Web Design 101: Knowing the Advantages of Online Marketing

In 1991, the first ever website went live. Today, in 2018, there are over 1.5 billion websites. Just under 200 million of these websites are active.

A website is one of the first ways a potential customer will interact with your business. If you’re wondering how to expand your reach, you should consider the opportunities of online marketing.

With online marketing, you can engage with individuals all over the globe and spread your brand. Want to learn more? Read on to learn about the advantages of online marketing for your business.

What Is Online Marketing?

Online marketing is when you use strategies to promote your business on the internet. With online marketing, you build your presence as a business. The most basic method of online marketing is by building a website.

Other strategies include creating marketing content such as blogs, webinars, or case studies. Another method is online advertising.

What Are the Advantages of Online Marketing?

There are currently over 3 billion people online. That’s over half of the world’s population, and that number went up seven-fold compared to 738 million people online in 2000.

The increased growth in internet connectivity is largely due to mobile use. In fact, 69% of the world had 3G broadband coverage in 2015.

As a business, you need to leverage this massive customer base and maintain a presence online where you can interact and engage with users.

Read on to learn about the many benefits of digital marketing.

People Are Finding What They Need Online

According to research, 81% of shoppers research online before they buy a product. Furthermore, there are over 3.5 billion Google searches every day and 1.2 trillion searches on Google every year.

Most consumers are using the internet to aid their purchasing decisions. If you don’t have a presence online, they won’t be finding your products or services. They won’t be reading reviews about your services, and they won’t have a way to browse your product listings.

Target Your Customers

One main advantage of online marketing compared to traditional marketing is you can effectively target your audience.

You can target your audience based on their interests through keyword research. For example, if you run a women’s dress boutique, you can target women interested in fashion or party dresses.

You can narrow your audience to focus on location, age, sex, and other key demographics. With online advertising, you can even choose the time of day you want to run your ads. For example, if you own a breakfast diner, you can target an online ad to run during your business hours.

Your Competition is Online

If you’re not online, users will find your competition instead.

For example, think about how customers would choose between two electricians. One electrician doesn’t have a website. Another electrician has a website and highly-rated reviews on Yelp and Google.

People would be more inclined to choose the electrician with the website and reviews. In fact, 84% of people say they trust online reviews just as much as a friend’s recommendation.

If you’re an electrical contractor, you can learn more about the benefits of a website and online marketing.

Less Costly

When comparing traditional marketing to digital marketing, digital marketing is less expensive.

With online advertising such as Google pay per click ads, you can set your own budget. You set your daily budget and your maximum monthly budget.

Also, with pay per click ads, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. If no one clicks on your ad, you don’t have to spend anything. But, if you run a television advertisement, you pay the same amount regardless of the number of people who watch your ad.

You don’t need to necessarily spend money to build a presence online. You can send out email newsletters.

Think about how much cheaper it is to send out an email newsletter compared to a paper flyer through the mail. With an email newsletter, you don’t need to pay for printing or postage costs.

Build a Relationship with Your Customers

With online marketing, you can build a relationship with your customers. You can do this through newsletters where you can send out information about sales or promotions. You can also send customers relevant content such as helpful blogs and how-to articles.

For example, if you’re a coffee shop you can send out a newsletter with an article about how to brew the perfect cup of coffee. You can also send out a quiz to determine what new roast a person can try.

Another way you can directly interact with customers is through social media. By creating business profiles on key social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, you can reach potentially millions of consumers online.

Measurable Results

One of the most convenient aspects of online marketing is that results are measurable.

If you send out a newsletter, you can see how many users opened your email. You can also see how many people clicked on links in your email and how many unsubscribed.

For online ads, you can measure metrics such as numbers of clicks, impressions, and conversions. You can take this information and calculate your ROI. And if you know which metrics need to increase, you can implement changes to your marketing strategies to see better results.

With your website, you can use Google Analytics and see who is visiting your website. You can see how many people visited your website, where they are located, and what your most popular pages are. If you have a blog, you can see which posts have the most traction.

With this information, you can get a better idea of your target audience.

Easier for Customers to Reach You

Another benefit of online marketing is customers can easily reach you.

If a customer has a question, they don’t need to wait until business hours. They can conveniently send a message through a contact form on your website. Or, they can contact you through social media and immediately get a response.

How to Get Started with Online Marketing

Online marketing allows you to keep a line of communication open between you and your customers.

We recommend you first build a website to showcase your products and services. Contact us for more information on how to get started.

Want to learn more about the advantages of online marketing? Read our marketing blog for tips and advice.