Internet Marketing Essentials

One could easily argue that 15-20 years ago the term “Internet marketing” didn’t exist. In fact, 12 years ago, people spent half as much as time online as they do today! This is because the advancements of technology have made communication, networking, and even shopping much more efficient in terms of time, money expenditure, convenience, and more. However, the principles of online marketing when compared to in-person marketing are much the same.

No matter what medium one is using to advertise, make connections, and communicate, a good marketer understands the importance of reaching out to the audience and always taking context into account.

With that said, becoming fluent in the new, confusing world of Internet marketing has become a critical skill that modern businesses and companies have to hone in order to remain successful. It sounds scary, but the truth is that connecting with potential clients, current clients, rival companies, partner networks, and everyone in between requires the mastery of all sorts of digital media channels.

When marketing online, there are certain tactics and strategies a smart digital marketer should keep in mind, but luckily, one is always armed with a variety of digital assets and types of media to take advantage of.

Not sure what “Internet marketing” even means? Aside from the typical text-based blog posts and websites that probably first come to mind, informative graphics and easy-to-read diagrams will play a huge role in the development of your Internet marketing skills, as well as brochures, lookbooks, and other visuals.

Some of the visual elements can include interactive charts and animations to help the user feel more involved in addition to the specific graphics of one’s particular brand: a color scheme, a creative logo, or even a trademarked font might be just what you need to help your company stand out.

Additionally, you have at your disposal a variety of social media channels and accounts that you can use to interact with your audience. Every social media channel – Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and more – attracts a slightly different demographic of viewers, so it’s prudent to get familiar with as many of them as you can!

Before we get into different kinds of online marketing, you should learn about one key skill: Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. This involves tailoring the content of your websites, keywords, HTML tags, titles, and subtitles so that it ranks higher in search engine result pages.

This practice is done to make sure that your website is likely to get more views than competitors. SEO is widely implemented by online creators in order to rank as high as possible, so it’s become an absolutely crucial technique to master yourself if you hope to stand out. You need to toe the line between stuffing articles and blog posts full of senseless buzzwords and making sure that your content is relevant.

Aside from SEO, there are plenty of strategic marketing tactics you should familiarize yourself with to help take your online marketing presence to the next level. Social media marketing refers to driving traffic towards your business using the newest social media channels such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and more.

“Pay-per-click” can refer to a few different things: either a third party company pays you to display ads on your website, or you pay a third party to display your ad on their media, and they make money every time a viewer clicks on your advertisement. Similarly, affiliate marketing refers to a trade of commissions for promoting brands on your website (or you’ll pay them for a similar service).

As you might be able to guess, the benefits of Internet marketing can only truly come about after bringing as much traffic to website as possible. To help with this, there are several different kinds of digital analytic widgets and other programs at your disposal to track the amount of people that visit your homepage, which pages are visited most often, and on what kind of devices they view your website and other accounts from.

These kinds of tools will help you get a better idea of which areas of your business to prioritize. Additionally, if you post a view counter or something similar on your website, users will realize that they’re not alone in visiting your website, which will subconsciously reinforce the idea that your website is highly reputable and reliable.

Since Internet marketing is so new and exciting, you might be wondering if there are any downsides to it as there are with other business techniques that sound too good to be true! For instance, you may be asking yourself how long it may take to see results.

The truth is that this can vary widely depending on how many different tactics you implement and the different ways you implement them. But there’s no need to be discouraged – after you spend time identifying the age, demographics, and needs of your audience, you’ll be able to tailor content especially for them.

With that done, you’re most likely to start seeing a strong positive result well within six months, especially if you’re using paid advertising tactics.
If you’re wondering about the budget, it might take little convincing to assure you that business ventures usually require a down payment or forward investment before it starts paying for itself.

Therefore, putting down money up front usually only becomes a problem if you are not careful with your outbound marketing tactics such as banners and advertisements that you’re paying other companies to host. Luckily, practicing good SEO technique, social media advertisements, and of course, creation of quality content that your audience wants to see are skills that are totally free to use!

Internet marketing can be overwhelming to learn about at first, but all it takes is some time to get used to it.

If you ever got lost, it’s just about communication with your clients. You want to make sure you are listening to what your audience is telling you – not with their words, but with their page views, ratings, rankings, and more. You never know how Internet marketing can help kick-start your company. The Web Squad is Las Vegas’ best internet marketing company. We work with everyone from mom and pop business to International Casinos. We are Las Vegas Internet Marketing geniuses. I know that sounds pretty lofty but the fact is we have the data to prove it.