What is INTERNET MARKETING?

From the 2 words, “Internet” and “Marketing”

Anyone even a layman can have a slight idea of what it’s all about if given a deep thought.

Internet marketing bears similar names such as web marketing, digital marketing, online marketing, e-marketing etc.

But without waste of time,

In simplest terms, Internet or Online or Web Marketing is all about marketing of your products and services using the internet

Simple as ABC

In other words, it is the process of advertising of your website, products and services using various internet promotional methods for various purposes.

The best marketing strategy ever: CARE – Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur, speaker & marketing expert

Why is Internet Marketing so Important?

With the continuous development of faster internet speed technology (2G to 3G to 5G and above), better website graphics among other factors, its advantages has continue to grow at a remarkable pace

In any business, CUSTOMERS are KING

In fact, most businesses have thrived well by getting more customers, making more revenue and profit

And this has been successfully accomplished simply by harnessing the power of internet and its promotional strategies.

This is one great importance of the internet.

Now, how does these businesses achieve this?

One popular method it does so is by building a very attractive website, for itself and showcasing all its products and services alongside its full details (e.g. specifications, reviews, costs, requirements etc).

It can also do so using other high-traffic websites by placing adverts on banners and texts at a cost

For better understanding,
This YouTube video by rapidlearninglife gives us a slight view about internet marketing,

Please watch below;

For the customer,

Another advantage is that it avail any prospective customer the opportunity to find and conduct research about any products/services from the anywhere in the world without visiting the company physically to make inquires.

All the customer needs is just a computer with internet connectivity and he can connect to as many places online as possible.

The access is unlimited

Lastly, According to their taste, cost and suitability, businesses are free to choose any of its different internet marketing promotional methods and strategies which will take us to the next chapter as we will be discussing them below:

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. Article/content Marketing
3. Social Media Marketing
4. Email Marketing
5. Search Engine Optimization
6. Paid Advertising (e.g. banner & pop-up ads, PPC)
7. Search Engine Marketing
8. Mobile Marketing
9. Blog Marketing
10. Influencer Marketing

Note that you don’t necessarily need to follow all these methods for your business.

Mastering about 3-5 of them is very ok depending on your budget, time and choice

But if you wish to go for all, No problem

It is a free world.

This is exactly which affiliate marketing promotion is all about

In fact, the image below throws more light on how this affiliate marketing works

In line with internet marketing, this type of marketing boost your products’ visibility across the globe online.

The idea behind this is that your products/services gets more exposed worldwide by affiliates who indicate interest in promoting your products especially if the commission is very attractive

The trick here is this:

Ensure the commission is very good enough to be irresistible

Through that,

you stand an opportunity to register as many affiliates as possible which in-turn boost your chances of getting sales and profit

There exist various affiliate platforms which you can trade your products of which the popular ones are:

1. www.commissionjunction.com
2. www.paydotcom.com
3. www.associateprograms.com
4. www.affiliatefirst.com
5. www.jvzoo.com
6. www.clickbank.com

and many others.

An image below shows an example of affiliate marketing products on jvzoo ;

According to wikipedia, Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online

Lets picture this,

When visitors land on your website, the first thing that look out for articles about your products to seek information and if it is not well-crafted, chances are that you will lose such potential customer like a flash and it will be forever

So to avoid losing such a golden opportunity, Master the act of copywriting

Through this, businesses utilize this kind of marketing to get higher Google rankings and attract traffic visitors.

Copy-writing is the skilled art of writing content for the purpose of advertising

Such content can be in form of;

1. Text e.g. How-tos
2. Infographics
3. Videos
4. Tool reviews
5.  Ebooks
6. charts/graphics
7. Templates
8. surveys etc.

Such content are shown below;

First, in form of text as shown below;

The aim of such content is to persuade its readers to take particular actions which could be subscriber opt-in, purchase, website visit etc

Once this is done, the purpose of content marketing has been accomplished.

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis, marketing speaker & bestselling author

This tells us one thing;

Social Media is the fastest growing trend in the world of internet marketing.

So, Social Marketing is the process of promoting your content on various social media platforms.

On facebook, you can do free and paid promotion adverts.

As for the free aspect of it, all you can do is to join as many facebook groups and pages as possible and place your products in all of them manually

A typical example is as shown below;

Another one is the twitter page of ever popular SEO comapny called Ahrefs;

Of all the types of marketing, this is surely the KING of them all because of its MASSIVE traffic visitors and BILLIONS of users across the world and the numbers is still increasing exponentially NOW and in the FUTURE.

You can identify some others like Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Vimeo etc. and invest.

Looking at the 2 dominant words “Email” and “Marketing”

And extracting out the meaning, it is easy to say that it is the process of sending out messages using email.

Simple as ABC.

And such messages can be advertisements, business requests, updates, receipts, order confirmation, password reset etc.

But there is a special feature that sharply distinguish this from other forms of marketing:

Targeted Traffic and Common Interest

This form of marketing offers you the opportunity to target a particular group of people of common interest or niche.

Now,

how does this Email Marketing operates?

it involves using a mailing platform capable of broadcasting messages to group of people

Popular among such platforms are

1. Aweber
2. Getresponse
3. Mailjet
4. MailChimp
5. Convertkit
6. Drip
7. SendinBlue
8. ConstantContact
9. Omnisend
10. Activecampaign etc.

Depending on our choice, the marketer is capable of sending messages automatically with the aid of an Autoresponder

And such messages are referred to as Email Newsletters

A typical example is as shown below for easy grab.

The above email is a promotional message to a subscriber informing about a new product with the hope of giving it a try.

To boost chances of getting sales and conversion, an email message newsletter MUST be (Call-To-Action) CTA-oriented.

It MUST be capable of persuading the subscriber to buy the product.

Now,

Subscribers are those at the receiving end.

As the name implies, these are persons who have subscribed and consented to receive mail messages from marketers and companies on a regular basis.

And to win their hearts, you must convince them that they will be at a higher advantage (if they subscribe) and will receive full benefits your site will offer.

Such benefits can be in form of products discounts, latest site info, free bonuses, 3rd-party ads, business opportunity, free ebooks etc.

Some of these benefits are used as “bait” to encourage them to accept your subscription offer.

Now to turn your traffic visitors to subscribers, you get an an Opt-In Page and an autoresponder.

An Opt-In webpage provides the platform for traffic visitors/readers to subscribe by inputting their email address in exchange for some benefits.

Example of how an Opt-In page looks like is shown below (in form of a webpage and a pop-up);

and in form of a Pop-Up as shown below

We have 2 major types of email marketing;

1. Direct Opt-In Email Marketing
2. Transactional Email Marketing

What was all described above is called an Opt-In direct email marketing

Lets deal with TRANSACTIONAL Email Marketing

The primary purpose of a transactional email is to deliver response information regarding a customer’s action that triggered it.

Order confirmations, billing statements, receipts, password set/reset, invoices, order/reorder status and many more.

This kind of email is usually activated by user’s action.

This kind of email offers an opportunity to extend the emailing relationship with the subscribers/customers

For better understanding, the image below describes a simple transactional email (providing information about a product order purchase) below;

 Simply put, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a website traffic from its organic search engine rankings.

Common activities associated with SEO are keyword optimization, link building and high-quality content

In line with internet marketing, SEO is simply the practice of optimizing your website settings and its parameters to increase its exposure to the internet world, thus boosting its chances of marketing worldwide.

There are 2 broad types of SEO

1. On-Page SEO
2. Off-Page SEO
   

On-Page SEO

Optimizing web content to boost its search engine rankings is what on-page SEO is about.

Organizing title tags, contents, URLs, keywords research and internal links are main ingredients of on-page SEO.

Briefly, we will deal on these ingredients  and how it helps to boost a website search engine rankings.

Lets start with Title and Description Tags

Title tags are what search engine users use to obtain results from search engine queries and such engines produces results according to thier rankings via title tags.

Also they give search engines an overview of what your webpage content is all about

A quick graphical example is as shown below;

These title and description tags are keywords that online visitors use to search out for topics on search engines, so they are worth optimizing

Now, how do we optimize such tags to make them SEO-friendly?

Step 1: Start your keyword(s) in Front Of your Post Title

Google results has shown that it favors tags that are at the beginning of the post title.

it is NOT A MUST that it must be at the beginning of the post title but it is VERY NECESSARY

As you can see from the example below in Google 1st page results, the keyword “website visitors” appears in front of the post titles and its description.

As you can see from the image above, you may be at an added advantage if you comply with this 1st step

we move to the next step which is……………………..

Step 2: Use Title Tag Modifiers

Using modifiers such as How, Killer, Best, Guide, Review, Fast, Checklist, New, ways etc on your title tags tends to persuade online visitors to click on your webpages on search engine results.

Through this, it generates more traffic visitors towards your website than others.

Below shows a typical example of a tag modifiers in Google 1st page results for the keyword “good quality backlinks

Step 3: Use Unique Keyword-Rich Meta Descriptions

Sprinkle your keywords around the first and second paragraphs of your content.

Google searches for keywords through these paragraphs to know what your web content is all about.

So, putting in several keywords will do a lot in your search engine rankings

The image below explains further of what i am talking about;

As you can see above, the red ones are the keywords placed around the meta descriptions (first paragraph lines).

So why writing content, do the same too

Step 4.  Write SEO Content

For a content to be SEO-friendly, it must satisfy the following conditions;

• 100% Original and Unique
• keyword-rich
• Must be of great value
• Contain Internal and External backlinks.

From the 1st step, What it means is that your content must NOT be a duplicate of another content elsewhere.
Its context must be completely different from others and must be specific in its own terms.

Secondly, Your keywords must be placed at strategic locations of your web content, especially the 1st 100 words.
This enables Google understand easily what your content is all about and rank you accordingly.

Thirdly, Include quotes, images, videos, audios and examples to your content when making illustrations for better comprehension and understanding.
This will make your content to stand out of the competitor crowd and be specially recognized by Google.

Fourthly, Your content must be awash with lots of backlinks, both internal and external to other sites. This enables Google to further understand your content and to rate it as a high quality one

STEP 5. Optimize for Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and User experience Signals

CTR is probably now a google ranking factor. Increasing CTR can drive more traffic to your website.

How do we achieve this?

Fill up any missing meta descriptions if unavailable. Sites with meta description have a higher 6% CTR than those without meta description.

Another way is to use Question title tags as study has shown that it tends to boost your CTR higher than other sites.

Also build up a very strong interactive connection and relationship with your readers.

You can do this by replying to every comments that your readers make

Below illustrates what i am talking about from the famous backlinko website;

Twitter is also another social site that commands a huge number of traffic visitors too on a daily basis.

You can create a twitter page, get lots of followers and post your website/products.

Or you can go for paid twitter promotional ads

These images below explains further;

I believe we have touched majority of what On-page SEO entails.

Just implement the tips, steps and strategies mentioned above for your web content and you are good to go as far as Google rankings is concerned.

Though it takes time, your website will get an SEO boost which will indirectly result in higher rankings.

but it goes way beyond implementing only on-page SEO.

You need to consider Backlinks too which is among the top 3 Google ranking factors and this lead us to our next topic, the 2nd aspect of SEO which is: Off-Page SEO

OFF-PAGE SEO

When we say off-page SEO, most persons attribute it to backlinks.

Though it is a major part of it, but it is way beyond that.

Generally speaking, it has to do with promotional methods outside the website design, all for the purpose of achieving higher google rankings.

For example, if you write guest posts for your site, you are doing off-page SEO.

Others are social bookmarking, video marketing, article marketing, social media marketing and many more

Why is Off-Page SEO important?

Lets start this way

If webmasters visit your site, like your web content and make reference to it in thier own site

It clearly shows that your web content is of high value

And when Google observes this, it rewards you for it.

How?

Simply by shooting your website up its rankings.

And references are made by creating backlinks that link to your site

A typical example as shown below is ahrefs linking to an article at Moz site which is of higher Authority.

Not only through references (backlinks). Google also considers other promotional methods like social media, Guest posts, social bookmarking, blog commenting, forum profiles etc.

Guest posts, forum profiles, bookmarking are other forms of building links

But we will deal with social media.

Google doesn’t recognize backlinks from social media

Infact, links from social media are flagged as No-follow backlinks.

but how it recognizes it is the traffic visitors that proceeds from it.

If Google notices that lots of traffic visitors to your site come from social media e.g. Facebook for example.

It means that there is something special about your webpage and will definitely give it some ranking boost.

That is why webmasters include social media share buttons on thier web contents to get links from them

The images below shows share buttons with number of shares so far.

The more the number of shares to social media by the readers, the higher the traffic visitors to your site from different sources and the more Google recognizes your website.

And last but not the least

BRAND MENTIONS

Brands are highly Authoritative and Trusted sites that has gained strong reputation from Google for years.

So when you make mention of such brands and even link to it on your website, Google recognizes that and gives your website some form of credibility and worth.

And also if you can mention your brands on other sites too.

Brands doesn’t necessarily have to link to other sites or your site.

It can be unlinked or linked

It can be mentions of your brand in forums, articles, reviews or social media networks

A brand mention is as shown below;

The famous SEO expert, Neilpatel mention “Brain Dean” in one of his posts

In Conclusion,

For your website to have a successful SEO campaign aimed at achieving a higher google rankings much later,

You must combine both on-page and off-page SEO to stand a very good chance among your fellow competitors.

If done rightly, your website will come tops among others

This simple YouTube 5-minute video by jigsaw seo  gives a summary of on-page and off-page SEO below;

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Deriving our definition from the words “paid” and “Advertising”

It simply means the art of advertising or promoting your products and services by paying for it.

You see an advert space, you contact the owner and pay for it for a certain period of time, then you place your advert there.

And it operates using various channels.

Such paid channels include social media ads, banner ads, pay-per-click (PPC), Text ads etc

Lets briefly touch on these various channels

1. Banner Ads (Or Display Ads)

These types of ads are the most common

These ads are easily noticable because they stand out on webpages due to their nature; sizes and attractive graphics.

They come in 2 types; Static banners and Motion banners.

To make the most of these type of banners, its graphic design must be of high quality and  very eye-attractive

The images below explains what i meant;

Twitter is also another social site that commands a huge number of traffic visitors too on a daily basis.

You can create a twitter page, get lots of followers and post your website/products.

Or you can go for paid twitter promotional ads

These images below explains further;

2. Google Ads

They offer display and text ads associated with highly -targeted keywords.

They produce a better Return-on-investment (ROI) than other ads.

Here, Advertisers bid on their choice keywords for their clickable ads to appear on google 1st page results

A typical example of a google ads is as shown below;

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising is exactly as the name says.

You pay for every click an online visitor makes on the ad you create.

This is similar to Google ads and can also referred to as Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Most social media platforms offers PPC adverts but the most popular among them is Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

But Google ads is by far the most dominant in the PPC world because Google is the most popular and widely used search engine in the world.

Social Media Paid Advertising

It deals with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, instagram and Linkedln.

Through these social media, you can create sponsored posts and even target custom audience.

Starting with Facebook, adverts work in the display format.

You can start by clicking “Create Ad” as described in the diagram below.

You can specifically target audiences by income, interests, job positions, and anything you can think of.

Below is a cool example of how a Facebook advert looks like;

Next is Twitter

You can also create ads similar as that of Facebook.

They also allow the advertiser to create custom audience and certain certain group of people based on age, location, interest etc.

To get started, just click on the ”Ad Info” (located at the right hand side of your screen) as pointed out in the image below;

Once you click on it, just read through and follow the steps as directed.

A typical example of how a twitter ad looks like is shown below:

Lastly, we talk of YouTube.

Aside Facebook and Google, YouTube is the 2nd most used search engine worldwide.

And it is only wise to capitalize on this opportunity to invest in YouTube to leverage your business to a higher level.

To start with, you can visit https://youtube.com/ads/

Once you visit that link, you will be taken to this webpage as shown below;

We are done with this kind of marketing

but on display ads, there are marketplaces where you can have access to publishers and webmasters who offer ads spaces at a cost.

A great one is www.buysellads.com    

There, you have options of choosing any kind of advert spaces based on the website niche, banner sizes, fixed or PPC, static or animated graphic or text and so on.

Just give it a try and thank me later.

Just of recent

We treated search engine optimization and pay-per-click.

Search Engine Marketing is the combination of the two

On a broader level,

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the process of getting higher traffic visitors to a website using both organic and paid methods.

Organic method deals from SEO while Paid method deals from PPC.

SEM is when you tap into PPC and SEO to get higher traffic from search engines.

For better understanding of what SEO and PPC is all about, it is covered in this article post, just look upwards.

Everything being discussed about PPC and SEO also applies for Search Engine Marketing on a broader level

So in addition to PPC, it has to do with bidding of specific keywords.

And when someone does search query for that your keyword, your ad shows up.

The position of rankings depends on the highest bidder.

If you bid the highest, your ad appears above all others; your competitors.

The amount that you pay when someone clicks on your ad is known as cost per click (CPC)

And it is through PPC that you can get your website higher rankings within few months.

I mean, you run PPC ads in the morning,

And in the afternoon, you begin to get conversions and traffic.

Unlike SEO which will take a long time to obtain higher search rankings.

In-fact atleast 2 years most especially if the keywords you want to rank for are very competitive.

And most webmasters are attractive to SEO because its practices are FREE.

But one disadvantage of PPC is that once you stop paying for ads, your traffic stops instantly.

Unlike SEO where once you attain that higher rankings, it is traffic for life.

Rounding up,

To achieve the best results for your website,

You can combine the efforts of PPC and SEO because they both carry its own advantages.

With both, you will be hustling to get traffic visitors fast and also investing to get higher google rankings much later at the same time.

But whichever suits you, go for it.

To understand this,

What is a virus?

It is a disease that spreads easily on a very large scale from persons to persons

Now, relating it to our topic; “Viral Marketing”

It is simply the spreading of messages about products and services over channels that offer a huge opportunity of reaching out to a massive audience

Such channels are Social Media, free giveaways, ebooks, influential persons, video clips, text messages,  word-of-mouth etc.

Word-of-mouth is a traditional method of viral marketing whereby customers spreads information about products and services to fellow individuals of group.

And one way to effectively achieve this is by offering free stuffs, price discounts, rewards, palliatives, promos etc and informing your customers to spread the news about it to others so they can benefit too.

Surely, offering these things will make the customer happy and willing to spread the news round via personal contact.

Another effective channel is Social Media.

I mean facebook, twitter, youtube, instagram etc.

Due to its huge users base, over 5 billion. surely it is capable of spreading out information on a very large scale

For example, take a look at this Huawei twitter page below;

Huawei is an Info-tech company with strong influence in its niche: Information Technology with over 2.4 Million followers.

Hence, You don’t need any soothsayer to tell you that advertising your products on their platform will go viral over a large number of persons via tweets and retweets.

That is how powerful social media is.

Another one is broadcast text messages by telecom companies.

Most telecom companies command a large subscriber base of over millions.

A good example is MTN (Mobile Telecommunications) company which has a subscriber base of over 70 million persons in Nigeria.

So, passing info e.g. new product, promo, discount, freebies or anything, in form of text messages will surely go viral like wildfire.

And even non-subscribers will get news of it too and may even apply to enjoy from it..

There are other methods of viral marketing just as we have mentioned above.

But these few ones i have just described above are the most effective of them all if you want to try this out for your products or services

Note that the text messaging is sent to the subscribers via mobile devices  which lead us to the next type of internet marketing,…………..Mobile Marketing.

Mobile Marketing is the advertising process of promoting products and services via mobile devices.

Mobile devices such as smartphones, Ipads, iphones, Tablets, portable computers, portable gaming consoles and PDAs

In this type, messages are broadcasted from a mobile telecom company to its subscribers base.

Such messages can be new product awareness, promos, discount offers, updates, notifications and many more.

And they can be in form of texts, Multimedia messages (video, audio, pictures), mobile websites, throw-in-app, downloaded app, emails etc

Below shows an SMS message being received and one message opened to be read.

One great feature about mobile marketing is that the percentage open rate  is very high because their receiving devices are portable and easy to carry where ever they go and they can assess such messages from any location they are.

For example, if a text message pimps into my mobile phone, i don’t need to wait till i get home or office to read it.

I can assess the message right on the spot and anywhere at anytime.

This is one distinguishing factor about mobile marketing.

Aside that, another great factor is that due to its easy portability, accessibility, mobility and easy-to-read, its users keeps increasing and increasing on a daily basis.

For example, using USA as a case study.

We can see that mobile smartphone subscribers base increases on a regular basis, from year 2010 to 2021

Generally, as at 2017, about 5 billion uses mobile phones, that is 66% of the world population and the numbers ever increasing.

So it will be great to invest in mobile technology to advertise your products and skyrocket your sales and revenue.

Though it might be costly, depending

But it is worth it.

First thing first: Who is an influencer?

An influencer is anything that has a very strong dominance in his field of study in terms of numbers or expertise knowledge.

Such thing can be a person or company or anything at all.

Take a look at the following examples below;

The first is the very popular brain dean, an SEO expert who is very knowledgeable in the world of SEO and link building.

And as you can see, he has a large number of followers as a result.

As you can see, they are very strong authority in their own niche and have the ability to make adverts sell out very well.

So you can make use of this opportunity by reaching out to them.

And if they obliged for a fee, great for you.

Through them, you can get traffic, sales and make some revenue.

And the last but not the least…………

Website blog is one of the oldest form of marketing that have existed before other forms were borne out.

They offer a wide variety of ways that one can advertise one’s products and services right inside the blog.

But before we proceed,

What is Blog Marketing?

Blog Marketing is the process of advertising your website, products or services using a blog.

Such adverts can be in form of banner ads, sponsored posts, text ads, Article write-ups etc.

And the real advert itself can be video, text, audio and graphics.

Example below shows the types of advertising that we can run on blogs;

These 4 images above shows how you can utilize blogs to do adverts in different ways

There are several other ways too but these are the popular ones for now.

You can also create a blog (either by yourself or by web designers), advertise your products and services on it and promote your website across the globe online.

This is what blog marketing is all about

But there is a saying that goes thus “Out of Mind is out of Sight”

One thing is to develop a blog for your business, another thing is for people to see it.

You MUST carry out different free and paid promotional strategies (depending on your budget) to increase your search engine rankings and boost online visibility.

This is where Search Engine Marketing (SEM) comes into play but that is a broad topic on its own

But there exist a very UNIQUE advantage of blog marketing;

Direct Interaction and Customer Feedback

While featuring your products, you can communicate with your customers anytime to hear criticisms, respond to comments, answer questions and take recommendations

And this can be done through 2 ways , one of which is an online chat application platform as shown below.

From the 2 platforms above (Online Chat and Comment Section), It offers the readers and online visitors that opportunity to drop comments, ask questions, make recommendations and suggestions and clear any doubts

And by responding, the marketer can create a very strong connection with his readers/visitors/customers.

Thus building a VERY STRONG RELATIONSHIP with them which is KEY

That will be all for now.

“Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.”

PLEASE NOTE: Internet Marketing is NOT a Get-Quick-Rich Syndrome. Internet millionaires didn’t just start today or few months ago. It takes lots of time (even years), hardwork and perseverance for them to hit the sky-top

One great advantage about internet marketing is that it offers a marketer/business owner the varieties of marketing that one can choose from depending on his suitability and budget

And for the Reader/online visitors, he can access information about any products and services from the comfort of his bedroom anytime, anywhere

Finally,

Now,
Which of these types of internet marketing are you planning to implement?
OR
Do you find this Article very interesting and highly educative and informative?
OR
Do you have any comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations, comments etc
OR
Anything at all?

Feel free to drop them below.

I am 100% available to response to your comments one-by-one.

Thanks for your time, patience, endurance, attention.

Till I see you again in my next post, I remain your friendly neighborhood business online tutor.

Bye for now.

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