Different Trends/Techniques of Internet Marketing

Different Trends/Techniques of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing plan will help define specific e-marketing objectives and develop strategies to ensure that resources are deployed to take advantage of the marketing opportunities provided by the Internet, and to counter its threats. E-marketing is focused on how a company and its brands use the web and other digital media such as e-mail and mobile media to interact with its audiences in order to meet its marketing goals. We plowed through all the variety of marketing arenas from content and social marketing to marketing technology, analytics and organizational transformation, to find and establish the ultimate summary for marketing trends 2017. The various marketing trends articles of different authors and experts were read, dissected, analyzed and summarized as below:- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) In layman’s terms, Search Engine Optimization or SEO is essentially tweaking your website so that it comes up naturally or organically for search results in Google, Yahoo Bing or any other search engine. Google updates its algorithms regularly so that only the relevant results come up. From that perspective, many experts say that SEO is dead and the effort is futile. However, the truth is that Google tries to prevent algorithm manipulation and filters sites that don’t deserve to be on the top of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). So there is no doubt you should invest in SEO work. Your website should address the technicalities related to content and query matching, spidering, indexing, and interpreting non-text content. Remember, it is the most cost-effective marketing strategy that will bring organic traffic to your business. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the comprehensive strategy to drive traffic to your business, primarily through paid efforts. Hence it is also called Paid Search Marketing. The universe of SEM is diverse and complicated. Based on your business structure, you may choose PPC (pay- per-click) or CPC (cost-per-click) model, or CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) model. There are different platforms for SEM. By far, Google Ad Words (on Google Network) and Bing Ads (on Yahoo Bing Network) are the most popular. SEM also includes Display Advertising, Search Retargeting & Site Remarketing, Mobile Marketing and Paid Social Advertising. Content Creation Content can be presented in different formats, including blogs, white papers, e-books, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, forums, news and updates, images, banners, info graphics, podcasts, webinars, videos, or content for micro blogging and social media sites. All recent changes to Google’s algorithm - be it Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird - point to the fact that content is the most important metric while filtering search results. You can be creative and create content on any topic and then skillfully link it indirectly to your business. You may like to read our article on how to include content and market your startup or business free of cost. Also, you need to customize your content for different platforms. For example, the content for mobile phones should be crisp and short. Remember, an effective strategy will engage your readers and leave them interested in more information from you. Good content is shared and is the best way for branding your business. Social Media Marketing (SMM) Social Media Marketing or SMM is an offshoot of your SEM efforts. It involves driving traffic to your sites or business through social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. As we mentioned above, good content is shared and liked. So create and customize content for different social media platforms. Remember to be prolific and original; you need to engage with users on a daily basis, at least four to five times a day. Your SMM efforts can be especially helpful for branding and driving sales. The tools and approaches for communicating with customers have changed greatly with the emergence of social media; therefore, businesses must learn how to use social media in a way that is consistent with their business plan (Mangold and Faulds 2099). In order to create a successful marketing campaign via social media, a consumer must be open to the technology. Digital Display Advertising This again is a subset of your SEM efforts. You may use a variety of display advertising formats to target potential audience - be it text, image, banner, rich-media, interactive or video ads. You can customize your message based on interests, content topics, or the position of the customer in the buying cycle. However, note that Digital Display Advertising is relatively costly. You need experts to drive good ROI for your business. Mobile Marketing Mobile marketing is a relatively new branch of marketing, referring to the two-way marketing communication between company and customers that takes place via mobile devices. The website, apps and content is being customized for mobile devices. The mobile users are growing day by day and it is the most effective way of marketing. Dushinski (2009) in his paper defines mobile marketing as a revolutionary tool for connecting companies with each of their clients via their mobile devices in the right time, on a right place and with appropriate direct message. Interactive Marketing Make sure your advertising strategy engages the potential customer in a conversation. According to a survey by ExpoTV.com, 55 percent respondents preferred to have ongoing communications with the companies they buy from; and 89 percent felt more loyal to the companies if they were invited to provide feedback. Use tools like widgets and opt-in features to make your website interactive, solicit feedback and track user behaviour. Engage with the customers actively and customize offers based on their preferences and browsing activities. Viral Marketing Viral is today’s electronic equivalent of old-fashioned word of mouth. Viral Marketing is a strategy where a unique content spreads exponentially online, because the content is appreciated, shared and liked immensely. This is a great way to brand and drive traffic to your website. The content can take any format; all you need is to be creative. Marketers have caught the bug and are increasingly weaving viral components into their marketing plans. Not only is the approach relatively inexpensive, but also it can sometimes be more believable than standard ads.” (Howard, 2005) Email Marketing When you send a commercial message through email to a list of potential customers, the strategy is called Email Marketing. With effective email marketing software, you can maintain email lists that are segregated based on several factors, including customers‟ likes and dislikes, and spending habits. Remember to send personalized emails; this helps to develop trust. [13] However, note that Email Marketing may also be considered as spamming and there are laws against it in some countries. Affiliate Marketing Affiliate Marketing is a performance-based marketing program, where you pay publishers who bring you customers. The performance may be based on conversions - promotions, leads or simply sales. You may like to be part of the affiliate programs of different publishers. Essentially, the publishers will give you space in their pages to advertise your business and help you drive conversions; and you will pay them based on the compensation model. You may avail the help from an Affiliate Network, which will give you a large base of publishers, and other benefits like tracking and reporting technology. Affiliate Marketing is especially useful for startups, as it will bring in more traffic to their business through high-traffic sites. In essence, Affiliate Marketing is a win-win situation for both the merchants and publishers. Sites like Amazon, eBay, LinkShare and Flipkart run Affiliate Programs. In fact, most online businesses with appreciable traffic have their own affiliate programs. Online Public Relations (Online PR) Public Relation is significant part of modern marketing tools. Companies that do not consider PR can loose customers. The question is how many customers they can loose? The answer of this question is very difficult, because PR is much more difficult to measure than for example internet advertising, however correctly realized PR brings always some benefits to the company. Online PR has advantage over the traditional PR in the possibility of great and fast two way communication on the internet. Companies running an online business can develop online public relations through publishing PR articles in online PR catalogues, press releases in online media, by sharing videos or music containing commercial message or advertisement, or by participating in various discussion forums concerning the related topic or pro-ducts. Digital Media Planning and Buying When a media agency researches and makes a comprehensive strategy framework, we call it Digital Media Planning. Be it in driving sales or conversions, launching a new brand or promoting an established brand, or changing customer behavior, the media agency plans different platforms and formats to reach the desired audience. It studies reach and frequency of different web-based and mobile applications. The agency works with different partners and buys relevant space and ideas. This is called Media Buying. In essence, Media Buying and Planning entails all the strategies that we have discussed above. Web Analytics Perhaps, the most important aspect of your Digital Marketing is Web Analytics. Essentially, Web Analytics helps you to collect, measure, understand, analyze, plan, report and predict the web activities for your business. Web Analytics should not be confused with Web Statistics. As opposed to simple reporting, Web Analytics gives you analyses and different angles to ponder vis-à-vis your business. Some of the important Web Analytics tools are Google Analytics, Spring Metrics, Woopra, Clicky, Mint and Chartbeat. It goes without saying that every advertiser should use Web Analytics to understand his business and improve the ROI and conversions. Most Preferred Internet Marketing Approach Ascend2 and its other research partners conducted a survey of 275 marketing professionals in 2016 around the world. The results are shown in the following Fig. invited the views from Smart Insights reader for most important trends at a top-level. A total 2,352 responses from marketers around the world were received. The respondents were asked to give their opinion on "Select one marketing activity that you think will give your business the biggest incremental uplift in leads and sales in 2017 (or your clients if you work for an agency or as a consultant)”. The following statistics show that various digital marketing activities with the greatest commercial impact in 2017. The content marketing communities is having the highest impact on the business of the company. Traditional Marketing v/s Internet Marketing If we compare the methods of online marketing with conventional traditional marketing practices, then there are ample areas and opportunities where online marketing is competent and have its advantages and is always preferred over it. Unlike traditional marketing where we have to wait for stipulated time frame to find out the response from the customers, online marketing is real time. Since we can the response of the customers in real time, it is easier to track if a particular campaign is working for the product or not and based on the feedback marketer can made the appropriate changes in the promotional campaign, in traditional marketing this flexibility is not possible. In traditional marketing, it is difficult for small retailers to compete with the big competitors in the market owing to the cost involved and strategy making expertise whereas in case of online marketing, through a crisp website you can reach your target audience with wider reach with better service assurance. Cost involvement is another point which creates a lot of difference between the conventional marketing techniques over online marketing; business house can create its respective digital marketing strategy with very little cost and replace conventional costly advertising methods such as print media, radio coverage, television and magazine. Through online marketing any business promotional idea have far greater reach and coverage as it can be seen any part of the world via one marketing campaign in optimal cost compared to conventional marketing campaigns and once any marketer optimized the important word search criteria content in website then it is a great return on investment with very marginal cost to maintain the positioning. With electronic marketing, marketer can create options to stimulate their target audience to take favorable appropriate action, visit the respective website, to know about their products and its features and different services, by this mechanism customers can express their view about the product, their choice of buying the product and corresponding feedback, which is also visible in the website thus by this way the marketer get an effective opportunity to engage with the customers, which is usually diluted in case of traditional mode of marketing. Through online marketing brand development can be done better than traditional mode of marketing, a well-designed website with quality information can target the requirement of the customers and add significant value to their expectations with creation of greater opportunities. Online marketing has the potential to create ripple and viral effect in promotion over traditional mode marketing, for an instance using social media networking website, email and social media channels promulgates the content of the message to be shared incredibly quickly.