Having an online marketing strategy in today’s day and age is an absolute must. Any new entrepreneur or business that is trying to establish itself on the market without having a proper online marketing strategy will inevitably be eaten by those that do have one in place. It’s a simple truth of the world we live in today.

That being said, I personally know people that are still trying to grow their online business without wanting to understand the whole Search Engine Optimization thing. Moreover, I know businesses that don’t even have a website! Some people think it’s enough to have a business profile on social networks. Tell me, how credible do you consider a company today that doesn’t have its own website?

Why have an online marketing strategy?

Any person that has just begun their entrepreneurial journey will soon wonder what exactly would be the best online marketing strategy in order to grow the business as fast as possible.

If you search the internet, you will quickly find that there are plenty of people promoting the so-called “black-hat” techniques to grow your business. In other words, it’s a way to cheat the system in order to grow faster than you would otherwise.

But please, don’t be misled. Cheating will never get you anywhere. Sure, it may feel for a while like it’s so much easier this way and that you are actually doing well, but it’s a matter of time before something will backfire. By cheating, there is no guarantee that your business will exist tomorrow. Google may simply remove you from its search engine results. And if that happens, there is pretty much nothing you can do.

Did you know that when Google’s released its Penguin update in 2012, over 3% of the English language search queries were affected? Those people that were using black-hat strategies, were almost instantly put out of business. This case is a very good example of why a genuine online marketing strategy is needed. Yes, it may be harder to grow this way, but at least you can sleep peacefully in the night, knowing that your business is operating within the guidelines.

Online marketing strategy checklist

I briefly mentioned why it makes sense to have an online marketing strategy, but let’s dive a bit deeper into what it really means to have that strategy in place.

First of all, an online marketing strategy is necessary if you want to be seen. Today, all business operations take place online. Well ok, almost all, but it’s a matter of time before they all go there.

Recommended read: How to Start a Business When You Have a Full-Time Job

And the internet, as you probably realize, has a lot of competition. In order to be seen and even stand out, you must create a presence for yourself. For this, you need to be resourceful and be able to use all tools that the web is offering you. If you don’t use these tools, your competitors will, leaving you far behind. Yes, I know, it’s a very aggressive world out there, but the fight for survival is what makes it even more fascinating!

Content creation

I am sure you have seen many company websites that have a “blog” section. The reason for this is that content creation is one of the most effective ways for people to find you.

By creating articles and posts, you are telling the search engines what your website is about. If you are a dog toy manufacturer, then you could be writing about dogs. If your company creates sports nutrition, then you should be writing about fitness and dieting.

In many cases, having a one-page website is not enough. As a matter of fact, in any business, you can stand out by creating meaningful, high-quality content. By doing this, you are able to introduce your products or services to the public in a way in which it is not possible if you have only one page of content.

Just imagine a scenario, you and your competitor both create fish oil supplements. They have only a landing page, while you have a whole blog about it. You talk about the benefits of fish oil and how it has changed your life. Guess who Google will notice and promote more? That’s right, the more content you are able to put out there, the more audience you will be able to attract.

Content marketing

Many people make the mistake of creating content, while completely forgetting about its marketing. This is very common.

Yes, content creation is crucial, but if your website/blog is still new, chances are that no one will see it. For this very reason, you should be doing the following:

Sharing your content on various social media

Answering online people’s questions related to your product or service and linking back to your website

Guest blogging

Cross promoting and cooperating with other companies/blogs

Using paid advertisements

Social media

Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. Depending on your business, you should be creating content for either some social networks or as many as possible.

Social networks are where people spend half of their life. I know, it’s sad, but it’s true. As an entrepreneur though, you shouldn’t be thinking about whether it is a bad or a good thing, but instead, you should be thinking how you can use it for your benefit.

There are millions of people every day that visit Facebook (ranking #3 website globally) and YouTube (ranking #2 website globally). Therefore, not leveraging these platforms would probably be one of the silliest things that you could do to your business.

If you don’t have the time to manage social media yourself, get a virtual assistant to do it for you either on Fiverr or Freelancer.

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of those things that requires you to be a bit more tech savvy. However, just because someone doesn’t understand how SEO works, doesn’t mean that it’s not affecting them.

Having an SEO friendly website means having a website that search engines understand and are willing to share with others.

You can be creating content of top-notch quality, but if it’s not adjusted to go well with Google and other search engines, you will be doing a lot worse than your competitors that have not so good content but are good at SEO.

It’s very unfortunate that content creation and marketing alone is not enough for a good online marketing strategy. You still must be able to properly optimize it for the search engines. If you fail to do so, content that you create today will be lost forever tomorrow.

All of this does not mean that you must become an SEO expert, but I strongly suggest that you learn the basics of what SEO is, what it does and what you need to be watching out for. There are plenty of cheap SEO courses on Udemy.

Email marketing

Email marketing is what makes any successful online marketing strategy complete.

Unlike with social networks, where you talk to thousands of people at a time, email marketing allows you to grow a personal relationship with your subscribers.

When you go on Facebook, for example, you see hundreds of different images and messages aimed at no one and everyone at the same time. You simply browse around without really focusing on anything specific. However, when you receive an email to your personal email address with the headline “Dear (your name),” it really does feel like it was meant to you only.

The bottom line is that people actually read their emails. Sometimes, email marketing may lead to a response from your reader, while at other times, they can even buy something from you based on the email alone, hence email marketing.

Why does it work so well?

The other reason why email marketing is so effective is because it is highly intelligent. For example, you can create separate lists of subscribers based on their interests, make split tests to see who opens your emails and when, create autoresponders series that are sent out automatically when a new person subscribes to your mailing list, etc.

There are many email marketing services out there, but the one that I recommend is called SendPulse. It does its job well and includes certain features that other similar services don’t. Here:

A free plan for those that have less than 2500 subscribers, which is the best I have seen so far

Machine learning algorithm, which identifies the time when a subscriber opens their emails based on previously sent email statistics, and sends the email right then

Push notifications, which are those notifications that pop up directly in your browser screen

SMS marketing, which is also a very effective way to communicate with your subscribers that other marketing services don’t provide

Advanced autoresponders that are triggered by specific visitor actions

Subscription forms for your website/blog

All of the features in SendPulse are more than enough to get you going with email marketing.

To sum up, content creation, content marketing, social media, SEO and email marketing are the five main areas that are absolutely essential to any online marketing strategy today. Without them, growth on the internet is pretty much impossible.

Hopefully, you found this post useful. If there is anything else you would like me to write about or clarify, feel free to ask me in the comment section below.

Recommended read: Is Affiliate Marketing Dead? My Income and Opinion

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