Benefits Of Online Marketing

A key benefit of using online channels for marketing a business or product is the ability to measure the impact of any given channel, as well as how visitors acquired through different channels interact with a website or landing page experience. Of the visitors that convert into paying customers, further analysis can be done to determine which channels are most effective at acquiring valuable customers.

Analytics for web or mobile app experiences can help determine the following:

• Which online marketing channels are the most cost-effective at acquiring customers, based on the conversion rate of visitors to customers, and the cost of those visitors.
• Which channels are effective at acquiring and driving higher lifetime value for customers — such as email marketing, which drives repeat purchases to prior customers.
• Which cohorts of customers exhibit strong engagement behavior and high potential for upsells — such as software or mobile apps, which expect to sell more products to customers with high engagement.

Online Marketing Tools

There are a number of tools that can be used to build and maintain a robust online marketing program:

• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Display Advertising
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Events & Webinars
• A/B Testing & Website Optimization
• Content Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Marketing Analytics
• Marketing Automation
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
• LinkedIn Ads
• Affiliate Marketing

Examples Of Online Marketing

Some examples of online marketing campaigns include:

• Canon advertises for search keywords related to "photography" on Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines to market their cameras to a relevant audience to drive traffic to a specific webpage.
• Whole Foods collects email addresses on their website to create email lists that can be used to advertise new products, sales, and events in their stores.
• Dove creates video advertisements and shares them with their audience on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to promote favorable conversation about their brand and products.
• Bite Beauty partners with influencers to promote a new lipstick to their target audience of high-quality, beauty enthusiasts.

Although online marketing creates many opportunities for businesses to grow their presence via the internet and build their audiences, there are also inherent challenges with these methods of marketing. First, the marketing can become impersonal, due to the virtual nature of message and content delivery to a desired audience. Marketers must inform their strategy for online marketing with a strong understanding of their customer’s needs and preferences. Techniques like surveys, user testing, and in-person conversations can be used to understand the overall user experience.

Online marketing can also be crowded and competitive. Although the opportunities to provide goods and services in both local and far-reaching markets is empowering, the competition can be significant. Companies investing in online marketing may find visitors’ attention is difficult to capture due to the number of business also marketing their products and services online. Marketers must develop a balance of building a unique value proposition (UVP) and brand voice as they test and build marketing campaigns on various channels.

Disambiguation

Online marketing is also known as internet marketing, web marketing, digital marketing and search engine marketing (SEM). Online advertising and internet advertising are techniques involved with online marketing, but are not synonymous with online marketing.