of Contents:
The first and by far one of the most extensive ways to advertise a brand online is through SEO. This is the creation and customization of a website for Google to display it in high positions in search results. The tactic of SEO is to increase the popularity of the site on Google, and to appear in high positions in search results, so that our site will be highly visible and frequently selected from the search engine by potential users.
The process of SEO itself involves adjusting the various elements of a website to Google's search engine according to official and unofficial recommendations. This process is long, unpredictable and very complicated. Most often, it is recommended that it be performed by a professional SEO agency, which optimizes and positions it - that is, makes it appear higher and higher in Google search results under specific keywords in specific thematic categories. The cost of positioning starts from a few dozen to several hundred zlotys per month. The time for positioning a website varies from a few to several months and depends on the popularity of a given thematic category, competition, the competence of the agency that deals with our site, or the budget we have and the condition of the site.
The second very popular way to promote online is through ad campaigns. The most popular systems of this type are Google Ads and Facebook Ads. They allow you to broadcast ads on Google's search engine in the form of paid search results in the top positions, videos on YouTube, ads on Google's partner sites, as well as content on Facebook and Instagram. The ads come in various forms - text, graphic, video and interactive. Thus, they can be text banners, banners composed of photos and graphics, as well as video content or product slideshows and carousels.
Speaking of these two most popular advertising systems on the web, we can settle for advertising in the form of payment of clicking on a link by a potential customer and going to our website or for displaying ads. Prices are set dynamically in the form of auctions and depend on the current demand for advertising. We can use these advertising systems ourselves, but we can also buy the service of running them from marketing agencies.
Another very important way of online advertising that we can use is social media promotion. These include places such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Linkedin and Instagram, for example. These are the most popular social media platforms with billions of users worldwide. They are popular places to hang out after work, but also to search for specific products, brands and services. Taking advantage of this state of affairs, we have many opportunities to promote ourselves on social media and attract real customers from the world of social media.
First of all, this type of promotion will involve creating and maintaining an interesting profile. It must be tailored to the right target audience, contain quality content, and be updated frequently. The profile must also have comprehensive information about our brand, be flawless, and be run in such a way that it stands out from others. On social media platforms, we also have numerous opportunities to promote our profile. This can include actively discussing in popular topic threads, adding posts, buying ads on the profiles of other brands / influencers, as well as adding thematic tagged content that will direct to our profile.
By far the most qualitative way of advertising a brand online in this list is content marketing. This is content marketing, which involves promoting yourself online by publishing valuable, interesting and useful content. This can be either written, graphic, video or interactive content. However, the content must be well-tagged, and our brand name must be prominently featured - preferably in the form of a link.
The purpose of publishing valuable thematic content on the Internet is to attract an audience that is looking for information on a particular topic, and thus may be our customers. This content is published in a way that is optimized and tailored for user experience, i.e. users. It is also published in various places on the Internet - wherever, our potential customers may be. This can be social media, online forums or our websites and blogs. The content is intended to interest the audience and make them go to the website of the sponsor responsible for publishing such content in search of further valuable information.
Above all, content marketing allows us to promote ourselves flexibly in a way that suits our capabilities. We can use various forms of content, create it ourselves or order its creation from copywriters and marketing agencies. Once it's a given content can also acquire customers for us for a very long time, so we will get a lot of specific measurable profits from the work once done. Content marketing is also a very qualitative way of advertising - making many people even perceive our brand as an industry leader. Compared to other low-quality ways of promotion, this is a big plus, which will help us to set the customer positively towards our brand from the very beginning, which makes it much easier to sell.
The last and most direct way of advertising a brand online in our list is referral marketing. This is a very broad area of digital marketing, using several smaller strategies. However, they have one thing in common and are based on exactly the same principle - the effectiveness of referrals.
Nowadays, many people are looking for the best options, solutions, as well as brands and products. Often they do not have any shopping preferences or knowledge of the subject. Recipients, therefore, highly value recommendations, which they are willing to suggest. These recommendations, can even come from unknown people, but as they increase the chances of making a good decision, they are very welcome.
Referral marketing is therefore based on creating a wide net of referrals of various kinds and advertising our brand. First of all, it can be whisper marketing, which involves adding positive reviews of our brand online in forums or social media. We can also use influencer marketing, that is, hiring well-known and recognizable people to be the ones to recommend our brand to their fans. The third type of referral marketing is sponsored articles, which can be purchased on popular online portals. In exchange for a fee, we will be able to publish an article on such a thematic portal that will recommend our brand and identify us as an industry leader. We can also take care of many smaller forms of referrals, such as a large number of positive reviews on Google Maps, or other types of referrals on online forums and in communities that are related to our subject category.
If we already know what characterizes each of the most popular types of online promotion, it is also worth answering the questions of when we should choose each of them. There is no one specific answer to this question or advice, as the answer will vary depending on the situation you are in or the goal you want to achieve.
Content marketing, as well as website positioning, is worth choosing primarily in situations where we want to advertise regularly and on a long-term basis. Therefore, if we have long-term promotional activities in mind, it is worth investing funds precisely in these two methods of digital marketing. They will bring a very good return on investment. In exchange for an extended period of profiteering, we will be able to count on very attractive customer acquisition costs, as well as a passive inflow of users.
If we are trying to build a brand to become an industry leader in a particular field first and foremost, it is worth betting on referral marketing. It will create a positive image of our brand in addition to attracting customers, and it will also build the image of an industry leader. Image issues are heavily emphasized in this method of digital marketing, so if we intend to stand out in a given subject category, first of all we should take care of good press for our brand.
On the other hand, if we only care about acquiring customers and sales themselves, various types of advertising campaigns will be a good solution. We can launch them relatively simply and quickly - and even start the process of acquiring a large number of customers within a few days. It is therefore worth using them when we care about direct sales. We can reinvest the funds earned in this way in a short time and increase advertising reach. Not without significance in marketing campaigns is also the possibility of precise targeting of recipients. Advertising systems allow us to specify a number of characteristics that recipients of an ad must meet in order to see it. As a result, the ad is broadcast only to a group of people who, with a high probability, are likely to use our service, and thus we efficiently spend the advertising budget.