online marketing for beginners

Online Marketing for Beginners: Top Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses 

 Online marketing, digital marketing, internet marketing, where do you start, and what is the difference in the world?

If you are new to online marketing, the truth is ... there is no difference between these words. They all refer to the same thing.

However, the strategies covered by it - such as video, social media, search engines, content, and email marketing, can push your business to reach explosive growth.

Just have a look at the Inc. 5000 list. There are tons of businesses that just started a few years ago that are already earning 7 to 8-figure revenue.

Many of these new companies relied solely on online marketing to achieve this massive success.

The Internet has allowed businesses of any size to connect directly with their target market, add value, and increase revenue.

So we believe that the time period we are in now, California will be bigger than the Gold Rush and the Industrial Revolution.

The whole world is using the Internet on the same platform every day, for the most part, the Internet is making a gold-mind right now.

And we want your business to take full advantage of this huge opportunity.

If you are not starting anything or know very little about how companies are using online marketing to explode their businesses, this blog can help provide some guidance.

Let's start with the basics, shall we?

What is online marketing?

Simply put, online marketing is the process of using the Internet to promote your business. Social media advertising, email subscriptions, and blogs are all part of online marketing.

With changes in consumer habits, traditional marketing tools have simply become less efficient. Now, any business that wants to be able to compete effectively with its competitors will have to implement some kind of online marketing techniques.

But it's not like you can just throw an ad online and expect to get leads. Many businesses do not recognize this and do not get the results they want.

Why do most businesses fail in online marketing?

Often, they try to use traditional marketing strategies in an online environment.

Typically, they use a sales-focused marketing approach, when the customer-centric approach is the only way to succeed in marketing in the information age in which we live today.

You see, with traditional forms of advertising, such as billboards, magazine advertisements, and even some TV commercials, publicity was all about business.

This was not uncommon like advertising…

“Find out why our computer is the best computer around. Over 100 years of existence. Great quality. And, you want to know something? I tell you a secret of this computer. Right here it's better. Then our contestants. BAM! got you. Yes, I got it !!! So will you pay by cash or card? "

In the marketing universe, we call this type of thing sales technique "sales-centric".

This aggressive, unilateral type of sales works very well when consumers rely on the expertise of the seller to make a purchase.

However, the Internet has completely changed this fact. So much so that we refer to the present day as the "information age".

The Internet has given us access to so much information to help us make decisions.

Now, we can easily find answers to our questions, have more options at the time of making a purchase, and determine whether a company fits well even before negotiating with them.

As a result, the Internet has shifted marketing from a sales-focused approach to what we now call a "customer-centric" approach.

Jeff Bezos is the founder of the world's largest Internet company, as far as what he calls his company's DNA "customer-obsession".

Amazon does everything to make the customer happy. From Amazon Prime, fast shipping time, low-cost products, product reviews, and so on.

The point is that if you want to succeed in online marketing, you have to first realize and agree that you will adopt a customer-centric approach to your strategy.

This means that your campaigns will be more focused on your customers' needs, wants and goals than your business.

You must have a strong mission and be committed to helping your customers reach their goals, even if that conversation does not involve immediately telling them why your business is the best.

Luckily, it's never too late to start creating a customer-centric online marketing strategy for your business!

What are the steps to get started with online marketing?

1-Get conversion-ready with great branding, website design, video, and photography.

2-Go ahead and optimize your website for SEO to increase your organic ranking as your website become more popular.

3-Start creating value for your audience through content marketing.

4-When all this is said and done, then you can share micro-pieces of your content through social media platforms.

5-Use digital advertising to speed up the process, and possibly skip a few steps.

6-Make sure you have email marketing so that you can convert people already interested in your business into buying customers.

As a beginner to online marketing, these steps are a great place to start.

Of course, we can jump right into talking about social media advertising and we helped a customer spend over $ 17000 to $ 150,000.00 in revenue.

Or tell you how we started an SEO campaign, resulting in $ 100,000 in revenue for a client.

But the truth is that those campaigns did not produce such a result. Businesses must first provide an incredibly valuable product or service, and present themselves in a way that is reliable and credible to their target audience.

Then and only then, online marketing will drive traffic through campaigns. And as a small business owner, effective online marketing will not be out of reach for you.

Now, let's take a closer look at the simple steps of creating an explosive online marketing strategy for your business.

6 Simple Steps to Online Marketing for Beginners

Step # 1: Get Ready

The first step of online marketing is to transform your business.

This means that you need high-resolution photography and video as well as a well-designed website and logo.

The goal here is to replicate a person's experience of their products or services in an online environment.

For example, suppose you are shopping for a pair of shoes at the mall. At the mall, you can visit a store and walk around and see all the shoes.

Eventually, you will stop, pick up a shoe that attracts your attention, and maybe even try on it.

So to replicate this experience in an online environment, you need an attractive store, which you can achieve through effective website design and branding.

You will need to capture and capture people's attention, which you can do through professional photography.

Then, in some cases, people will be very interested, but just want a little more. Like trying on your shoes.

In this case, the best thing is that you can make videos of your products or services. Show people what it's like to experience your product. You can show different angles and how it is used. And so on.

If people don't like your store setup or believe in your products, then this is not the online strategy for you.

You can have the best advertising in the world, it is not for selling a bad website or products without videos or photos.

So do your business favor by having an effective website, videography, photography, and branding.

 

Step # 2 Optimize your website for SEO

The next step is to optimize your website for SEO, which is search engine optimization.

This will help you on Google when someone is searching for a product similar to yours.

For example, suppose your toilet is broken and you need a plumber.

Naturally, the first thing you do is go to Google and type in "plumbing services" and a list of search results appears.

You will see various advertisements at the top of the results page. And then you will see some local SEO results, followed by some organic SEO listings.

All the listing results below the advertisements represent websites that are solely receiving traffic from Google.

This is what SEO is all about - optimization by Google to trust your website, resulting in top Google rankings and tons of free website traffic.

So once your website is ready, it is best to optimize your website for SEO. In this way, as your website becomes more popular, so will your SEO ranking.

It can drive hundreds, thousands, and even millions of visitors to your website directly from Google.

For some perspective, we used SEO to drive over 4 million website visitors to our website over a few year's time frames

And your business can do it too!

 

Step # 3 Create Content. Lots of material.

Talking about online marketing, content is king.

Because remember, we are living an information age now. Customers shopping online should trust your business and understand your solution for the transaction.

Content is the most effective way to do this.

As long as the products you are selling are a few people who bought without thinking, then you have to make an impulse purchase, then you need to create content to build trust and help your audience fully understand it. Why your solution is the best one to solve your problem.

The higher the cost of your product, the more resistance people have to resist when purchasing it.

For example, suppose you wanted to host virtual events, and a company had a software application that allows you to do this effectively.

The problem is, the cost of the application is $ 10,000 / year. And to make matters worse, you've never heard of this company before.

Chances are, the company you're looking at can't just give you ads to run on Facebook to buy your product.

For one, you have to fully understand the application to justify the $ 10,000 price tag.

And besides, even if you understand the value, you still have to trust the company, which is enough to give you these benefits.

Your customers are always thinking about two things - do I really need this? And do I really need to get this from you?

What is the content?

Content is the one that bridges the gap between your price and the consumers' buying resistance.

This provides comfort to the buyer and helps them overcome any objections before purchasing your products or services.

Great online marketers understand what their buyer's journey looks like and what questions they may have, and then create content to help them get over those obstacles.

Content may be written, audio, or visual. It can come in the form of e-books, short guides, videos, blog posts, and more.

Regardless of the content type, you need to create something that ultimately adds value to your audience.

And the best thing about content is that it can be used to fulfill your other online marketing efforts. This can boost your SEO, social media, and email marketing campaigns.

For example, our own agency received over 5 million views on free content on our website. This has created immense trust and awareness among our target audience.

.But to fully know the ins and outs of content marketing, check out our "What is content marketing" blog.

 

Step # 4 Create a Social Media Marketing Presence

Now that you have created your content, you can start creating subtle pieces of your content to share on social media.

Here you can take long-form content you've created, and break it into smaller, more digestible pieces of content to engage your audience on social media.

Social media marketing is important because your customers are there, advertising it is very cheap, and it is highly targeted.

To be successful in social media marketing, like everything else, you have to create content that benefits your audience.

Companies that often see low results from social media tend to focus too much on themselves, using the sales-focused approach we discussed earlier to promote their social media campaign.

As long as you create content that is valuable to your audience, and makes sure people actually see it, you will have a greater chance of success in social media marketing.

As you continuously add value to your audience and they connect with your business, they will start making a positive impression of your company and trust your business.

Once they trust you, they are more likely to buy from you. And this is how you move your business forward.

 

Step # 5 Use Digital Advertising to Increase Awareness and Engagement

Digital advertising, such as social media advertising and search engine advertising, can be used to complement your social media marketing and content marketing efforts.

For example, you can promote your best content on your social media pages or promote your hottest blog posts.

However, digital advertising is also a powerful tool to direct your website from social media or search engines to your website.

And the best part about digital advertising is that you don't necessarily need to create a bunch of content to generate tons of awareness and traffic.

You can use a piece of valuable content, and run a single ad on social media that drives hundreds, even millions, of website traffic to your website.

Let's look at the company beer mattress.

Bear Mattress is running an advertisement to let people know what type of sleeper they are.

They know that if people know what type of sleepers they are, they are interested in finding out what kind of mattress supports your sleeping style.

As a mattress company, this makes a perfect advertisement for social media because of your valuable content, "a guide to finding out what type of sleeper they are," engaged them.

Now suddenly, they are interested in buying a new mattress.

this is madness!

Even Crazier, the company started in 2014 and according to the Inc. 5000 list, is making $ 10M per year in revenue.

How powerful digital advertising can be. Instead of creating high-volume content, you can create a few pieces of high-quality content that are proven to engage people online and inspire them to buy.

Volume in digital advertising is not in your content, it is in your pocket. The more dollars you can spend, the more people you can reach.

It also means that if you are not sure what will work to motivate your customers to buy, you can waste a ton of money.

To be successful, you need to know what works for your customers, and what works for different digital advertising mediums.

For example, Google ads are completely different from Facebook ads. On Google, you can target people based on your intentions, and with Facebook ads, you can target people based on their behavior.

Even better, we explain more effectively how to use platforms like this here.

 

Step # 6 Use Email Marketing For Sales And Speed   Up Your Sales Cycle

As your business grows online, you will more than likely start accumulating email addresses.

If you are a service-based business, these emails can be leads. If you are an eCommerce business, these emails can be former customers. Or for any business, it can include anyone who has opted to get more value from your company in your email list.

Despite this, it is important that you have an email marketing strategy to promote these relationships with your email subscribers.

Email marketing involves sending regular email newsletters to your email list and engaging them and motivating them to buy.

Sure, some people will buy your products when they come to your other marketing efforts. But there will also be a group of interested people who do not do so.

They are not yet required to buy your products, they do not have immediate solicitation right now or fully understand the value of your product or service.

Email marketing is often used to bring this group of people to the finish line. Chances are if they made it to your email list, they already know who you are and maybe even trust you.

You can send weekly or monthly emails to continuously engage your customers through value creation. And, you can run time-sensitive promotions to encourage them to buy quickly.

Email marketing may not be the hottest type of online marketing available today, but make sure it works.

As a matter of fact, small businesses report a $ 28 ROI for every $ 1 they invest in email marketing.

We have sent single emails resulting in over $ 30,000 revenue for our customers.

So investing in email marketing as a part of your online marketing strategy will help you not to miss these revenue-adding benefits.

The conclusion

So, we have covered everything you need to know to get started with online marketing for beginners. And now you know that almost everything on the internet is offered for marketing your business.

With this new digital marketing knowledge, you are now equipped with top online marketing strategies to help your business grow.