I know you probably understand what internet marketing is and the different methods used, but I’m sure you don’t know all the methods I’ll be talking about in this article.
First, keep in mind that internet marketing is not just about Google AdWords, Facebook, and banners.
In this article, I will briefly explain what internet marketing is and its advantages. Then, I will discuss the different methods for effective internet marketing.
The explanations of each method are brief because if I were to analyze each method in detail, this article would exceed 10,000 words and I would have to sell it as a book for at least €39.90. (Not a bad idea now that I think about it…)
Internet marketing is the process of promoting and increasing your sales through the internet, whether you have an online store, are an affiliate marketer, or are simply promoting a business opportunity.
Advantages of Internet Marketing
The advantages of internet marketing are many such as:
- Global market: You can market your products or services to people in your field all over the world, not just in your home city or country.
- Cheap: You can start promoting your business with €10 or even €1000. It depends on your plan and your budget. You also don’t need huge amounts of money for your ad creative as there are options for both high and low budgets.
- Quick: With internet marketing you can set up an advertising campaign in 30 minutes and start getting visitors – potential customers – to your website the very next day.
- Targeted: You can target with great precision (so much so that sometimes it’s scary) to which people your ads will appear through their google or Bing searches , through social networks (Facebook, twitter) and through websites that target specific audiences.
- Measurable: One of the biggest advantages of internet marketing is that you can measure everything and instantly know what works and what doesn’t and from which campaign the most sales are coming from.
Lest I be misunderstood, I believe that a business should also include offline marketing methods in its marketing mix. It is fine to focus on some online marketing tools, but you should NOT leave the conventional offline marketing tools “out of the game.”
How to Promote Your Business Online
Like offline marketing, there are various methods that will help you achieve your goals. Below are all the Internet Marketing methods with a comprehensive description of each method.
1. SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The exact translation in Greek is “Search Engine Optimization”.
Basically, SEO helps you to get your website higher in search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo for specific searches that internet users make.
E .g. If a person searches for “cheap eyeglasses” and your website appears in the first positions (SERP) of the results, then he is most likely to visit your website and buy something – if he finds what he is looking for – without you having paid a cent to get him.
Think about how many other similar searches might be made that are related to your business and by how many thousands of people every month.
Think about how many sales you are losing because your website is not appearing in the first positions of search engines.
SEO experts charge too much money to get you high in the searches. Of course they are entitled to it, since their actions will drive a huge volume of sales to you.
What 99% of SEOs do is to improve your website (on-page SEO), build backlinks, and produce new content.
This costs them both time and money, which you have to pay for.
If you don’t have the money to pay people to do your business’ SEO for you, you can start… study…
YouTube is full of guides – even for newbies.
2. Email Marketing
One of the most misunderstood tools in online marketing is email marketing.
Most people use it incorrectly and have no idea of the tremendous results that its correct use can bring to their sales.
Many times, when I suggest it to my clients, the responses I get are:
- I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work.
- When they send them to me, I erase them, I don’t see them
- It does not bring good results.
..and many more that just thinking about them makes my blood pressure rise.
What they think is email marketing, is not email marketing but spamming.
That is, they send an ugly and irrelevant email, to an irrelevant audience, who never asked to be emailed, resulting in zero sales.
Don’t you find it strange that all the foreign websites ask you to subscribe to their newsletter?
The reason is simple.
By getting your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, you build an audience around your store that is interested in what you sell (in the case of a blog, what you write).
They subscribe themselves to the Newsletter and so you can promote them, again and again,
- special offers
- discount coupons
- to let them know about the new delivery or collection or just
- communicate with them
I recommend reading my article on the best email marketing platforms and my article Money is on the List: Increase Your Sales With Email Marketing.
3. Social Media Marketing
Yet another misunderstood online marketing tool that is being “abused” daily by various marketers and entrepreneurs who think that Facebook is the only thing that exists and that they are doing social media marketing by having a lot of likes on their page.
Of course, the course of most Facebook pages, after getting a bunch of Likes, is as follows:
- They start taking pictures – from their mobile phones – of their store’s products and upload them to Facebook along with a bunch of other nonsense that their sole purpose is to sell…
- so that the people who clicked the Like button get bored of the constant promotion that is done…
- to start completely ignoring what you’re putting up…
- then Facebook, with the algorithm it has recently developed, does not even show what you upload to the timeline of the people who have liked your page.
Social Media Marketing is the process of communicating with the public , through clever and creative images, videos and articles that aim to pass various messages.
There are dozens of social networks out there with millions of users ready to receive proper and creative marketing from your brand.
Whether you’re creating videos on YouTube or trying to promote your B2B services on LinkedIn, what you need to keep in mind is that social media users don’t go to their favorite social networks to buy something.
See also: Social media tools that will make your life easier.
4. PPC – Pay Per Click
Pay per click advertising is one of the most popular methods of promotion on the internet. It can bring you crazy profits if you use it correctly, but it can also strip you financially if used incorrectly.
For example, I recently spent about 500 euros on LinkedIn without making a single sale… I was sad, I can’t say, but I learned a lot…
In PPC advertising, you are only charged when someone clicks on your ad.
Fees range from €0.02 per click to €100 euros per click, depending on the advertising platform and the competition around your sector.
For example, a lawyer will pay you several times more money per click on his advertisement than a dry cleaner.
5. CPM – Cost Per Mile (thousand)
Here you are charged an amount per thousand times your ad will appear to visitors of a specific website.
For example, someone tells you that he charges €2.00 CPM. This means that he charges €3.00 for every 1000 times your ad will be shown to his website visitors.
The best known advertising platforms that charge per thousand views are Facebook and Google – if you choose to advertise with Display ads (i.e. banner ads) and on YouTube, with videos.
So, in this example, if you buy 100 000 views and charge €3 per thousand, you will pay €300.
TIP: When you advertise with CPM, keep in mind that your banner or txt link must “magnetize” the visitors of the website where you placed your banner and “cause” them to click on it. Your goal is to get as many clicks on your Banner (i.e. visits to your website) as possible.
6. CPV – Cost Per View
This advertising model is similar to CPM. That is, you are charged per 1000 views your ad will receive, only this time you don’t advertise with a simple Banner or text, but with your entire page in Popunder format.
Basically, CPV networks, through various methods (which I may cover in a later article), install very small, harmless files, called “adware cookies”, on the computers of internet users.
Anyone who has this small file on their computer then becomes part of the CPV network.
CPV advertisers target websites that are relevant to their product. When the person with the adware cookie on their computer visits the website targeted by the advertiser, then their website will be displayed.
Every 1000 times the ad is displayed (whether you see it or not) you will be charged the appropriate amount.
Usually, this kind of advertising is used by betting companies, supplements for men, etc.
7. PTC – Paid To Click
One of the most underrated forms of advertising which is being devalued by many marketers. PTC stands for paid to click, meaning I get paid to click.
These sites give their members an incentive of a few cents for every advertisement they see.
It is possible to target members of these websites by country and by gender. You can also choose how long you want the website members to be “forced” to see your ad in order to receive their money.
Usually the options you have are from 5 seconds to 60 seconds.
The cost to advertise on PTC websites is very low, since for €50 you get 5000 30 second visits (€0.01 per visit) or 10000 15 second visits (€0.005 per visit).
PTC websites are a great way to build an email list (with a squeeze page) of people who are interested – usually – in business opportunities and how to make money online.
8. Sales Promotion (Discount Coupons)
This marketing method is more suited to online stores than affiliate marketers (although there is a way to use it in affiliate marketing) and is exactly the same method you use in offline marketing.
That is, you boost your sales by offering discounts, discount coupons on some of your products to ”attract” customers to the store, to ”get to know”, to buy something and if they become repeat customers.
Some websites where you can offer discounts are Directdeals.com.cy or similar websites.
If you have an eshop you can “publish” some discount coupons (if you don’t know, ask your developer) and upload them to websites like SimplyCodes, CouponIt, Couponse and other similar websites…
👉 You can find discount codes to software and internet services on my website.
9. Content marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating content, in order to strengthen your brand, to be seen and to attract customers to your business.
All websites and big brands around the world are using content marketing to increase their customer base.
Some content production techniques are:
- Create Infographics ( See example Infographic)
- Creating Educational Videos (YouTube, Vimeo )
- Online Presentations (e.g. Slideshare.com)
- Creation and distribution of press releases with the news of your company or your brand. (e.g. pr.com)
- Articles on various websites related to your field.
- Creating a blog and writing related articles
10. Native Ads
Native Ads are generally called ads that blend with the content in such a way that they do not disturb the user’s experience.
They usually appear as recommended articles at the end of articles on various web pages (or in the sidebar) and are designed to look like articles. They are something like the advertorials that go into magazines.
Their purpose is to inform and promote a program or service at the same time.
Below is an example of native ads from the CNN.com website. CNN.com is part of the Outbrain.com network and you pay a fee every time someone clicks on a native ad.
Another example of native ads on the CNN sidebar
Clicking on one of the native ads appearing on CNN entitled The Hidden Secret to Booking 5 Star Hotel Rooms (catchy title) took me to an article promoting a service to book cheap rooms at various hotels around the world.
Here’s what it looks like.
Some websites that offer native ads are:
11. Solo Ads (O.P.L Method)
Solo ads is directly related to email marketing. The difference is that instead of building your own email list, you are emailing someone else’s list of people or businesses or websites. Hence the O.P.L which stands for Other Peoples List.
The way this method works is as follows:
Suppose you sell a male fitness supplement.
You visit a men’s website that has a newsletter such as Menshealth.com, contact them and ask.
“Do you accept Solo ads?”
If so, then you ask to find out.
- how many subscribers they have in their Newsletter,
- how much is the open rate of the emails (open rate)
- what percentage of people click on the email links (click through rate)
- and how much money they want to allow you to send an email to their list.
You do your calculations and decide if it’s worth sending or not.
Don’t confuse solo ads with email marketing services that send spam email. And when I say spam email, I mean they will send your email to a list of people who have NOT subscribed to their list. These lists are not targeted and do not bring the desired results.
Some websites for Solo ads are:
Instead of looking for websites to send solo ads there are databases that has various people and websites that accept solo ads. The best known is Udimi.
12. Affiliate Marketing
A model that almost all companies abroad use. Basically they offer a commission of 6% up to 75% (depending on the product and service) to anyone who sends them new customers.
Sites like Amazon, eBay, and affiliate networks like ShareASale pay millions in commissions to people around the world who bring them sales.
Also people who manage to turn their knowledge into info products such as a series of videos, an eBook or a software, can “host” them on various platforms such as Clickbank and start to have their product promoted by various affiliate marketers.
Some of the huge advantages of affiliate marketing for a business are:
Some websites that will help you get started are these 👉 The 10 Best Affiliate Marketing Networks and Programs
TIP: It is better to develop your business affiliate program yourself as these sites – yes they will help you get started more easily – will receive a percentage of the sales brought in by affiliate marketers.
13. Online marketplaces
A very good method to increase your sales is to start uploading your products to other online marketplaces besides your own website, such as skroutz.gr, amazon.com and ebay.com
These websites have managed to build a huge name around the words security and trust and as a result, every month millions of people from all over the world visit their pages to make their purchases.
Why not be there with your products and take advantage of all the traffic that these websites get.
14. Comparison Shopping Engines
Comparison Shopping Engines are websites that compare products from different websites. Millions of users around the world visit these websites every day to search for various products they need.
The reason why these websites have become very popular among the buying public is because they are very convenient.
That is, users do a search for a product and their website displays dozens of products from various websites. The user can easily compare prices and qualifications and buy from the website they want.
Due to the huge amount of traffic that Comparison Shopping Engines receive, more and more websites are uploading their products to these engines.
The billing model is Cost Per Click – which is very advantageous. That is, the website charges you a fee only when someone clicks on your result and visits your website.
Usually the people who will click on your product are people who are “baked” and ready to buy. Of course, it’s up to you how good your landing page is and how easily you convert the visitor into a customer.
Some Comparison Search Engines are:
15. Push Ads
Push ads is an innovative method that allows you to send push messages to millions of mobile devices around the world.
This method is very cheap and effective if you want to motivate users to install an app or subscribe to a service.
Final Comments
Which of the internet marketing methods do you use to promote your business? Do you have any other methods to suggest that I haven’t included?
If so, let me know so I can include it. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions on this article.
See also
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