An Introduction to Online (Digital) Marketing
Marketing has evolved along with media over the years, but nothing has matched the impact that the Internet has had on marketing. The traditional marketing methods- billboards, TV commercials, print, radio, and direct mail- are slowly losing influence due to the growth of online marketing. Online marketing is a branch of marketing that uses the internet as a medium to generate sales, obtain sales leads, or promote the brand or a specific product. The primary methods of online marketing are search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and retargeting. No one method of online marketing is necessarily better than another, rather there is a time and place for each.
The Importance of Online Marketing
Before we consider the debate between traditional vs. online marketing, it is important to understand the difference between promoting a brand, product, or service and selling a product or service. Promotion lets people know that a decoration business has products or services for sale. Selling is the process of convincing someone to purchase decorated products or services. Online marketing makes it easier to promote a brand, and it also makes it easier to close a sale. Online sales are quickly overtaking brick and mortar sales because the costs are typically much lower for online sales due to lower overhead costs for the business. Decoration businesses are major beneficiaries of this shift because in-person custom decoration sales are time-consuming and inefficient. Also, when the sale of a product is conducted entirely online it can be shipped directly from the product decorator and not be touched by a single middleman or employee. Brick & mortar locations have to order, receive, stock, display, and then sell the product, a lengthy process that is also much more expensive. This, in turn, leads to the product being more expensive for the customer.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the oldest form of online marketing. A search engine is a website comprised of software algorithms that instantly searches (crawls) through most available web pages to find matches for searched terms or phrases and return relevant results. Most people navigate the internet through a search engine due to their ease of use and ability to produce relevant results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process through which businesses manipulate their own websites or pay search engines so that they are likely to appear, or “rank,” high on the list of related search results to gain more visitors to their sites. As the dominant search engine, Google receives over one trillion searches annually and is the most visited website on the Internet. By monetizing their search engine, Google created a massive advertising platform that makes money both for Google and for businesses.
Searches are performed for various reasons, but one of the most common is to connect a person searching for either a good or service to a business that provides them. In essence, a search engine acts as a middleman that connects buyers and sellers. Search engines like Google typically have two types of search results: free and paid. Free search results are called “organic search results” in which a search engine ranks a web page based on the relevance of content, quality of content, and other variables. Therefore, the methods used to obtain a high placement (or ranking) on a search engine results page through activities other than payment are referred to as Organic SEO. Organic SEO is a difficult process that can be complicated by the constant evolution of search algorithms used to gather search results. Google makes changes to their search algorithm nearly every day of the year. This makes it an ongoing challenge to stay on top, or get to the top, of search results. Paid SEO is a method of SEO where businesses purchase advertisements to be placed among search results, and paid for either when one is viewed or when one is clicked on. Google created Adwords to handle its paid SEO services. Adwords customers pay either per-click or per-impression. Cost-per-click means that every time someone clicks on the ad, Google is paid a royalty. Cost-per-impression means that a business is paying for its advertisement to be show a set number of times (typically 1,000), regardless of whether or not consumers interact with the advertisement.
Organic SEO for decoration businesses is especially difficult because it is such a competitive market. National brands like CustomInk and DiscountMugs.com would be nearly impossible for a new decoration business to displace in search results. In order for a small decoration business to have its site appear on search results for related keywords, they will likely have to embrace paid SEO. It is difficult for a decoration business to reach the front page for general search results, but it is possible for newer decoration businesses to rank on the first page for local search results. For instance, it is almost impossible for a small decoration business to reach the first page of results for the keyword “custom t-shirt.” However, if a customer searches “custom t-shirt Cleveland, Ohio,” a small decoration business in Cleveland could definitely achieve a first page ranking.
Local SEO
Ranking highly in search results is important because consumers tell both Google and advertisers exactly what they are looking for. If a business can put its advertisement in front of consumers who are looking specifically for goods and services it offers, then the odds of converting a sale are quite high. Customers that come to a business through local SEO are basically qualified leads, as they have clearly indicated they are interested in purchasing the business’s products and services. For example, if you Google “custom printed t-shirts,” you are likely looking to purchase that particular product and are looking for a business to fill your needs. Businesses often pay a premium for offline qualified leads and, relative to those advertisements, SEO leads are often far less expensive. Since decorated products are not terribly expensive, paying less for leads is especially advantageous for product decoration businesses.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media marketing is another powerful form of online marketing. Social media marketing is simply the use of social media websites and applications to promote a business, brand, or products and services. There are 5 main social media websites: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Pinterest. Each website has dedicated users who log in each day to view, create, and share content with other users. At every step along the way, these users are being marketed to. Facebook is the most commonly used social media website by businesses due to how well, and how easily, it allows them to target customers. Most purchases on Facebook and other social media sites are impulse buys. That is a good thing for decoration businesses, as their products are not necessities.
The remaining 4 social media platforms are not quite as simple to market through or as effective as Facebook. However, they still offer the ability to target specific markets by placing advertisements in front of users who have shared valuable personal information with these social networks. In addition to outright marketing efforts, it is now important for businesses to have their own social media accounts with which they can interact with customers. For new decoration businesses, Facebook and Twitter accounts are essential. Eventually, however, businesses should create accounts on any social media network where their target audience can be found.
Facebook Marketing
Facebook is a social network and the second largest social media company. Facebook’s marketing capabilities should be appealing to any business looking to expand its reach online. Through Facebook’s marketing tools, businesses can target advertisements to highly-specific groups of consumers and measure the performance of their pages and advertisements through Facebook analytics. This is possible because one of the first things that users do on Facebook is share some or all of their “likes” and “dislikes.” When combined with their personal (segmented) information, including age, race, education level, and more, this is valuable information for advertisers. For example, an Ohio business that makes zombie t-shirts might identify males between the ages of 18-30 who like the show “The Walking Dead” as the target market. It is possible on Facebook to run an advertisement campaign for zombie t-shirts that only appears for users that are males between the ages of 18-30, who live in Ohio, and have indicated they “like” zombies, the TV show “The Walking Dead,” or other zombie-related keywords. Since the advertisement is only shown to the target audience rather than a mass audience, the ROI from the advertisement is typically far higher than traditional marketing practices.
Email Marketing
Email marketing, which is a type of direct marketing, is the process of advertising directly to interested consumers through commercial email messages. Email marketing is most frequently used by businesses who want to market to existing or past customers to build brand loyalty and encourage those customers to purchase again. Getting repeat business is vital for a decoration business, especially one that subsists off of smaller orders. Businesses can also pay for lists of qualified emails to use, much like paying for leads. Decoration businesses do have to worry about marketing emails being perceived as spam, but they can still effectively drive sales and increase awareness.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where a business allows third parties, or “affiliates,” to market for them, paying them a commission for either each sale or each unique website visitor those marketing efforts provide. It might seem counterintuitive for a business to want additional parties involved in their transactions. However, while there are fees, and the profits are shared, there are often more sales. Web traffic is much like foot traffic. The internet is an incomprehensibly large place, and businesses need to place their product somewhere where they can easily be found, or they need to find a way to drive traffic to those products. Affiliate marketing sets out to solve this issue by finding qualified customers to push to their clients. By allowing affiliates to market their products, decoration businesses can save the time and money they would be spending on marketing and put it to use elsewhere in the business. For instance, buying new equipment or expanding a decorated product line. So, while giving up part of the profit for a sale might sting, it is entirely possible that the sale would not have been made without the affiliate.
Retargeting
Affiliate marketing is a fairly young practice when compared to traditional media, but there are still new methods of affiliate marketing being developed. Retargeting is a newer method of affiliate marketing which involves placing advertisements for products viewed by consumers on a business’s website on subsequent websites visited by the consumer. For example, you might go onto CustomInk.com and look at t-shirt prices, but choose not to purchase. CustomInk knows your IP address viewed that specific product, and when you visit other websites you will start to see ads for the same product that you previously looked at. Sometimes offering you a discount to return and purchase it. This is retargeting, continuously pushing the same products that consumers have clearly indicated an interest in until they make a purchase.
Conclusion
Simply having a website or a social media account does not guarantee that a decoration business will attract new sales. A decoration business must know how to market their brand and products to potential customers through online marketing, which is quickly overtaking traditional marketing models. Whether a decoration business decides to market online or not, it is a good idea to take the time to learn the basics of online marketing and how a business might be able to promote its brand through the world-wide web. The internet is the perfect place to advertise custom-decorated products as people are constantly searching for that special something that can show off their personality, or make for a unique and thoughtful gift.
