Pay for ads. Write more articles. Create more stories. Facebook reach is dismal. Wait, isn’t email dead? Should I be on Tik Tok?

Many of today’s business owners are at a loss when it comes to marketing, and understandably so. We live in a time where things are constantly changing, primarily fueled by innovations in technology. Customers’ changing demands and expectations mean change is needed in business. The way we communicate, connect and share information has changed. Just about everything we do, from work to play to everything in between, is now done online. As a company owner, it’s important to keep up, and marketing requires you to understand the psychology of customers and how this is constantly changing over time. Currently, here are three of the best ways to market a business online.

The Best Online Marketing Methods for Modern Business

Content Marketing

Content marketing works because it’s subtle, and provides something to an audience. Instead of simply being an ad for a product, content marketing works by providing knowledge, humor or wit on the topic and linking to other sources purely as additional information. The audience is free to click on this if they want to find out more, rather than having ‘buy our stuff’ shoved in their face, which older methods like banner ads can do.

Nobody likes companies that broadcast “buy my stuff” all day.

On top of this, research shows that many of us have developed ‘banner blindness’ where we stop noticing ads on the page. Along with this, the use of ad-blocking software is common these days, and simply blocks the marketing efforts of many businesses.

When you’re creating the content for your content marketing campaigns, you should also use SEO and add long-tail keywords, which will give your site a boost in the search engine listings too. Then of course, guest posting on high authority sites will also help you to increase your reach.

When you round this your efforts with a high-quality backlink strategy to boost your ranking on the search engines, your content marketing efforts will result in increased exposure for your business.

[Tweet “Does anyone even look at banner ads on websites anymore??”]

Email Marketing

Email marketing has a bit of a bad name due to companies doing it wrong and simply resorting to spamming and buying email lists. However, it can definitely be a part of an effective strategy if you go about it the right way. Email enables you to reach a broad audience but keeps your costs down. Use an email tool and experiment with things like different subject lines, times of day and days of the week to work out which get the highest responses and click rates.

Email marketing is not as sexy a marketing strategy as social media, but it works. When developing your emails, you can have fun with it. From emojis to gifs, you can include the latest technology into your emails to make them visually appealing. This, combined with personalized messaging and dynamic content, will ensure your email campaigns aren’t stale at all. In fact there are any companies who are thriving from their email marketing efforts.

Email marketing is something that many businesses take for granted, and it shows in their low open rates and click through rates. If you’re experiencing lower-than-average results, consider performing an audit of your email efforts from this past year.

• • How any emails did you send this year
  • Do your emails visually look the same as they did 3 years ago?
  • How consistent are your emails? Are you only sending them when you have something for sale, or are you providing value on a regular basis?
  • Are the email offers the same offers you’re posting on social media? If so, you aren’t providing enough of a reason for me to optin to your email at all.

These are just a few of the things you can review today, to get started on revamping your email marketing campaigns.

[Tweet “Email marketing is something that many businesses take for granted, and it shows in their low open rates and click through rates.”]

Social Media Marketing

Many companies mistakenly use social media as a platform to hard sell on. It’s important to know that it doesn’t work like this. Research has shown that social sites simply aren’t people’s preferred ways to buy. Social media should be used instead for increasing brand awareness, building buzz around your company and connecting with your audience. It’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t sell on social media, but spamming links and harassing your followers for sales isn’t going to have the desired effect. All that will do is make your business look spammy, and put people off.

Once you get over your need to hard sell, social media marketing comes down to platform, content, and engagement. Instead of trying to be everywhere and be all things to everyone, a business must first find where their customers are talking about the types of products and services they offer. Next, look at the content that gets the most engagement on those platforms – is it text, video, memes, infographics, a combo of the above? Can you add to the conversation, or should you create content in a different format in a more compelling way?

When you consistently review your social media efforts, you can experiment to see what gets the most engagement, and clicks. Don’t be afraid to try out new ideas either. Just because something is working for one brand doesn’t mean you have to stick to that same format. This is part of the fun with social media – you are free to experiment to find what your audience likes and responds to. Just be sure to review your analytics to make informed decisions.

[Tweet “Social media should be used for increasing brand awareness, building buzz around your company and connecting with your audience.”]

Bottom Line

There are so many online marketing methods available today; you an’t possibly use them all. Marketing is complex, and isn’t something you can just guess at. If you don’t fully understand how specific techniques work and how marketing in general should be done then it’s important that you don’t try and guess at it. Poorly executed efforts will almost certainly hinder your business rather than help it, it could even lead to being penalized or banned by search engines. If you’re not sure, hire a professional or a marketing agency to run things for you.

Ciao,
Miss Kemya