A Guide to Online Marketing for Beginners

When you’re just starting your business, online marketing can be overwhelming. There are many online marketing strategies you can implement into your marketing plan. It can be hard figuring out what to do when you’re new to online marketing and don’t have anyone to really guide you. This post will hopefully help you figure out which marketing strategies to consider using.

Invest in a Website

It may be that you don’t have a website for your business yet. Just about every business needs a website, regardless of industry. While it’s possible to practice online marketing without a website, it’s very difficult to do. A website is a fantastic way to develop your business’ brand and get in front of your target audience. There’s a very high chance your competitors already have their own websites, which makes them have greater online visibility than you. Much of your online marketing should be centered around driving traffic to your website, as a way to increase conversions or brand awareness.

Your website doesn’t have to be extensive or have a lot of content. You just need key pieces of information to help your customers get to know your brand. Whether you sell products or services, you should talk about them on your website. Having a website will also add a level of legitimacy to your business and increase your credibility.

Search Engine Optimization

If you do have a website, search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing tactic you should start implementing today. SEO is very inexpensive compared to other forms of online marketing, and it’s also very effective. You can practice on-site or off-site SEO with your business’ website. If possible, you should practice both for best results. Practicing both forms of SEO will help push you to the top of Google more quickly than if you just focus on one type of SEO. We previously published a blog post titled How Long Does it Take to Show Results from SEO. In that post we touch on many factors that impact how quickly you will climb the rankings in Google.

If you want to practice on-site SEO, you should have quite a bit of strategic keyword focused content. On-site SEO includes all the SEO tactics that are implemented on your website. This is why you will need plenty of website content. Off-site SEO includes everything you do to boost rankings that is done off your website. If you have a website for your business, you should practice off-site SEO as part of your online marketing strategy. Steer clear of blackhat SEO tactics so you don’t get penalized by Google and decrease your search result rankings. Many beginners will ignorantly cause more harm than good, by accidentally practicing blackhat tactics. Be sure to thoroughly research this topic before you begin implementing SEO on your own. You can also hire an SEO company to act as a coach, or consultant, and give you guidance to help you avoid rookie mistakes.

Social Media Marketing

5.29 billion people are expected to have at least one social media profile by 2020. Having said that, you should probably take advantage of social media marketing. Social media marketing doesn’t necessarily mean paid ads on social platforms like Facebook. You can implement social media marketing into your marketing strategy by simply creating a Facebook page for your business. Interacting with your potential customers via social media is a great way to increase brand awareness. Simply posting just once a day, on your business’ Facebook page, is a great start to social media marketing. Of course, there are best practices to keep in mind when using social media for marketing. Here is an old post, but a good post, that’ll give you some tips on using Facebook for marketing: The #1 Reason Facebook Marketing Fails

Whereas a website is great for pretty much any industry, this isn’t the case for social media marketing. For example, restaurants tend to do very well on Facebook and Instagram. This is because restaurants can talk about their food while showing images of it. Facebook and Instagram do very well with businesses that can visually showcase their products or services. On the flip side, restaurants are not as likely to do well on Twitter and LinkedIn. Be sure to do some research on what social media platforms work best within your industry.

If you do have the budget to pay for social media marketing, you should consider trying it out. Paid social media advertising is a great way to expand your social media audience. This will help you gain additional brand awareness. There are many objectives you can use for your campaigns. You can create ad campaigns that drive traffic to your business’ website to gather more leads. You can even set up a campaign to gather email marketing contacts!

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Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a long time. It can still be very effective despite it being a little old-school. In fact, email marketing has an average ROI of about 4,000%! If you want bang for your buck, this type of marketing can be a very good choice.

Nearly everyone is on at least one company’s email list. Email marketing can consist of content like promotional deals, newsletters or special announcements. You can easily practice email marketing with your own business. You just have to encourage people to signup to receive your emails. Try including a form on your website that will capture email addresses. This is perhaps the most common way to grow your distribution list for email marketing. You can use platforms like HubSpot that store your subscribers’ contact info and allow you to send mass emails in bulk. Other email marketing platforms include Constant Contact and MailChimp. Our personal favorite is Campaign Monitor.

When writing your emails, you don’t have to make them complicated or content heavy. Try going through the emails other companies have sent you. The emails that catch your eye or make you want to go to the company’s website are good to use as examples. Make sure your emails are unique though. You don’t want to make an exact copy of what someone else did.

Let us know if you need help with your online marketing! You can use the form below to contact us.