MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE

Marketing is defined as “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising”. Everything you do to promote your business, from handing out a business card to posting information about your latest sale on Facebook, is marketing.

There are a lot of different ways to market your business. Nearly all of these types fall under the two main styles of marketing. The two main styles of marketing your business is Traditional and Digital marketing. Let’s have a look at these different styles.

First off, there’s traditional marketing. Traditional marketing includes pretty much everything a business would have done to promote their business before the internet popped up and stood the marketing world on its head.

Traditional marketing still has a big place in business today, especially for large businesses, though gone are the days when you had to rely on these forms of marketing to bring your business success. Some examples of traditional marketing would be:

• Print Media - Advertising in Phone Books, Magazines, Newspapers, “Junk Mail”, etc.
  
• Television & Radio Advertising
  
• Billboard Advertising
  
• Telemarketing
  

Essentially, any way that you could have marketed your business in the early 1990’s, before the internet was widespread, would fall under this traditional style of marketing.

Digital marketing is a different sort of beast than its predecessor. People browsing the internet on their phones and computers do not want to feel like they’re reading an ad and they definitely do not want an ad to interrupt whatever it is they are trying to do online.

This doesn’t mean that we need to just skip out on our online marketing efforts, it means that we have to be smart about how we go about it. Some examples of digital marketing would be:

• Search Engine Marketing (“SEM”) - Advertising on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
  
• Social Media Marketing - Advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, etc.
  
• Email Marketing - Digital equivalent to traditional junk mail marketing but much cheaper.
  
• Influencer Marketing - Having popular online figures use and talk about your product.
  
• Video Marketing - Everyone wants to have the next viral video. These can be seen by millions.
  
• Podcasting - Audio and/or Video “shows” that people record and make themselves.
  

The list just goes on and on. New ways of marketing your product or service online are being conceived all the time. You do not have to do all of these things in order for your business to successfully benefit from digital marketing.

The most successful adverts are the ones that don’t look or feel like an advert at all. These will provide something of value to the viewer. Also, value does not have to mean monetary value.

Entertainment is a great thing to offer your viewers. Give them information they’re looking for. If you can give your viewers a reason as to want to view your advert, then you’re doing it right.

An important tip to remember though, any type of marketing will cost you time, money or both. This is why you need to carefully plan ahead and develop a marketing strategy.

Ok, time for good news / bad news. Let’s do the bad news first, it’s always the hardest.

Your viewers are used to people trying to “sell” them and are always suspicious. If they suspect that your “entertaining” video is nothing more than an advert, they will down vote it to the pits of hell never to be seen again, just like anyone on the 4th or 5th page of a Google search.

Now, time for the good news. Marketing, like a lot of things in life, is a skill that you can develop by doing it more and trying new things to see what works best. Run a Facebook ad and analyze its performance. Look for places to improve it by maybe targeting different areas or different demographics.

You can also take classes on digital marketing. I would suggest Udacity’s Digital Marketing Nanodegree Program , It’s a 3-6 month program to help you learn about digital marketing. I’ve taken it myself as a continuing education project and it will give you a good basic understanding of how things work.

Your other option, if it’s not a good time to spend a lot of money and time taking classes to learn this world of digital marketing, is to hire an internal marketing team.

If, however, you’re a small business or don’t want to hire your own internal marketing team, you could always partner with professionals who specialize in digital marketing to help your business grow.

If you would like to set up a time to chat and see if we’re a good fit for your business, please reach out to use via our contact page.