With so many technological advancements in many parts of the world, we can safely say that the internet has taken over. Nowadays, people use the internet in just about everything, such as business meetings, personal talks, study, entertainment, and gaming. It is said to be believed that 4.33 billion people are using the internet for their respective reasons. Considering the evolution of technology in this day and age, it looks like this statistic will only increase going forward.
People associated with online marketing have always done what they know best to interact with people to promote their products and services. The Internet provides them with an ideal opportunity to do just that. Never before could a single person doing internet marketing can reach out to so many people at once.
Introduction
Before we get to know about the types, we must make sure that we know that what is internet marketing. Also called web marketing, it is a marketing term used to describe numerous marketing activities taking place on the internet. If you are reading a blog in the morning to be aware of the political situation in the country or keeping up with news in sports, they are all forms of marketing on the internet. As it presents various forms of marketing, there are many things for you to consider, such as content marketing, pay-per-click, and search engine optimization.
Types of Marketing on the Internet
With so many things to consider, we can safely say that we spend most of our day on the Internet. Before we look into the marketing that we are associated with, it is essential to look into the seven fundamental types of marketing. Each of these types has different challenges and attributes for the marketing person to visualize. Furthermore, we may see many similarities between different types of marketing as they usually go hand-in-hand.
1. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the form of internet marketing in which you gain attention and sales via your social media accounts, such as Facebook and Instagram. Social media marketing is usually split into two simpler forms i.e. organic and paid. Organic marketing aims to build a community that creates deep relations with the customers and promotes customer loyalty. On the other hand, you can promote your business via paid marketing. For example, you can create a paid Facebook ad through which you can promote your business products.
As a social media marketing person, you will be working with website statistics when you run different advertisements on your social media channels. If you rely on Strikingly, you will have a built-in tool to check into the Google analytics, considering that you submit your website to Google. Social media marketing enables you to understand online marketing insights.
2. Influencer Marketing
Before we get in touch with influencer marketing, we must know what an influencer is. In this internet marketing guide, you will get to know all the fundamental aspects of an influencer and how they play a part in the welfare of your online business. Firstly, an influencer is basically someone with a huge fan following, such as:
- Mainstream celebrities like Rowan Atkinson
- Niche celebrities like tennis champion Roger Federer
- People associated with an industry, such as digital marketing expert Neil Patel
- Someone with approximately 100,000 followers, such as an environmentalist, Emily Penn
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Okay, now that we know about different types of influencers, let’s learn about influencer marketing. It is a process in which you collaborate with your influencer to market your products or services. As your influencers have a huge fan following, they will attract a huge chunk of their audience through their message. Before other types of marketing came to the able, influencer marketing was only associated with large brands as they could afford to work with huge celebrities.
The more you talk about your products and services, the better it will be for your influencer marketing procedure. For example, if you consider a Strikingly blog, we discuss our users and how they are growing their businesses by building websites on Strikingly. This strategy can also be considered content marketing and is cheaper than paid advertisements.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing can also be considered referral marketing. A business will create an affiliate program that will pay commissions upon every visit to the platform for sales or traffic purposes. This enables the people associated with internet marketing to increase their earnings by doing promotion of business products and services. Unsurprisingly, there are many overlaps between affiliate marketing and other forms of marketing, such as social media marketing, content marketing, and influencer marketing. This is a consequence of numerous affiliate links that get promoted by influencers in social media content.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly isn’t just one of those website builders that improve the reputation of your online business. It also has an affiliate program that you can integrate as part of your online marketing strategy. Regardless of whether you use your website like a pro or not, you can join the Strikingly affiliate program and earn up to 30% commission for every referral under your belt.
4. Email Marketing
Email Marketing, also referred to as direct marketing, is a process in which you deliver messages directly to people to attract new customers and retain the current ones. Even though email marketing isn’t one of the most popular types of internet marketing, but you cannot disregard its influence. It is believed that this form of marketing has a return on investment (ROI) of 122%, which is approximately four times higher than any other type.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Before you begin email marketing, you must have a professional email address at your disposal. Due to this reason, email marketing works as a collaboration with other forms of marketing types, such as social media marketing and content marketing. Once your mailing list is filled with dozens of email IDs, your content will do the rest. Make sure to provide them with the most healthy content, discounts, giveaways, and access to your products and services. Moreover, you can improve your sales by doing email segmentation.
5. Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the types of internet marketing that involves the creation, distribution, and promotion of relevant online materials effectively. The content is designed strategically to engage your target market and to convert your visitors into customers. Blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts, and webinars are all forms of content that can be effective for an online business.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
The article that you are reading currently is also content marketing. Just like we have seen with other forms of marketing previously, content marketing also has many common denominators with social media marketing and SEO. As we have said before, social media is one brilliant outlet for promoting and distributing content. However, if your content is optimized as per SEO, you can get your brand higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
6. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is doing website optimization and improving digital content to enhance search engine rankings. It is one of the most reliable types of internet marketing. By improving the website rankings on Google or other search engines, you will see many audiences coming to your channel or website. For example, if you want your football website to appear first on Google when someone types “Football websites in the USA”, the process that enables you to achieve it is SEO.
7. Paid Advertisement
In this internet marketing guide, you will learn about the influence of paid advertisements on your online presence. The ad-makers make payments to ensure that their advertisements appear on Google, relatable search engines, and social media platforms. The social media platforms include LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Paid advertisements are also referred to as pay-per-click (PPC), which means that the ad-makers will pay the fee whenever a user clicks on one of their advertisements. However, there are many more things to look at than just PPC.
Image taken from Facebook
The two biggest platforms when it comes to digital advertisements are Google and Facebook. For doing advertisements on Google, you must do the keyword research of the terms that you want to showcase your ads for. The paid advertisements on Google are usually called search engine marketing (SEM). Secondly, Facebook enables you to showcase your ad to a refined target audience. Through demographics and behavior, you can define your target audience. Most importantly, there are numerous ways for you to do customer segmentation. You can segment the customers to get the ones most suited to your ads, and then use your Facebook ads to ensure that you attract them.
Conclusion
Now as you know that what is internet marketing and its types, it is important to integrate it as part of your business plans. You cannot be running a physical store without having a professional eCommerce website supporting it. Gone are the days in which you have to put a banner of your brand outside every single store in your city. Even if you are successful in doing that, your brand will just be limited to your city. This is why marketing on the internet is important.
Strikingly is a website builder that seems to be effective for both you and your customers. Even though there are many benefits of it, you can integrate it as part of your marketing plan. This will enable you to do your marketing tasks efficiently and benefit your online business. So without wasting any more time, get started on Strikingly and influence your online business right away.
