Online marketing combines digital, electronic and other media channels to reach current and prospective customers with promotional messages, such as websites, social media, search engines and apps.
Digital marketing provides businesses with more flexible options to tailor their campaign according to budget and goals, including performance tracking and analysis.
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is a strategy involving creating and sharing informative content designed to attract new customers, with the intention of building credibility among your target market while simultaneously increasing brand recognition and sales.
Inbound marketing strategies encompass blogging, pillar pages, videos, emails, newsletters, expert interviews, webinars, research papers and Q&As – all methods by which customers can become informed of products or services and be motivated to purchase them.
Ebooks and infographics are popular inbound marketing strategies that can be given out for free to potential leads to boost your company’s reputation, or as promotional tools to existing customers.
One effective inbound marketing technique is sharing content on social media. By using a tool like Buffer to schedule posts for publication at times when your target audience is most active, this helps keep up with trends while improving search engine ranking by posting at optimal times for search engines to detect them.
If you’re uncertain which inbound marketing practices to utilize, take some time to think about how your target market might benefit from your services and create a plan to make these practices work for you. Doing this can maximize marketing efforts while getting more out of your budget, helping to stay ahead of competition while standing out from the crowd which could ultimately lead to an increase in revenues. It is key that you have a clear idea of what goals your inbound marketing efforts want to meet so that realistic goals can be set and met successfully.
Outbound marketing
If you’re trying to figure out how best to promote your business online, outbound marketing may have come up. This approach uses traditional advertising tactics like cold calling and billboards in order to reach potential customers. While outbound marketing may help companies increase brand recognition, its effectiveness varies if used to target specific groups.
Outbound marketing methods such as cold calling, billboards, TV and radio commercials, print ads, direct mail marketing, and social media promotion all aim at reaching consumers at just the right time and place.
Though these methods may seem archaic and outdated, they still work and can help expand and increase sales for any business. It is, however, essential that they be implemented effectively for optimal results.
Outbound marketing differs significantly from inbound strategies in that it is more aggressive, intrusive and likely to alienate consumers by pushing an outbound message directly onto users regardless of their relationship to or current needs for that brand.
Inbound marketing aims at cultivating prospects by producing content they find helpful, and building trust between users and brands.
Marketing strategy must include customer loyalty; doing so increases the odds that customers will come back and recommend you to their friends while improving search engine rankings.
Outbound marketing can be an effective way to generate leads, but tracking results may prove challenging and costly. Furthermore, results may take several months or years before becoming visible.
Targeting
Targeted targeting in your online marketing campaigns can make a big difference to how customers respond to what you’re putting out there, helping reduce waste while increasing sales by making sure your message reaches only those people that matter most.
Targeting can take many forms, from demographics and psychographics to behavioral variables. Deciding which method best meets your business needs depends on its intended outcomes and goals for this campaign.
Audience targeting involves targeting specific users based on their past behavior and interests, such as those who have visited your website or watched videos on YouTube. This method allows businesses to advertise to consumers that may have previously interacted with your products and services in some way.
Marketing platforms allow marketers to access email lists, CRM data and other proprietary first-party information that they input directly into the system for use as targeting tools to create highly-customized marketing campaigns geared specifically toward their ideal customers.
Behavioral targeting is one of the most prominent forms of targeted marketing. Like contextual advertising, behavioral targeting places ads for consumers based on their browsing activity and search history as well as websites they visit, links they click or social media activity.
Predictive behavioral targeting takes this a step further by tracking users over time and analyzing their browsing patterns in order to develop an in-depth profile of their needs. This method can be particularly helpful when targeting customers who haven’t made purchases yet or don’t know exactly what they want.
Before embarking on any marketing campaign, it’s essential that you understand all of the different forms of targeting available to marketers. Each approach offers different benefits but ultimately all will help reach customers faster than any single strategy could.
Automation
Automation technology enables companies to automate routine marketing tasks without human interference, including sending e-mails and updating editorial content on various social media platforms. Automation also makes it easier for organizations to administer customer satisfaction and product usage surveys as well as collect, measure, and segment response data.
Automation allows companies to effectively match customers with salespeople at just the right moment, using marketing automation software to leverage user data such as emails addresses and website activity for personalizing customer experiences.
One way this works is through sending welcome emails to newly acquired customers, providing information on the product or service as well as instructions on how to use it. This typically happens after someone subscribes to your list or makes an online purchase.
Implementing this tactic effectively includes the capability of activating new sales opportunities when prospects progress further in their funnel, such as purchasing an expensive product or entering a high-value VIP segment. This strategy helps businesses expand their audience while turning prospects into lifelong brand advocates.
Automation can also play an integral part in improving customer experiences, by sending follow-up emails after purchases or requests for feedback to show consumers that you care about their satisfaction and that their voices have been heard.
Automation can be an efficient marketing strategy, especially when used alongside other online tools. Automation can save marketing staff from repetitive tasks while freeing them up to focus on areas such as analyzing data or improving campaigns – leading to increased returns on investments, growth opportunities, and revenue increases.
Immediate feedback
Instant feedback is vital to customer satisfaction and loyalty, showing customers you are listening and acting upon their concerns. Furthermore, providing immediate feedback may even increase revenue for your business.
Immediate feedback can come in various forms – email, chat, social media and in person are just some of the options available – it is important to select one that best meets your individual circumstances.
For instance, when improving the design of your website, giving customers an opportunity to provide feedback before making any modifications is a great way to identify any issues quickly and implement solutions swiftly.
Note that both positive and negative feedback should be treated equally; negative comments can often help you improve the services you offer.
As part of your customer service strategy, recognizing trends early and acting upon them quickly can also help prevent customers from leaving, as well as any negative impressions about your brand being cast on it.
Also, having an instant feedback loop between your customer support team and yourself allows for faster identification of product bugs or marketing missteps that may have an adverse effect on customer experience – something which would otherwise go undetected!
Immediate feedback has another advantage in that it helps prevent recency bias – an aspect of cognitive bias where individuals tend to assess something based on recent events rather than making impartial evaluations based on objective measures.
Automated feedback systems that give customers instantaneous responses can reduce this risk by offering instant, immediate responses in response to customer actions or interactions, such as sending out notification emails shortly after closing a ticket. Combining this feedback system with an optional 1-question survey asking about customer interactions would be particularly helpful.
