Top 10 online marketing strategies

Every business that plans to go digital should deploy a strenuous effort in developing the right online marketing strategy which attracts more number of target audience. Since millions of potential buyers actively engage in multiple online marketing platforms like websites, apps, blogs, social media etc luring a fraction of its can amplify your conversion. Campaign integration is another factor that forces companies to bundle multiple marketing channels for advancements. Also adding more purchase points increases the probability of conversion. We live in an ecosystem where attention is money.

Research carried out by smartinsights.com clearly shows that only 38 % of business have an integrated digital marketing strategy, followed with 16% of business have their strategy documented whereas 46% of business does not have any strategy at all. The above stats clearly shows that almost fifty percentage of companies are not implementing any strategies to ameliorate their online market presence, which can severely affect their digital campaigns.

Success depends on implementing an effective plan of action over a course of period. Different campaigns are divergent in nature, based on the nature of product/ services you offer the strategies has to be diversified.

1. Selecting the Right Web Design : A well-designed website tends to increase the confidence of customers and reflects credibility of an entity. Web sites have ultimately become one of the single corridors through which customers will come to know about your business. A well designed website elevates the success of conversion. People judge a book by its cover, keep that in mind while you plan your website development. A great website is a strategy that comprises of marketing, user experience optimization, branding, etc. Even your site template colour can highlight or evoke a sensible attitude among users, For eg an eco-friendly website with bright red colour instead of green confuses the target audience. Make your website simple, interesting and easy to navigate. If your customer doesn’t know where to go and how to proceed, the chances are high that you may lose him. Customers respond to sites that loads fast, your target audience makes decisions at a fraction of seconds. Either it’s you or your competitor’s website that responds fast. Our landing pages should be optimized in a way that its should persuade your target audience in taking your service, one best way is by accentuating benefits rather than pasting features. 
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) : Search engine optimization is the process through which your website content is made to rank high for a specific keyword. SEO has become one of the most effective marketing tools, that it helps in generating organic traffic to your website. It helps in customizing your website in a way that your webpage’s become more user-friendly. More the user-friendly your website, more the chances your web page will rank first in SERP. A good SEO is all about creating interesting, engaging content that adds unique value to your customer, which people prefer sharing. Building a search engine optimization strategy primarily consists of selecting the right keywords and developing content around it. Speak to your target audience in their language, It helps to boost conversion.

• Give importance to meta description - Even though spiders stop crawling through meta description, these descriptions are of high importance when users starts to read and select the link in SERP. A well structured meta description can attract a user’s attention.
• Backlinks - It’s the quality of backlinks that are more important than the quantity. It is better to get one relevant backlink from an authoritative website than hundred links from a low quality site. Focus on obtaining links from relevant industry, product or service.
• Keyword - Make sure that the keyword for which you are optimizing the page appears on the domain URL. Never ever encourage yourself with keyword stuffing.

3)    Content Marketing : Content marketing is a part of SEO. Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing relevant and informative content consistently that adds unique value to your customer. Content marketing is an inbound marketing technique which helps to drive more number of target audience to your website. Content usually refers to different forms of information, it can be Infographics, Videos, Podcasts, Video games etc. Publishing guest posts in niche blogs is also an effective online marketing strategy to drive traffic to your website.

• Infographics - Information in the form of graphical representation. Breakdown an article you have written, develop a plan on how to proceed. Decide where it’s an infographic on depicting statistics or explaining a procedure etc. Always make sure that the information you provide will be in layman’s language and easy for people to derive meaning out of it.
• Videos - Videos gets more share in social medias and other online platforms than text based articles. With the same amount of time invested one gets more information from a video than compared to same amount of time invested reading. It takes less effort to listen than to read and decipher information. This makes videos as most preferred channel to circulate information. With the advent of technology, developing a video has become cheaper. Which sounds a good news.

4)  Social Media Marketing : SMM is one affordable marketing channel through which you can reach a wide spectrum of audience. According to Social media examiner (media company founded by Michael Stelzner), 97% of marketers prefer participating in social media in order to leverage more leads and conversion. This channel has high promise and potential in positioning your company among the target audience. A report published by Texas Tech University coined that brands that maintain a higher social media presence are more inclined in generating loyal customers. Another company Convince & Convert (Strategic advisor ) found that 53% of people that follows companies in social media are more loyal to the brand. Paid advertising on social media also helps in creating prospects/ leads and stimulate conversions. Social medias are the right platform that helps an entity to send information to a larger group, communities etc. If you are lucky on viral video will bring a chunk of traffic to you.

5)   Email Marketing : If SMM is an affordable marketing channel then email marketing is the cheapest way you can reach out to your target audience and persuade into conversion, it is economic and cost effective.Radicati group ( analytics firm) has conducted a research and found that around 190 billion emails are sent everyday, out of it 109 are business emails. Its is simple and equally adaptable to any businesses. The effectiveness of email often depends on the way it is structured and the kind of message you intent in delivering. It is crucial to send a personalized email than a general blast. According to Adestra (email service provider), a customized email with the recipient's name on the subject line increases the clickable chance by 22%. Eg “Thankyou John for being part of Kamkash”. A joint study by Forrester Research and Shop.org clearly depicted that majority fo the US firms are using emails as an online marketing strategy for customer acquisition.

6)   Get Endorsed by a Local Celebrity : Every company wants to get endorsed by a global celebrity, and the only hindrance is the budget. If your business is focused on local audience, then why not try a local hero. For eg : A local environmentalist endorsing your product as an eco-friendly one. Her the benefits are multiple, one you are positioning yourself as an entity that supported a common cause. Say the celebrity shares an article picturing him endorsing your product in other eco- friendly sites. Which will in-turn drive attention towards your brand.

7)   Affiliate Marketing : Affiliate marketing is also known as referral marketing. Let’s make it simple imagine that you own a restaurant and your friend referred few of his friends to your business. Here because of your friend you got a good deal, in response you offer your friend 15$ so here your friend is the affiliate. Here the beauty is that you don’t need to invest capital, churning a physical product of your own. You can be an authorized affiliate of someone and sell their products at the same time earning a commission of your own. When you do it on a business intent, the business model will be commissioned based.

8)  Pay Per Click (PPC) : PPC is also known as Cost Per Click. It is an online marketing strategy to attract direct traffic to your website landing page. PPC and display ads are different, PPC ads are related to ads that pop up on when you search for a keyword in search engine. Whereas display ads are the ones you see mainly on websites. Pay per click is most effective when you need a lot of instant traffic to your website. In PPC you bid for keywords, so that when a search is triggered with the keyword your ad is displayed. Pay per click advertising is costly in nature, If you bid for a wrong keyword it can cost you a fortune.

9)  Online Press Releases : Press releases have to be pithy and powerful. Press release highlighting industry related updates can drag a lot of traffic to your website. Sensitive information that can educate people about how an update could possibly affect them, What remedial measures they can implement to reduce the impact etc will be valued and shared by the public. Most press releases carry an affirming quote, usually, comes from the top management hierarchy. Which directly carries a direct statement in it. Things to remember while designing a press release, use simple and powerful words, make it short and interesting, add an image that tells the story, stick to the fact, a striking header, info about the author.

10)  App Marketing : Every company is coming up with an app of their own, It helps in retaining customers and differentiates them in the digital platform by providing focused experience. Search engines are already responding to this changing trend, For eg : Google has seen the future opportunity that they developed a feature of their own “app streaming” which allows users to access unique app functionality within the search result.

Deciding on what online marketing strategies are best suited for your business and creating a business plan around it will increase the conversion rate. Consider using multiple channels for driving and promoting your product/ service. You should create a detailed plan where all the strategies are aligned in meeting the final objective.