How to Market Your Business online: The Complete Guide

Online marketing is essential for any business, even those that are mostly offline. Online sources are becoming more popular with consumers looking for brand information and solutions.

This guide will help you market your business online and improve your current strategy. This guide will discuss:

• Online marketing: Important facts and figures
• Online marketing channels
• Different types of online marketing content
• 7 steps to launch an online marketing strategy

Let's get started!

Quick Takeaways

• 
  35% of respondents say they are constantly on the lookout online for products and brands.
  
• 
  Brand discovery is something that even consumers who shop offline do often online.
  
• 
  The four most important online marketing channels are email, search engines and social media.
  
• 
  Companies create many content types to promote their business online. These include blog articles, emails, video, and ads.
  
• 
  Defining your target audience is the first step in building an online marketing strategy.
  
• 
  Strategies are more successful when they have a documented execution strategy.
  

Online Marketing 101: What does it entail to market your business online? And why is it important?

Online marketing, also known as digital marketing, is the process of creating your brand's online presence in order to attract new customers. It can also be used to grow your business. It is essential for all brands, even those that are primarily based in brick-and-mortar.

Why? Why? Because internet shopping is becoming more popular.

An average adult spends six hours online per day. Three out of four say they are constantly on the lookout to find brands and products that suit their needs. As of last year, 263 million people shop online. This is 80% of the population. More than half of them prefer shopping online to offline. People often shop online even if they intend to buy offline.

Image Source : Fit Small Business

Marketing your business online is no longer an option. It's now a necessity.

We'll be discussing the various online channels that you can use to promote your business and the different types of content you can create. Finally, we will discuss 9 steps you can take to make your online marketing strategy a success.

Online Marketing Channels

Brands communicate with their customers through marketing channels. Online marketing channels include email, search engines and social media. Let's take a closer look at each channel to learn how we can successfully market our businesses online.

Company Website

Your website is your online shopfront. Your website is often your first impression to potential clients. This is where you can showcase all aspects of your brand, including information about products and services, content, and other details. This is where customers go to find out more about your brand.

A company website is a great way to start to establish your online presence. A website that is quality builds trust and shows customers you are a legitimate company. It is your online home base, where you can drive traffic online and convert visitors into leads.

Continue reading: The only website launch checklist you'll ever need

Email

Although email marketing is the oldest form of online marketing, it is still preferred by most consumers. Despite having a full inbox (the average person receives more than 100 emails per day), 68% of consumers still prefer email to all forms of brand communication.

Image Source: MarketProfs

Brands find email appealing because it allows them to communicate directly with their most engaged customers. Most online marketing strategies include building an email list and sharing valuable content with subscribers.

Continue reading: 7 Keys for Successful Email Marketing

Search Engines

Your online marketing strategy should include search marketing. Search engines account for 93% of all online interactions. Search engines are used by people to search for answers to any question, problem or need they may have, as well as to discover new brands and products.

Image Source: Marketing Wire

Search marketing is an important driver of the rest your online marketing strategy. Search marketing is the way that consumers discover your brand on other sites (like your website, or social media).

Two main components of search engine optimization (SEO), must be part of your search marketing strategy:

• On-site SEO: Elements of your website such as structure, meta data and content.
• Off-site SEO: External factors that can impact your Google rankings such as backlinks and brand awareness.

Optimizing for both off-site and on-site factors will ensure the best visibility possible on search engines. We know that customers are searching for brands and products.

Continue reading: What is an SEO Marketing Strategy, and How Does It Work?

Social Media

Social media is a great way for consumers to get in touch with brands. It's as easy to connect with friends via social media than it is to see targeted ads showing products they love. Recent research by Sprout Social has shown that 9/10 consumers purchase from brands they follow via social media.

Source: Sprout social

You can reach consumers directly by creating a social media presence. Engaging with your social media audience will increase the likelihood of them becoming paying customers.

Continue reading: The Complete Guide to Social Media-Based Lead Generating

Different types of online marketing content

Content types are the specific form in which your content is delivered. You can share the same message in written words or video. Blog articles, emails, videos, infographics and downloadable content are the most popular types of online marketing content. Let's take a closer look at each.

Blog Articles

Blogs have a significant impact on online visibility, search ranking, and brand awareness. Blogs are a way to show expertise on key topics, build brand awareness, and provide value to your audience.

Websites with blogs have an average of 434% higher indexed pages. They are viewed more frequently and show up in search engines at a higher frequency. A good content marketing strategy is built around blogs.

How can you create blog articles that will earn traffic and rank high?

First, you need to realize that to see real results you will need to publish many articles over a long period of time. Brands publishing between 11-16+ articles per week earn 3x more traffic than those who publish less often.

Image Source by HubSpot

Next, choose pillar topics. These are the main topics of your blog. Then select subtopics. This process is made easier by keyword research. You can also create a content calendar that lists article titles and publication dates to help you stay on track. Writing articles that are relevant to your audience is key. This will help you build trust and credibility for your brand.

To keep your content diverse, there are many types of blog articles that you can write.

• Pillar pieces – These are “ultimate guide” pieces and other long-form, timeless pieces that cover all pillar topics.
• How-to articles – These articles explain how to solve a problem and accomplish a task.
• List posts – Simple-to-read lists about just about everything (ideas or best products, dos-and-don'ts, templates and examples — whatever your audience requires).
• News and opinion – Comment on industry trends or current events.

When writing articles, make sure to follow the best web writing practices, such as concise language, visuals, CTAs and optimizing for search.

Continue reading: The 20 Step Checklist for Writing the Perfect Blog Post

PPC Ads

Marketing professionals hear a lot about organic traffic being the best. In many ways that is true. However, pay-per-click ads (PPC) on Google and other social media platforms can be a great way to get consumers with high purchase intentions.

PPC ads can complement organic marketing strategies (such as blogging) and be a powerful component of your overall online marketing strategy.

This is how it works: To launch PPC ads companies pay the hosting platform (like Google), to place their ads above organic search results for a specific keyword. They then pay per click for the ad.

Image Source: Ahrefs

If they are in the exploratory stage of brand research, people may scroll past paid ads. Many people who are ready to purchase will click on them and they're more likely to convert.

Paid ads can be very useful for targeting campaigns, such as promoting a product or reaching a specific customer segment, hitting high performing keywords, increasing sales at a given time of the year, and so on. Paid ads can boost organic traffic and make your brand more visible for people who know what they want and are more likely to purchase from the brand that provides it.

Learn More: 5 Simple Strategies to Beat the Competition at PPC

Email

Email is the preferred method consumers prefer to be contacted by brands. There are many ways that you can incorporate email in your marketing strategy. The best one will depend on what you offer, your goals, your customer segment, and the action that you want them take.

Email newsletters can be a great way of building ongoing relationships with your audience. Your brand is always visible to their inboxes. They can also be used to share important content such as blog articles, surveys, announcements, and more.

Email can also be used to promote your product. You can use it to promote seasonal deals and new product launches, as well as special offers. It can be used by B2B companies for lead nurturing and cold email outreach to grow their pipeline.

Email marketing platforms make it easy to automate emails and personalize them with the recipient's information.

Emails must be valuable and provide value to their recipients. Otherwise, they can quickly become junk mail. Do not send emails just to send them. You must have a purpose for sending them. Also, you should keep track of your sending schedule.

Continue reading: The ROI-Driven Content Guide for Email Marketing

Video

Video content is in high demand. Cisco predicts that video content will make up 82% of all web traffic by the end this year. Marketers are taking notice of the fact that people are now watching both short- and long-form videos from brands.

Image Source: ReputationUp

The myth that video content requires expertise to create and edit is a common misconception. This is simply not true today. Many brands use smartphones to shoot their video content. Editing your videos is now easier than ever thanks to social media platforms and other apps. Your videos will not require any editing.

You can create high-quality videos that are affordable and your viewers will love them. These are just a few examples.

• Webinars are educational online events on a specific topic. Brands may feature guest experts or internal guests to discuss the topic. Or, it could take the form of an interview.
• Social media stories – A casual way to share video content with your audience and give them a behind-the scenes view of your brand.
• Vlogs – The video version blog, vlogs can be used to tell a story and educate about a topic via video.
• Customer success stories – Video is a powerful way to share stories about happy customers.

Video content can be easily amplified by being featured in blogs, email newsletters, and on social media.

Read more: 8 Exciting Video Marketing Trends for 2022

Social Media Posts

You can use a variety content types in your social media posts depending on which platform you are using. Facebook and LinkedIn are great for sharing longer posts and linking to external content, such as news articles or blog articles. Twitter is better for casual and shorter-form content. TikTok and Instagram have been the best places to find visual content, both images and video.

Social media posts are so easily shared. People love to share what they find fascinating on their social media pages. You can create social media content that is popular with your industry peers and customers, so they will share it.

There are two types of social media content that brands can use: user-generated and influencer content. The first comes from partnerships brands have with influencers in their target markets. The second is brand content that customers and advocates share. Both cases are authentic and consumers feel the content is more authentic than traditional brand content.

Social media content can also be simple: amplifying content from other sources, such as your blog articles and a webinar.

Learn more: Why social media is important for business marketing

Infographics

Infographics, a type of visual content, have been very popular recently because they can share a lot in one place. Infographics are used by brands to show how to accomplish a task, statistics and numbers about a topic or to list facts. To make the content more digestible, visuals are used in all instances.

Infographics are another popular content type. They're shared three times more than any other visual content. Below is one of our examples from Marketing Insider Group. We created a 20-step checklist to help you create the perfect blog post.

Image Source: Marketing Insider Group

Continue reading: 20 Amazing Infographics that will inspire your content marketing

Reports, whitepapers, Ebooks

In exchange for the user's contact details, downloadable lead magnet content is offered in the form of whitepapers, ebooks, and reports. Each of these three types demonstrate brand expertise in slightly different ways.

Ebooks are designed for general audiences and provide a guide to a topic or strategy. Whitepapers, which are longer and more academic, provide more information to an expert audience. These reports are valuable for both expert and general audiences. They present original research on industry trends.

These content types are particularly useful for B2B companies, as they can be used to generate leads online.

Continue reading: 9 Ebooks That Convert Like Crazy

How to market your business online: 8 steps

Let's take a moment to recap the basics before we get started.

We know first that online marketing is crucial for businesses because consumers use the internet to search for products and brands. There are four main channels that brands can use to reach customers online: email, search engines and company websites.

We are also familiar with the various content types that can be used to engage audiences. These include blogs, email, videos, ads, video posts, infographics and ebooks.

The question is: How do you market your company online? How do you build a strategy that works? How do you actually execute it?

This is what this section will cover. Follow these 8 steps to create an online marketing strategy that will deliver big results for you business.

Define Your Target Audience

Who are your customers? This is the most important question to ask when you are creating an online marketing strategy. Even if a brand has a strategy in place, it is important to ask this question periodically to refine their target audience based on buyer information.

Before you decide on the “what”, and then the “how,” it is important to know who your target customers are before you can create a strategy that's highly targeted and relevant to them. To determine the characteristics and customer segments of their customers, many brands use buyer personas.

The buyer persona framework is the most important thing. It helps you understand what buyers want from your purchase. This framework helps you create high-quality content and messaging that is based on your buyers' pain points and needs.

Continue reading: Personas are great (except when they suck).

Create your brand voice and personality

Next, determine your brand voice. Your brand voice is the way you communicate your ideas in your messaging. Your voice can influence the perception of your brand and how people view your brand through marketing content.

Knowing your target market is key, you can now create a brand voice and personality that resonates with them. It's important to ensure consistency across all channels, content types and campaigns.

It's important to have written guidelines that your marketing team can use to keep your brand voice consistent. The first step is to identify the traits that best describe your brand and then create a plan for how these traits will be displayed in your marketing content. This brand voice chart can be useful:

Image Source: CoSchedule

It is important to remember that brand voice and tone are two different things. Your tone will vary depending on context, message, and occasion. However, your brand voice should be consistent and reflect the core values of your brand.

Continue reading: 7 Steps to Create a Tone and Voice Brand Guide

Make a budget

Marketing your business online is much more cost-effective than traditional offline methods. However, there are still costs to be considered before you start your online marketing campaign.

Here are some questions to ask:

• What tools are available for online marketing? And what is their cost? These tools could include social media schedulers and email marketing platforms.
• What are the costs associated with hosting, designing, etc.? )?
• We are willing to outsource any task related to online marketing (PPC and content creation, etc.) )?
• Is it necessary to hire additional staff in order to implement our online marketing plan.
• Are we going to use PPC ads? What's our budget/plan for the campaign?

You can prioritize your strategy and execute your best parts when you have accounted for all possible costs in advance.

Continue reading: This amount is all you need for your marketing budget

Choose Your Marketing Channels

Multichannel marketing is a common way for brands to promote their business online. However, you don't have to use all of them. It's a smart idea to use a few channels first, and then build upon your successes over time.

The company website is the first important channel you should establish. Next, you might want to expand your reach by adding social media platforms and email campaigns. Once you are able to manage each channel effectively, you can add more to increase your presence.

Continue reading: How to Find the Right Digital Marketing Channels For Your Business

Make an Execution plan

For online marketing, one of the most important pieces I can give you is to document your execution plan. Documenting your execution plan is a reference point for your entire team and holds them accountable for their actions.

It can seem like a tedious task to create a plan. It takes time, dedication, and consistency to keep an updated execution plan current. The payoff can be high. Marketers who have documented execution plans report that their team is more focused and aligned, they are better able identify valuable metrics and they have greater accountability.

Image Source: Content Marketing Institute

There are many free templates online that you can use to help build your strategy. You can use a simple Google spreadsheet to start your strategy. The important thing is that you actually use it and keep it updated.

Continue reading: The Big Fat Collection Of Content Marketing Templates

Find out how you'll measure performance

Continuously measuring your online marketing strategy's performance is key to understanding what is working and what isn't. You need to identify your key performance indicator (KPIs) in order to do this. These could include organic traffic, rankings and click-through rates as well as leads generated, email subscribers, lead generation, and other things.

These metrics can be used to identify which strategies are generating high ROI and which ones need improvement. These metrics can be used to identify opportunities and to remove strategies that aren't performing. You can also keep your team motivated and focused by conducting continuous performance evaluations.

Once you have identified the KPIs that you will use to measure your strategy's effectiveness, you can create a formalized process to measure them. This will ensure you do it. It should be clear what frequency it will occur, who will do it and how it will be shared.

Continue reading: How to define digital marketing KPIs that align with your business goals

Be flexible and customer-focused

There is no one right way to market your business online. You should follow best practices, but be flexible in the details. This will ensure the best results. Attention to customer and audience behavior. Be flexible to adapt to new trends. Make informed decisions about new strategies by using your KPI data

Companies that are open to change and innovating according to the needs of their customers and their industry will have the greatest success over the long-term.

More to you

Are you ready to launch an online marketing strategy that works? You will need great content to do it. Marketing Insider Group's team of SEO specialists and writers can provide you with optimized content that is ready to publish every week for a year or more!

To learn more, visit our SEO Blog Writing Service or to schedule a consultation with me to get going.