Web Marketing: What Exactly Is It?
What Is Web Marketing?
Web marketing is a broad term that encompasses many different types of digital marketing- all of which involve the use of the internet. Web marketing is employed to aid in the communication strategy of a business by enabling a connection with past and prospective customers. This can be done by using digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and a properly functioning website.
With internet usage ever increasing, it’s an undeniably powerful tool for businesses and marketers alike. Web marketing has also opened up and democratised marketing by making it accessible to companies who may not have been able to afford the large expenses involved in traditional marketing of the past. Not that long ago, reaching a national audience would have involved a significant investment in a television, radio, mail or print campaign.
These days, no company is too small be able to utilise web marketing as a powerful tool. Another major difference between web marketing and older, more traditional methods is the ability to track your return on investment to quite an accurate degree- this, twinned with advanced analytical methods, allows you to put your marketing budget where its most effective at increasing revenue.
We are all spending more and more time online these days. With internet usage increasing by 5% in just the last 3 years (Pew Research), the ability to target a particular demographic is getting ever easier.
Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. Today, that means you need to meet them where they are already spending time: on the internet.
How Can You Utilise Web Marketing?
Now that we have figured out the functionality of web marketing, lets take a look at the marketing methods that are encompassed within this…..
Get yourself an awesome website
Not all websites are created equally. You may have a website, but is it awesome?
Your website needs to convert visitors into customers- if it isn’t then you really need to think about what use your current website is to your business.
Direct conversion becomes even more important if you are paying commission to other companies that sell your product through their own websites. Hotels routinely pay around 20% commission to online travel agencies- this is money that the hotels should and could be keeping for themselves!
Realise the importance of SEO
Search Engine Optimisation is all about convincing the search engines that your website deserves a top spot for any given search term/keyword.
The good thing about a beautifully optimised website is that the effects of SEO are residual; that is to say that once a website is optimised correctly, it should continue to reap the organic click rewards of this endeavour for a while. Having said this, it’s still good practice to keep up with SEO improvements as the way that search engines rank websites is something that is ever evolving.
Start building a mailing list
You probably know your client demographic, but does your mailing list?
Many companies have email lists that sit unused for years, by the time these lists are called upon, many realise that the data within is a total mess and barely usable. Don’t wait until its too late to fix. Take a look at your mailing list and fix it before it becomes junk.
It’s important to have different lists and to segment them taking into account their future uses. For example, will you be sending out marketing emails in multiple languages? If so, make sure your email database contains a field that states the spoken language of the customer. Want to target customers interested in a certain service that you offer? It would probably be worth adding this as a field too.
Use Pay-per-click (PPC) to find new customers
PPC, in a nutshell, is paying to appear in front of customers when they search for a particular term (keyword). More accurately, you actually only pay when someone clicks on your search engine ad/listing.
The key to running a PPC campaign with a great return on investment is to only pay to appear in front of people who are likely to convert into customers. With modern website analytics its relatively easy to pinpoint a particular demographic of website visitor that you are most likely to convert into a customer. With this in mind, you can utilise targeting to place your advert in front of people who are more likely to become paying customers!
Aside from targeting the right demographic of customer, its also important to target the right search terms and also excluding certain terms. For example, if you’re a hotel based in Marrakech, you want to be attracting people who are looking to become customers and not people who may be searching for “hotel schools in Marrakech”.
Many tactics exist that can help utilise your PPC budget more effectively and help to increase your return on investment- one such tactic involves utilising a negative keyword list. A negative keyword list would contain keywords that you would like to avoid, such as “schools”, if you are a hotel in Marrakech and not a hotel school in Marrakech. As the name suggests, PPC involves paying per click, so its best to only pay for the right clicks!
What Next?
Now that we have covered 4 of the most important parts of web marketing, you should consider whether your business could benefit from putting into place a web marketing strategy.
Studio Rif offers businesses the chance to receive a free design and marketing consultation from us. We are based in both London and Marrakech, so get in touch and lets discuss what we can do for your business.