Internet marketing plays a key role in a successful business. This is becoming more and more essential for a business to drive success with leaps and bounds.
So, if you are not active on your business internet marketing then you can hurt the chances of getting SUCCESS.
However, Online Marketing is quite complicated. Understanding which plan fits for your business, after that, choosing the right platform and then how to start can higher the blood pressure of the most focused entrepreneurs.
So, today in this article I am sharing with you the best internet marketing strategies in 2018 and beyond (strategies that work presently and continue in future as well).
Well, the internet marketing is very wide and there are many strategies available under it and selecting the right set of strategies is very important.
Therefore the main goal of the article is to analyze internet marketing into basic strategies and simplify them for the business holder or the marketers to drive success.
So get ready to check out the comprehensive strategies and various tactics linked to each strategy.
Here We Go…
Quick Access to the Internet Marketing Strategies:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Conversion Rate Optimization
- Paid Advertisement
Detailed Internet Marketing Strategies and Various Tactics Related to It:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
I guess we all know how important SEO is for our website. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing process focused on maximizing the visibility in organic search engine results.
SEO includes both technical and creative elements needed for increasing traffic, Google ranking and awareness in the search engines.
So if you are looking for the organic search traffic, then you need to start with optimizing searches.
SEO might seem tricky and perplexing but learning and starting with the basics are easy.
To learn more about SEO, read this: Step-by-Step SEO Guide To Boost Your New Blog Up in Google’s Ranking
Learn the important steps you need to take in SEO:
i. Keyword Research
The very first tactic of search engine optimization is keyword research. Keyword Research means understanding what the people are looking for or what people are searching for?
Keywords are like a compass for SEO marketing and doing keyword research will help you to figure out the desires of the targeted market their search queries and topics.
Becoming master in finding useful keywords for your business not only provide your more search traffic but also make you as a trustworthy brand among your audience.
ii. On-page SEO
Now after doing keyword research, here you need to do On-page SEO.
On-page SEO means optimizing the content and HTML elements on a webpage to rank higher in Google searches and drive more traffic.
Well as per the changing Google’s algorithm On-page SEO has changed over years, so it is highly important to keep up with the latest practices to get maximum benefits in SEO.
iii. Off-page SEO
Just like On-page SEO, Off-page SEO also plays an important role in search engine optimization. But unlike On-page SEO, off-page depends on another webpage for improving your website.
Doing Off-page SEO will help you to develop search engine rankings. Most of the people think Off-page SEO refers to link building but this is not limited to link building.
It contains things like building relationships with your audience and content promotion through social media marketing.
Opt for Linkbird, this makes link building seamless and easy with its highly functional software program.
iv. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is related to entire SEO activities but excluding content optimization and link building.
In simple words, this is an SEO aspect focused on how well the search engine spider crawl and index your website and content.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is very essential internet marketing strategy. Because everything you see online is content for instance – videos, articles, infographics, blog posts and others.
Moreover, content marketing is a long-term strategy and aims at building a strong & trustworthy relationship with the audience through providing a high-quality and relevant content.
The content marketing helps you to build a reliable and healthy relationship with your audience.
And ultimately when the customers trust you the make a decision to purchase your product and choose it over the competitor’s option.
So, this is very helpful and important strategy in online marketing.
To make your content marketing more effective read this out: Content Marketing: 11 Things You’re Doing It Wrong in 2018
Below check out some of the points you need to follow:
i. Blogging
In content marketing, blogs play a vital role to grow your business. And having blogs and company newsletter can be very fruitful for your business.
This allows you to connect your existent and potential audience.
But remembers you need to be more curious about what you are writing.
Google believes in Satisfying the Users, so the content you create must be unique, high-quality, engaging, relevant, and answer each and every query of your audience.
Implementing these simple tricks will help you to grab user’s attention automatically and hold a remarkable position in Google ranking.
Try Grammarly – this is the best tool for blog writing and is an excellent proofreader which has got all the feature that you are seeking for in a perfect blog writing tool.
ii. “Linkbait” Creation (and Promotion)
Linkbait is another important tactic comes from content marketing.
The LinkBait creation is sharing valuable content on your website so that other will naturally reference or link to it. The main aim of Linkbait creation is attracting backlinks.
The Linkbait content can be anything (video, infographic, blogs, guides, research projects, tutorials etc.)
But the question arises here how linkbait creation helps in internet marketing?
The answer is SIMPLE; the inbounds link will help you to drive traffic from the linking sites to your website
And secondly helps in improving rankings, and in turns lead more traffic to your site through organic searches.
iii. Videos
Creating and promoting video is on trend. This is a visual type content marketing and very helpful to promote and market your business online.
In a report of the Information Technology and Networking Solutions, it is clearly mentioned within the next four years videos alone hold 82% of the organic traffic.
Videos allow you to connect with a large amount of audience easily than that of the events.
iv. Infographics
This is also very helpful in building your online marketing strategies. Infographic is an easy way to craft your content in the form of graphics.
Infographic helps you to broadcast your statistics, content in the form of visual to your customers instantly.
So, in your content marketing strategy don’t overlook adding infographics.
v. Guest Posting
Guest posting is also very effective, here you need to publish content on another website.
Well, you must be thinking then how this helps you in internet marketing strategy.
Below check out few reasons why you should do guest posting:
- This helps you to gather referral traffic to your website.
- You can interlink your guest post to your relevant site content.
- High-rated brand exposure
- You can build a relationship in your niche or industry.
vi. Content Syndication
Content syndication is republishing a piece of the web-based content by another website.
This is a timeless internet marketing strategies and also can be an excellent source of referral traffic.
vii. Podcasting
Well, it doesn’t matter the content should always be visual, or only the visual content is effective. Podcasting also plays an important role in content marketing.
This is an audible form of content marketing. And is best for building brands and drive more traffic.
When it comes to podcasting there are two major strategies:
- Make your own podcast;
- And emerge on another person podcast.
These both strategies are very helpful in building your online business.
So these are some content marketing tactics that help you to not only grow content marketing but also is beneficial for improving internet marketing.
3. Email Marketing
Email Marketing is another very valuable part of internet marketing; this includes online marketing through websites, social media, blogs etc.
In simple words, this is a direct path of communication between your current and possible audience.
This allows businesses to keep their audience informed and tailor marketing messages to their customers.
It is a type of direct marketing because this engages business though sending promotional messages via emails to the customers and other prospects.
But this is also not easy to leverage as you have to figure out how to send email to everyone without spamming them.
Well to explore your knowledge check this out: Learn to Run Proper & Successful Email Marketing Campaigns in 4 Easy Steps
Apart from that here check out some of the tactics that you can use to increase your conversion rates in email marketing.
i. Lead Magnets
Have you ever heard the word ‘lead magnet’ or know what the word lead magnet means in Email marketing, if YES then good enough, but if not then I’ll help you.
Lead Magnet is an appealing bribe offered to a particular portion of the value to a prospect for exchanging their contact information.
In simple words, the goal of the Lead Magnet is maximizing targeted leads number you are getting an offer. Or the lead magnets are the value that you offer in return for the email address.
Best Lead Magnet offers remarkable value within five minutes of the opt-in.
Here check out the few examples of successful lead magnets:
You can provide “free” download in exchange for the email address.
- eBooks
- Free training
- Discounts/coupon
- Complete guide/report
- Videos
Remember the lead magnet should be worthy & associated with the product you are selling.
ii. Segmentation
Segmentation plays an important role and marketers know segmenting email marketing plays an important role.
As you attain the opt-in, the goal of email marketing is two things:
- Build the brand responsiveness and authority
- Raise lead to a sale (or upsell)
And to achieve this you need segmenting email lists so that you can send the targeted and personalized emails.
iii. A/B testing emails
Now after doing the proper segmentation, this is time for doing split testing.
A/B testing stands for split testing, this means testing each other conversion elements to check your audience responds to which.
Check some of the examples you run A/B testing on:
- Content
- Subject line
- Design element like color, layout, length etc.
- Email “hook” such as first sentence or paragraph;
iv. Automation
Automation is the final step that you need to take from the successful email marketing strategy.
This helps you to save your time and you can run your emails marketing as a skyrocket.
There are many tools available that help you to automate your email marketing campaign and run email marketing successfully.
You can opt for AWeber – It helps businesses to deliver automated professionally designed and personalized emails to their targeted customers and also send up follow-up emails based on a schedule.
The email marketing software has pre-made sequences and is sent automatically by them.
4. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing plays a remarkable role in the internet marketing strategies.
This helps you to gain organic traffic and user attention through the social media sites. This is the biggest platform to communicate with the current audience.
But the communication can be made if you have an audience. And the question arises here how do you get more and more followers?
Content is the key… not only content you need a freaking good high-quality content that attracts visitors and convinces them to share your content with their friends, followers, family members etc.
Helpful Article: 5 Infallible Tips to Engage Your Social Media Followers To Boost Conversion Fast
And here are a couple of individual social media tactics that you need to put into practice:
i. Choose Right Channels
For a successful social media marketing, it is very important to select the right platform.
Investing your precious time on the right platform is very important for gaining traffic.
Facebook is the largest platform to connect with the prospective customers worldwide. It is easy to manage and allows best possible targeting.
Other than Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube are the biggest platform to generate more and more traffic to your website.
Why don’t you try Sprout Social, this helps you to manage various social media accounts, schedule posts and analyze their performance. It is perfect for Freelancers, Large Enterprises, Mid Size Business, Non-Profits, Public Administrations, Small Business.
ii. Learn Everything about your Audience
In social media, marketing audience is the KING, so it is very essential to know your audience.
You need to know who your audience is and what they want. This helps you to create the content they like, comment and share.
Knowing your audience and their desire will help you to increase engagement. Well, this quite critical to developing social media audience into customers for your website.
But this simple tactics will help you to boost your conversion fast.
iii. Engage In Social Listening
Social listening is a great way to keep an eye on the competitors.
Tracking your competitors account and industry related keyword will help you to acknowledge how the competitors use their social accounts.
So, keep an eye on their information and make use of it calculate your own goals.
iv: Test, Evaluate and Adjust your Strategy
For business success, your social media strategy is very important.
After starting implementing the plan, you need to test and evaluate your strategies which are working and which are not.
By tracking you can recognize which one works for you better in digital marketing strategies than expected.
So after implementing a proper social media marketing strategy, you should track your data to see which social posts drive more traffic to your website.
Try GAIN is a social media management tool that works effectively for every user to grow business in an easy and protective way
5. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is also a great way to generate traffic and is in trend in the internet marketing strategies in 2018.
This is a process of classifying, researching, engaging and support the people who create high impact conversations with the audience about your brand or services.
For example: Buying a product because of friends or any other relative recommends it to you. As you friend built up some credibility with you and you trust them.
Influence marketing is totally same.
This is having incredible effects on your business, and this is the reason your product has to be truly great.
And this will help you to build trust with your customers and generate huge traffic.
Remember the Good product is the key to best influencer marketing strategy
Below check out key steps for influencer marketing strategy.
i. Define Your Target Audience
For getting success in the influencer marketing campaign the first thing you need to know who you are trying to influence.
This helps you to be specific, and easily find the relevant influencer.
ii. Choose Method For Approaching Influencers
After recognizing the targeted audience this is the time to select different methods to approach the influencer.
There are three ways that help you to find your influencers.
- Examine influencer identification manual process, by building relationships.
- Take help from the platform that has potential influencers database.
- Work with the specialist influencer organizations to guide you through various stages of setting up a campaign.
6. Mobile Marketing
This is in trend and highly effective in the 2018 digital marketing strategy.
In a report, it is mentioned that 40% of the user’s internet time is spent on mobile devices, and ignoring it is not an option.
Everything is now available on a mobile device, from opening emails to visiting your website to reading content, everything is accessible through a mobile screen.
This is the mobile era and users are engaging with mobile devices than ever before. And it is expected this trend continues further in future as well, so get ready now!
Check out some points you need to keep in mind for successful mobile marketing strategy.
i. Create Mobile Buyer Personas
In any marketing strategy, the very first step is to understand your audience. The buyer’s personas are a helpful tool to understand your audience.
This helps you to make a particular point to detail the targeted audience’s mobile habits also.
ii. Monitor Mobile Metrics
After knowing your audience and tracking everything, this is the time to monitor mobile metrics.
This helps you to examine how well the mobile content engages your audience. And also indicate whether or some of your landing pages are still needed to optimize for mobile browsing.
iii. Mobile Friendly Website:
The mobile-friendly website is not only an option – this is a must. So it is very important to make your website mobile friendly for successful digital marketing.
The mobile-friendliness site means:
- The site content fits on the screen without scrolling or zooming
- Site content loads quickly
- The website should not return on mobile-specific errors.
7. Conversion Rate Optimization
Marketing is all about Conversion, this is the reason you do it in the first place.
So, do the things for increasing conversions. The basis of that is called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
CRO can be a combination of User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) and copywriter.
Make use of the copywriting for delivering the message to convey and then utilize design elements to make it easy for visitors to achieve their goals and convert.
Further Reading: Struggling With Your Landing Pages? Here’s How You Can Optimize Them For Better Conversion
Have a look at some basic Conversion rate optimization strategies:
i. Conversion Focused Web Design
Web design is where the conversion rate optimizations start. So it is very important to make your website optimized. If your website is outdated then you need to struggle hard to get anyone to convert.
Make people trust your website. Check out some examples to help you:
- Reviews
- Modern design
- Testimonials
- Contact information
- Trusted companies logos
- Social trust sign (followers etc.)
2. Headline Optimization
Improving the headlines is the easiest and highest Return on Investment (ROI) you can do for your website.
Looking to optimize organic search, pay-per-click advertising, display advertising or doing something else Headline optimization is the key.
And to come up with the initial headline, see what your competition is doing and after that try the similar one.
And as you have your first headline, test for the other headlines.
iii. Call-to-Actions (CTAs)
CTA (Call-to-action) is the best way to acknowledge the visitors on your website what action they should take and why they should take.
This is very important for attracting your audience and boost conversion.
Helpful Article: 9 Ways To Create An Effective Call To Action For Improved Conversion
iv. Social proof
Social proofing is another way to gain the trust of the audience.
It is the best idea to convert your audience into customers. The certain trust signals like social media followers/likes, testimonials, reviews, awards are the best.
v. A/B testing (for UI/UX elements)
Testing is very important, this helps you to track what is helping you to convert more.
Whether you are using a blue button or red button or the button should be in the middle of the screen or to the right?
A/B testing will help you to get the answer to your questions.
You may go for Instapage, this is a popular landing page builders that allow creating landing pages with best customizations.
8. Paid Advertisement
Well, this is the last internet marketing strategy in 2018. To get the success you can give a try to Paid advertising.
Paid advertising is where you need to pay the third party for advertising in the ad space they own.
Some of the well-known platforms are Google Adwords and Facebook advertising. Despite it, there are many others that you can give a try.
Well, the other marketing channels give result slowly but the best thing about the paid advertising is this provides the immediate return.
Here check out some of the well known paid advertising platforms.
i. Google Adwords
Google Adwords is a type of paid advertising and is also known as pay-per-click (PPC). Here you need to pay every time when someone clicks on your ads share shown Google’s Search or Display Network.
Adwords is extremely powerful to drive targeted traffic to your website or landing page.
ii. YouTube Advertising
YouTube is the biggest platform to get more and more traffic. More than 1 billion users with over 1 billion hours watched daily.
So, there are ample chances lot of people reach to you with YouTube advertising.
iii. Facebook advertising
Facebook is another effective platform to get the desired traffic. This is an effective and low-cost form of digital advertising.
Facebook ads is one of the best internet marketing strategies and is also be one of the first few strategies given.
This is very helpful if done in a right manner.
Further Reading – 19 Things Your Competitors Do To Increase Facebook Engagement And You Don’t
iv. LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn is similar to Facebook ads but is very effective and known for its efficiency for B2B companies and marketers.
This is a helpful digital marketing.
v. Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising is the purchasing of digital advertising space through technology that automates the buying process.
DSP or the demand–side platform is the technology that advertiser buys digital ad placement through.
The programmatic advertising permits the marketers to strategic on the way they spend their advertising budgets and get better as technology improves.
vi. Retargeting
Retargeting is also important and is a kind of paid advertising.
If anyone lands on your website through a PPC ad and after leaves without buying anything, then they could be gone forever.
But if you are having retargeting setup, then, in this case, you can continuously advertise to that person till they are ready for buying your product.
Bring It All Together:
So this is the list of the marketing strategies in 2018. Well, this is not complete but enough to educate you to get success in the internet marketing strategies in 2018 and beyond.
Try to execute each one correctly and the strategies given in the article are really worth and continue to work for you.
Apart from that internet marketing is continuously improving and becoming more evolved. So, giving 100% certainty, which strategy will work ten years from now is not confirmed.
However what you can do is educate yourself and try to give your best. Also, you need to be aware of what is working and what is not in your internet marketing strategy.
And always remember one thing which strategies you are using or not using, ALWAYS MEASURE YOUR SUCCESS.
This is the key to successful internet marketing that works for years and years.
Also, I love to hear from you which strategy you found is effective or which like to put into practice. Please share your ideas, queries, suggestions with us in the comment section.
Stay connected!!!