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Internet marketing is the most inexpensive way to reach your target market, regardless of the size of your business.
But whatisinternet marketing, really?
Also called online marketing, internet marketing isthe process of promoting a business or brand and its products or services over the internet using tools that help drive traffic, leads, and sales.
Internet marketing a pretty broad term that encompasses a range of marketing tactics and strategies including content, email, search, paid media, and more.
These days, though, internet marketing is often used interchangeably with content marketing.
Why?
Because content marketing is the internet marketing of the present and future.
Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:
A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Think of it like this: content marketing (or inbound marketing) is in direct opposition to traditional advertising (outbound marketing), and indirect integrationwith the patterns and habits of todays generation.
We dont like to be sold to, we have our ad-blockers on, and we barely watch cable anymore.
Content marketing serves up content that addresses our pain points, and is there when we want it.
Heres a great illustration of that from Voltier Digital:
Heres the evolutional pathway behind the modernized form of marketing that is most successful today.
Sellingno longer works (a.k.a., traditional advertising).
Why?
Traditional advertising focuses on pushing messages at the consumer to get them to buy.
Its interruptive, obstructive, and intrusive.
It shouts, Hey, look at me! while waving its arms.
You may try to avoid eye contact, but traditional ads are persistent.
You know what traditional ads look like because youre bombarded with them every single day.
Think TV commercials, billboards, magazine ads, radio ads, and web banner ads.
Ads have been around for a long time, as evidenced by this traditional ad for honest-to-goodness coffee from the 1950s.
Ads may still work in some strategic places.
But Internet users can just click away from ads if they dont want to see them.
Which is exactly what happens.
According to a PageFair report, 615 million devices in use today employ ad blockers. Additionally, ad blocker use increased by 30 percentin 2016 alone.
You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.
Ads are annoying.
And, they arent the way consumers prefer to learn about new products anymore.
Instead of businesses shoving themselves in consumers faces, they need to take a different, gentler approach.
Content marketing is exactly that.
Brands and marketers who use it publish content that teaches, inspires, guides, or solves a problem for their target audience.
With some handy tricks, the targets can find that content on the web without it being pushed at them.
If the prospects gain something useful from the content, theyll keep coming back for more.
Finally, consumers can interact with the brand organically and share their content on social media.
Trust is forged.
Authority is established.
Connections happen.
These loyal followers can then be converted into leads and sales naturally.
All of the above happens with a focus on giving value to the user.
Help users offer them value and theyll reward you in return.
That is what internet marketing/content marketing is all about at its core.
Now that you know what internet marketing is, you still may be wondering why theres so much hype around it.
Well, the hype is totally founded.
Internet marketing has shown proven success over and over again.
Here are some stats gathered from around the web to help give you an idea of why internet/content marketing stands tall:
And theres more.
From my own content marketing endeavors, I have seen my small business take off.
With 99 percent of our focus on content marketing, we managed to grow our worth to millions of dollars.
Bottom line: This stuff works.
Reading about great content marketing is not enough to truly understand how it works. Instead, you have to see it in action to grasp its fundamental value.
Because when content isreally good, it can do amazing things.
Here are some top examples of content types from brands who knocked content creation out of the park.
One of the most common content types is blog posts and articles.
A blog, in particular, is a great content platform because it gives you a foundation for lots of posts, pages, and content that all point back to your site.
Think of a blog as a tree trunk. Your individual blog posts are the branches that reach out into the corners of the internet and search engines. Users can find your branches and follow them back to your core site. That gives you a greater shot at leads and sales.
For a great example of blogging content, look to Content Marketing Institute. They create troves of valuable, useful content for content marketers in order to teach, instruct, guide, or inspire.
The result?
Devoted fans, followers, and customers for their events, training, and consulting.
Infographics are fun, visual ways to present valuable information.
They use charts, graphs, pictures, and illustration to explain concepts. This type of content is easily digestible and totally shareable.
Heres a fantastic example of an infographic about baking bread from RJ Zaworski:
And heres another highly-shared infographic from Curata about the anatomy of a content marketer:
Another popular and effective form of content is a case study.
In general, a case study is an in-depth look at some action your brand or business completed that had measurable results for success.
Usually, this translates into something you accomplished for a client.
Heres a great example of a case study by Fractl:
In it, the agency showcases how they executed a successful content campaign for a real estate brand. They talk about how it came together, the whys of the project, and the results (presented in measurable stats).
This type of content is an awesome trust-builder for obvious reasons.
For those of you who shudder at the thought of writing a blog post or in-depth article or case study, there are content mediums out there for you.
Podcasts are huge.
Theyre similar to the storytelling and news radio shows of yore, except people can download them and listen to episodes however and whenever they want.
If you are a good speaker or interviewer, this content format can be a great one for sharing valuable information with your audience.
For an example, check out Search Engine Journals Search Engine Nerds, aboutSEO, paid search, social media, and content marketing.
Videos are the hottest content type right now.
The stats are staggering. According to Social Media Today:
Its easy to see why videos dominate.
Videos are simple to consume, theyre entertaining, and they appeal to the current attention-span deficit that we suffer from when we surf the web.
For a great example of a marketer making the most of video content, check out Neil Patels YouTube channel:
So, youre totally on-board for this internet marketing thing.
You love the idea of getting creative, sharing value with your prospects/audience, and building brand loyalty and customer relationships organically.
Hold on a second, though.
You cant just jump into this blindly.
You need to understand the key pieces of successful internet marketing, first.
They include:
Content marketing without a strategy will ultimately fail its just the sad truth.
You must have a direction, a plan, the right tools, and ways to measure your progress if you expect to get anywhere.
Here are the key content marketing strategy fundamentals involved:
When you use SEO with content marketing, it can take you farther, longer.
These two pieces together help power-up your organic (read: free) reach and visibility on the internet.
SEO encompasses a variety of techniques that help get you into prime spots on search engine results pages (SERPs). This means people can find you just by looking up some topic theyre interested in or need help with.
The overarching goal of good SEO is to get your site pages ranked on the first page of Google. (After all, most people rarely, if ever, click to Page 2 on their quest for information.)
Here are some basic SEO techniques that will help your content get indexed and ranked in search results:
Of course, this is just bare-bones SEO. To get a better, in-depth look, check out SEJs ebookSEO 101: Learn the Basics of Search Engine Optimization.
Organic search can give you great click-through rates. It also gives you the benefit of the inherent trust people have in Google results.
However, sometimes investing in paid search can give you a boost.
Original post:
What is Internet Marketing? Your Guide to Today's Online ...