Today, about 4.66 billion people use the Internet around the world. They find information, shop online, book hotels, and much more. Another way to use the Internet tools is to promote your business.
So, imagine that you are the owner of a car rental business. With the Internet, you can talk, for example, about how good it is to rent a car for travel, or how to find the cheapest Alamo car rental locations. How to do it?
Many marketing tools allow you to promote your business or services. Check how to advertise on the Internet, what Internet advertising methods exist, and which ones are suitable for you…
Contextual advertising
Contextual advertising is ads with information about a product or service that you see on Google search results pages, on individual search engine services, and on partner websites.
How does it work?
Advertisements appear according to your most frequent search queries. They are highly efficient, as the user sees them at the right time and in the right place. In addition, such advertising is available only to those who are already entering or have entered similar search queries.
Contextual advertising will suit those who sell goods or services online. Therefore, find out if people are looking for your product or service on the Internet and what search queries they enter. This will help you understand whether you should run contextual advertising. Also, decide if you are willing to pay more per click than your competitors. If not, your ad will rank too low in the SERPs.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a set of internal and external optimization techniques that allow a website to rank higher in search results.
How does it work?
You analyze what users search on the Internet and optimize relevant content for these queries. Then, you add relevant keywords and build an SEO strategy, etc. SEO is suitable for promoting a new product and testing sales channels. Also, this is a great promotion tool if you want to invest in the further development of an existing product. However, SEO is not the best option if your main source of income is social media and you don’t want to spend a lot of time developing a website.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the creation and dissemination of useful information in order to attract the target audience. You write content, develop guides, or record podcasts that your potential customers might be interested in.
How does it work?
You create some helpful material, publish it on your blog, or arrange for publication in a popular profile or channel. This tool rarely leads to sales, as it rather works for your recognition, builds user trust, and increases demand.
Content marketing is suitable for those who can wait. This method of promotion doesn’t give quick results but helps to gain customer confidence and increase their loyalty. You may not be able to feel the return until six months later, but the customers who come to you will be truly interested in the product.
This tool works great if you need to sell complex products, shape the company’s image, or maintain the expert status. Its main tasks are to retain customers and increase their loyalty.
Social Media Marketing
SMM is the promotion of a product on social networks by posting entertaining content. You analyze your audience and, based on this, select social networks. Then, you develop a content plan and start publishing posts, sharing stories, and responding to comments.
Like content marketing, SMM helps to confirm your expert status and increase audience loyalty and trust. This allows you to turn subscribers into customers in the long run.
How does it work?
A person watches your content on social media every day. As a result, it forms an emotional connection and encourages him to make a purchase. SMM is a universal promotion method that suits everyone. Fashion, beauty, art, education, food, travel – you can advertise any niche through social media.
SMM is suitable even for B2B companies. After all, potential customers are more likely to choose a supplier who has an account on social networks, talks about its activities, and shares reviews about its product.
Targeted advertising
Targeted ads are the ads you see on social media. Such advertising focuses on an audience of a specific gender, age, education, and area of interest.
How does it work?
You customize the ad according to the characteristics of the audience. A person sees it in the feed and clicks on the link if it falls into his field of interest.
If the ad leads to your account, make sure it has a beautiful visual design, informative posts, and active followers. In this case, the likelihood of a purchase is higher. If the ad leads to a website, its description must not contradict advertisement information.
Targeted advertising is a universal promotion tool. It’s popular both among brands to advertise their products and private professionals to sell their services. Due to fine-tuning, it allows you to work with any audience. However, there’s one drawback – the audience of targeted advertising is less motivated to make a purchase. Yes, people come to social networks to relax and communicate, but not to learn about products and follow links to third-party resources.
Video advertising
Video advertising is the promotion of goods or services through videos. According to research, 84% of marketers say that video has helped them increase website traffic and sales. Therefore, many experts consider video advertising one of the most promising areas of Internet marketing.
How does it work?
Video advertising allows you to reach a big audience, form an emotional connection with your brand and increase engagement. You can shoot humorous videos that will rank well on social networks and thus bring in new subscribers and customers. On the other hand, useful videos will help you talk about the product or service features, remove objections and increase demand. Video advertising is a great way to promote online stores, cosmetics and clothing brands, and service providers: from beauty masters to IT specialists.
Today, Internet marketing offers multiple choices of tools to promote your products and services. You can run ads even with a small budget and without third-party specialists. However, it’s important to set goals correctly, prioritize tasks, and pay attention to analytics to make it effective!
