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How to Get Started with Web Marketing

Marketing

If you are intrigued to jump into web marketing, you are at the right place. Viva One Digital provided the total guide to start and ace your web marketing strategies.

Here are what we are going to cover:

What is web marketing?

Web marketing is basically any advertising activity done online. It is to use the internet to market your business. You may or may not know but you sure have seen this type of marketing all over the internet. Web marketing can be done on social media, search engines, blogs, video, or e-mails. It comes in many forms such as posts, banners, and e-mails ads.

Why is web marketing important?

Web marketing is essential for business these days. People are spending all day and night on the internet, if you want to effectively market your brand, you need web marketing. It will help you reach more people, more customers. Other than this, there are more reasons you should consider web marketing.

It build connection for your brand and clients

Website marketing will create a strong connection between your brand and customers. It will set you apart from other brands and build trust in your business. It keeps you and the customers in touch and connected.

It is cost-effective

Website marketing is cost saving. Marketing your brand online costs a lot less than other forms of marketing like radio, television, and printed ads. With website marketing, you can plan to market your ads for only the target audiences. This will help save costs and make your ads more effective.

It is easy to edit and optimize

With social media marketing, you can make changes or add new ads easily. You can inform your customers about news and promotions quickly. You can also do social media marketing alongside traditional marketing for better results as well.

You can assess the result

Another best reason to do web marketing is that it can be assessed. You can use a website analytics tool to see the result of your marketing strategy. Knowing the effectiveness of each marketing method will help you improve your marketing strategies and help cut costs for marketing projects that are not helpful.

What do you need before starting web marketing

Before jumping to web marketing, there are a few things you need to do first.

Build a killer website

First of all, you need a good website. Website helps you run your business. It is where the customers interact with your brand, buy products, get to know you, and other activities. It is important that you build a well-designed website. 

Be present on social media

Now, before you can start marketing your brand online, you will surely need social media accounts. Be on every social media platform so you can reach more people and make use of each social media uniqueness. At least, you should be on Facebook and Instagram since they are the two biggest and most popular social media today.

Know your target audience

Last but not least, before you start digital marketing, you need to know your audience. Research on your customers and potential customers. You need to know who your target audience is, who will need your products or services. Then you need keywords.

Research for keywords that people will type in the search engines and find your brand as a result. The keywords should be relevant to your brand and are something the people will search for. Most importantly, those keywords should seamlessly fit in with your content on social media and websites. It will help search engines find you easier and make your brand more visible.

Types of web marketing strategies

There are many types of website marketing, let’s take a look at four best types that we have selected for you.

Search Engine Marketing

First up we have SEM or search engine marketing. SEM is anything you do to help people find you in search engines. SEM includes SEO which is search engine optimization that could be done for free and paid ads.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is free. This type of marketing is organic, meaning that they are not paid to be upfront. To do SEO, you will design a website that will rank well in search engines like Google. In order to rank well, you need to work on the keywords and write qualified content on those keywords.

Search Engine Ads

If doing SEO sounded like too much work, you can always turn to paid searches like Google Ads. Using paid SEM, your website will be present at the top of search results. Paid search is great since it is cost-effective, you can control your budget. Also, paid search will surely reach your target audience since they are searching for products and services like you.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is to advertise your brand through social media platforms. It also includes both organic and paid methods. Social media marketing is one way for brands to connect directly with the customers. It is good for creating brand awareness and building connections with customers.

The most popular social media platforms for brands these days are Facebook and Instagram since you can create business accounts there. Business accounts allow brands to sell products there.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

SMO is the use of social media to build online presence and bring traffic to your page. It is very similar to search engine optimization. To do SMO, you will be creating content, posts, video, and photos on social media. You will also need to include keywords in your content as well.

You can be on as many social media platforms as you want, but we suggest you start with one or two to make sure you can handle it well. You should be consistent and post content regularly.

Social Media Paid Ads

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter,  Instagram, and others provide ads service that brands could pay to have their posts show up on users’ screens. The ads posts will be shown for users who either search keywords about your products or services, or show interest in similar products. It is great since it shows your ads directly to your potential customers and target audience.

Content Marketing

Content marketing publishes content online in forms of blogs, e-books, infographics, or video that will link back to your brand. Content marketing builds trustworthy characteristics for your brand. It also brings lots of traffic to your website.   

Email Marketing

Email marketing is to maintain leads and increase sales via email. You are communicating with your customers through email. To the customers this is like subscribing to a newspaper or magazine. Email marketing keeps your brand in touch with the customers and keeps the customers informed about your brand and products. This is the marketing method that connects you directly to the customers which creates an exclusive atmosphere.

Social Media or Search Engine?

Now that you know about the social media marketing and search engine marketing, As we have stated that they are pretty similar. Let’s take a look at their pros and cons so you can decide which strategy you want to invest in. Should you invest partly in both or put your trust in only one method.

Search engine marketing trumps social media marketing in some aspects. First of all, search engines are the first thing people think of when trying to find a business or product. Think of yourself as an example, if you are looking for something, you will mostly use search engines first since it provides options, then you might go to the brand’s social media later. Also, you can put up search ads to make the search engine user see you first. Moreover, with the help of search engine tools like keywords tools, you can better your search engine optimization and make your brand more visible.

However, search engine markets also have some aspects that cannot beat social media marketing. Here are some reasons why you might want to invest more in social media marketing. Firstly, social media marketing uses likes and shares to create peer recommendations. Peer recommendation is great. When your customers post or share a story about your brand, their connection will see your brand as well. But you need to be careful since when your customers are not satisfied, your brand might get criticized on social media which is a large and fast-paced platform.

On the bright side, It also gives you the opportunity to respond immediately to criticism and solve problems and gain popularity. Also, you can pay for post ads to reach more potential customers who are not in your connection.

As for now, you can see that both methods have good assets that the other doesn’t have. This is why you should consider investing in both methods. If you are using website analytics tool, take a look at the source of traffic. It will be a mix of both search engines and social media. You will never want to lose any traffic source.

Paid ads vs Organic ads

As mentioned before, paid ads are as its name, it is paid, not free, while organic ads are free, you are not paying extra money for those ads. Here is the comparison of paid ads and organic ads.

Budget constraint

Organic ads are free. They are small businesses’ best friends. It doesn’t require any budget, but you need to invest time and afford to create content to boost the SEO. On the other hand, paid ads are not free. You will also have to re-purchase the ads regularly. While over time, you still do not need to pay anything for organic ads.

Short term vs Long term

Paid ads work fast, it brings traffic to your website as soon as you pay for it. Once the contract is over, your posts or websites will not be at the top anymore. On the contrary, organic advertising is more like a long-term plan. You will need to keep posting and doing organic ads forever. It will not result quickly in bringing traffic to your website but it will slowly build brand recognition and reliability.

High quality traffic

Quality of organic traffic is generally better. Organic traffic brings real human traffic. With paid ads, you might get traffic from automated machines or automated visitors that are visiting your website to gain clicks only. Real human traffic means potential clients are seeing your website. Also, organic traffic will secure permanent ranking on the search result page since your website traffic does not rely on paid ads to be on the top rank.

Final Thoughts

After knowing every important thing you need to know about web marketing including their importance, types, and pros and cons of each type, you can now start working on your web marketing. Each type of web marketing has its own advantages and downfalls, choosing the methods that will serve your brand’s needs is the best way to plan your marketing strategies. Also, using a mix of many methods will work in your favor. Marketing is like building bridges, you need as many bridges to reach people from places and platforms. Don’t be afraid to explore, trials and errors are the way to your marketing success.

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