Internet marketing can bring billions in profits to a company. I tell you how it works and what skills are needed to start in the industry.
Internet marketing is one of the most popular areas of marketing. Most companies promote their products on the Internet in one way or another - creating advertisements, creating communities on social networks or selling products on marketplaces.
What is internet marketing
Internet marketing is the promotion of goods and services on the Internet. The goal of internet marketing is to understand what consumers want and how to meet their needs and sell a product to them in order to make a profit.
Internet marketing is a type of marketing. Marketing is conducted both online and offline, and Internet marketing only covers a company's activities on the Internet.
There are many tools and directions of internet marketing. Online marketing may include, for example, an advertising campaign on Facebook, registering on Google Maps and publishing an article on your blog. Below we will talk more about the main tools of online marketing.
It can be said that everyone needs internet marketing. For many companies, the Internet is their main source of customers, and some companies conduct business exclusively online.
Why do companies need internet marketing?
The global goal of internet marketing is to bring as much profit as possible to the company. If a company doesn't engage in internet marketing, it earns much less than it could.
In practice, the global goal of Internet marketing corresponds to two large tasks.
The first is direct sales and lead generation. This direction is called performance marketing. Its aim is to quickly improve the company's financial results: selling as many goods or services as possible here and now. To this end, companies, for example, attract new customers, offer goods and services to loyal customers, and increase the average bill.
The second one is working on the brand. This direction is called brand marketing. Brand marketing aims to make people aware of a brand and feel good about it. This indirectly affects sales - the more people know about a brand and the more they trust it, the more often they buy products of that brand. It turns out that brand marketing also affects a company's financial results - but in a different way and in the long term.
What does internet marketing include: main stages
To achieve its goals, internet marketing solves various problems. There are different stages in marketing theory, but in simple terms they look like this:
- Test. At this stage, they research the competition, market, product, target group - everything that is important for marketing. This is necessary to understand what position the company occupies in the market and what opportunities it has.
- Developing a strategy. At this stage, the company's goals and ways of achieving them are established. The strategy describes internet marketing tools and how to use them.
- Implementation. This is the implementation of all planned works. For example, setting up advertising campaigns, maintaining pages on social networks, organizing events and much more.
- Control. It is an assessment of the effectiveness of a marketing strategy. At this stage, they analyze whether it is possible to achieve the set goals, and if something goes wrong, they correct the plans or work progress.
All these stages are cyclical - they are constantly repeated.
What areas distinguish internet marketing?
Internet marketing areas are divided into groups of tools that are used to achieve goals. There are many of them. Let's talk about the five most commonly used types of tools.
Contextual advertising. These are advertisements in search engines and advertising networks belonging to these systems. It is displayed in response to a user request. For example, an ad for an online store selling smartphones will be displayed to someone who entered the query "Iphone 15 Pro" in the Google search bar.
Contextual advertising on Google is called one of the main online marketing channels. The purpose of placing contextual advertising is to sell goods or services. There are companies that attract customers solely through contextual advertising.
Targeted advertising. This is the name of advertising in social networks - ads displayed to people who meet the necessary criteria. For example, the ad is only shown to men under 25 who are studying at university.
Targeted advertising is also one of the main online marketing channels. It is often used for sales, but you can also run ads to increase brand awareness and loyalty.
SEO. Search engine optimization - optimization for search engines. This is a whole series of works aimed at improving individual pages of the website and the resource as a whole. SEO brings websites to the top of search results, which means they receive free traffic.
SEO is another popular internet marketing tool. It allows you to attract visitors to your website at a much lower cost than advertising. There are companies that derive most of their sales from SEO and use almost no advertising.
SMM. SMM stands for Social Media Marketing - Social Media Marketing. Companies create pages on social networks and cooperate with the target group there - they attract subscribers, tell them about the product and launch extensive advertising.
The main goal of SMM is to attract customers from Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and other platforms. But social media marketing also serves to improve a company's reputation, increase its awareness and loyalty to it - all of which affects sales.
Content marketing. It's promotion through content. Content formats can vary – articles, checklists, how-tos, collections, podcasts, videos and more. They are published on the company's website - e.g. on a blog - and on external platforms - e.g. social networks, media and specialized resources.
Content marketing doesn't generate sales in the same way as contextual or targeted advertising. Its goal is to build or increase trust in the company. With the help of useful content, the company shows its knowledge, users begin to trust it, which means that they are more likely to buy its products or services.
There are a huge number of other areas of internet marketing - for example, email marketing, CRM marketing, chatbots, influencer marketing, video advertising.
In internet marketing, several tools are often used at the same time. For example, a company may engage in SEO, email campaigns, blogging, and run contextual advertising. To control all promotion channels, companies hire internet marketers.
Who is a digital marketer
An internet marketer is a specialist responsible for promoting goods and services on the Internet. He develops the company's marketing strategy and implements it.
The tasks of an internet marketer largely depend on what promotional tools the company uses, what goals it wants to achieve and what its marketing budget is. For example, in some companies, an internet marketer can be called a person who runs ads on Google, manages Facebook pages and plants plants.
In other companies, the online marketer may be the person in charge of marketing.
Here are his typical tasks:
- market, competition and target group analysis;
- preparing a marketing strategy and a marketing plan;
- budgeting - division of budget funds for the use of various tools;
- cooperation with contractors - setting tasks and monitoring implementation;
- analysis of results and preparation of reports.
Such an internet marketer does not create advertisements and does not maintain pages on social networks. He is a strategist who determines how internet marketing should work.
There are also marketers who specialize in one area of internet marketing. For example, an e-mail marketer deals exclusively with e-mail campaigns: he collects contact databases, builds e-mail chains and analyzes the results. The influencer marketer is only responsible for cooperation with opinion leaders - searching for bloggers, thinking about the advertising strategy and negotiating cooperation.
What skills does an internet marketer need?
Skills depend on the online marketer's specialization and the tools he or she works with. Let's take a look at the skills that employers most often need.
Understand how marketing works. For example, you need to understand how users make purchasing decisions, what is influenced by the product price, and what effects can be expected when using various promotion channels. Without this knowledge, an internet marketer will not be able to build a sales funnel - a path for a potential customer to make a purchase.
Ability to use various internet marketing tools. Most often, employers expect that an internet marketer knows how to set up contextual advertising on Google, understands SMM, SEO and setting up targeted advertising.
Understand analytics. Online marketers are expected to have internet analytics skills - examining the behavior of website users. Employers often indicate knowledge of Google Analytics as one of the main requirements for candidates.
Employers also often expect an internet marketer to have the ability to conduct market research and manage projects, budgets and teams.
The most important information about internet marketing in 3 points
1. Internet marketing is the promotion of goods and services on the Internet. Its main goal is to bring the company as much profit as possible. Internet marketing is needed by most companies, for many it is the only way to attract customers.
2. Internet marketing has many areas. The most popular are contextual and targeted advertising, SEO, SMM and content marketing. Companies also use email newsletters, chatbots, influencer marketing and many other tools.
3. An internet marketer is responsible for internet marketing in companies. He can set the advertisement himself or manage processes: analyze data and research, develop strategies, assign tasks to contractors, and so on.
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