Visibility has always been an important factor in business success. The more visible your business is, the more profitable it becomes. That’s why marketing is highly valued, yet, not everyone can get the most in-demand celebrities to advertise their products.

However, we have the internet now and internet marketing just leveled the playing field for everyone. Businesses of all sizes now play by the same rules, which means this is where you should step up your game.

What is Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing or online marketing is a strategy involving the use of the world wide web or virtual spaces to promote and sell products and services. It is more cost-effective and services or products can be advertised on a global scale. As it continues to grow, more and more forms of internet marketing emerge. Businesses continue to get creative with this flexible medium every day.

So, how can you stand out amongst all the businesses competing for users’ attention over the internet?

Know your target audience

Define your target audience before you take any step further. The framework of your marketing strategy will depend on who they are, their characteristics and where they can be found online.

Target a specific demographic and look into how your product or service will serve them. It may depend on their age, gender, occupation, income level, and other factors. This will help you develop more solid materials and content that will connect with that audience.

Look deeper and delve into the psychographics as well. This will tell you the personality, lifestyle, behavior and interest of your target audience that you can then use to determine which specific features of your service or product will attract them. Psychographics will also let you know where they frequently go online, which social media platform they use the most and where they get their information from. Knowing these will let you know which platform to use.

Optimize your website

Your website is the face of your company online and it should help your potential customer make a purchase decision. Once a lead lands on your website you have to give them what they want and more.

Enhanced user experience. Users should be able to easily navigate your site. A beautiful website is a must but more than that, website development should be at the top of your list for a more user-friendly design. If they need to browse your services then they should be able to locate the tab or menu that will direct them to that specific page. If they want to read reviews from your previous clients, then they should be able to switch to that page without fumbling or searching for too long.

A site designed with enhanced UX in mind is a great marketing tool that empowers your brand’s presence in the market. You can always opt to outsource web design services if you don’t want to do it yourself or hire your own web designer.

Make your website mobile-friendly. It’s estimated that the Philippines will have 44.3 million smartphone users in 2020 so optimizing your website for a device that a person will be frequently using throughout the day will be beneficial to your business. This means that your site should be reformatted to look good when viewed on a mobile device and be able to quickly load as well.
Necessary details about your products and services should be easily visible. Your website should have complete information about the company, its products and services.
Valuable information that will help them make a purchase decision. High quality content is what will separate your website from the rest of your competitors. You should have content that highlights the value of your products and services.

Content has the power to make you an authority figure in your industry. You can achieve this by earning industry awards and sharing it on your website or social media. If you have achieved a milestone in your industry or career, post it online and let everyone know. It’s also important to always update your blogs and discuss topics that are relevant in your industry.

Before publishing any kind of content, make sure to proofread your material for grammar errors, misspelled words or typos.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the art and process of driving traffic to your website. It also plays a big role in increasing your visibility in search engines.

A website is at the center of all your digital marketing efforts. Businesses — eCommerce or otherwise — might choose a different social media platform they want to associate their business with but ultimately, they will always have a website.

What I’m saying is, SEO in the Philippines is now a must.

Having a website with enhanced UX and beautiful UI isn’t enough, it’s important for people to actually find it. That’s where SEO comes into play. What it does is improve the rank of your website in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

A proper SEO audit on your website will tell you how well it’s performing. A complete report displays which areas are doing well and which areas need work.

Two components of SEO:

On-page SEO – These are the efforts that happen directly to your website. This involves targeting the right keywords, optimizing titles, headlines, meta tags and other factors that are happening on your website.
Off-page SEO – These are efforts happening externally or made offsite to attract more traffic leading to your site.

Familiarizing yourself with these methods will gain you immense competitive advantage allowing you to properly strategize depending on your location, industry and target audience.

Identify which internet marketing efforts you’re going to focus on.

In 2019 alone, the Philippines topped the global list of the most internet-addicted regions. This means that with the increase in the number of internet users every year, Filipinos are at the top of the list of people who constantly frequent the web. We are not lagging behind in terms of users, we are leading and this is why your business should focus on optimizing its internet marketing efforts. However, you can’t spend energy on every medium. You should identify where your audience is and focus your efforts there.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has always been an effective strategy for awareness, outreach, lead conversion, onto closing and retention. In 2019 alone, email users have amounted to 3.9 billion globally. The opportunity this presents is countless for those who know how to implement an effective email marketing campaign.

It does have some setbacks, like you can’t make sure that leads or potential customers are opening the emails that you sent. This calls for a more creative and engaging approach so that you can boost your email open rates effectively.

Some tips to boost your open rate is to create high quality and educational content. Create engaging and informative newsletters with amazing call-to-action. Also, opt for a more personalized email. There are a number of email marketing tools that allow you to do this like SendinBlue, MailChimp, and Drip to name a few.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has exploded in popularity with 3.5 billion global users. What’s more interesting is that in 2019, the Philippines alone has 71% of its total population recorded as active social media users — that’s 76 million people out of 103.4 million. From Facebook to Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, it has affected our daily lives. The fact that more and more people are seen in social media, businesses are capitalizing on this to boost brand awareness or increase website visitors.

Social media marketing efforts should always be creative and engaging because that’s what it does, it engages people.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you get other websites to drive traffic to your website and in doing so, they get a percentage of the sale each time they drive a visit.

Three important factors in Affiliate Marketing:

The Merchant. This is the seller or the business owner who provides the product and services.
The Affiliate. The publishers that post ads for you.
The Consumer. People who use products and services, simply put, this can be anyone of us.

Paid Advertising

The strategy for most businesses, especially at the beginning is to spend money on paid advertising to generate some traffic. This is initially correct, but won’t be sustainable if there is no long term marketing strategy and proper SEO. Paid advertising or pay-per-clicks are ads that appear on top of the SERPs and it will keep doing so as long as you pay for it.

This will give you leads but will not ensure they are quality leads or those who are looking for the services you are specifically offering.

Unlike organic traffic where the people who tend to land on your website intentionally searched for you, PPC is a strategy that works well if used in a timely manner. Like mentioned above, it’s a good strategy to use if you have a new business you want to promote. It’s also a great strategy for retargeting customers, this way, they promote products or services based on a customers’ browsing history.

Establish your KPIs and goals

Every business owner needs to know whether the strategy or in this case, the internet marketing strategy, they implemented is working or not. Digital marketing metrics work to keep your campaign on track, if it’s performing well or not, if you should keep it or ditch it.

Ask yourself these questions:

What are your goals?
Having a clear goal at the beginning will make it easier to plan your move. Begin with the end in mind. What do you want to achieve with internet marketing and how are you going to achieve it?
What are the goals of the internet marketing strategy you chose?
What are the KPIs related to your internet marketing goal/s?

Here are some metrics to keep in mind:

For Email Marketing: No. of emails delivered, no. of emails opened, click-through-rate (CTR), unsubscribed, conversion rate.
For SEO: Organic traffic, CTR, Impressions volume, average time on page, bounce rate, conversation rate.
For Social Media: Active followers, clicks, likes, shares, comments, profile visits.

Boost your presence with Google My Business

Google My Business or GMB is a tool that helps businesses show up in different search results. The information you put into GMB is much more detailed and since Google occupies a huge chunk of the internet, it can place you in sites with high visibility such as Google Maps, Google Local Pack, Google Maps and more. It allows potential customers to find and buy your products or services easily, especially now where more and more people use Google Assistant or Google Home to do their searches.

This is helpful for local businesses where optimizing your GMB listing will increase your public visibility.

Create high-quality content with both the audience and SEO in mind

Content is what the internet is all about. By having content marketing and SEO together, you create the fuel that powers your internet marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter what you look like or how much money you have — an engaging content dominates the world wide web. There’s an art and formula when it comes to ranking high on search results, nothing happens randomly.

When writing content for an online audience, most find it difficult to find the balance between resonating with the readers and also writing content that search engines can effectively deem as valuable.

While search engines are looking for keywords, readability and matching your content to the user’s search intent, your target market is looking for substance and value. To balance both is a constant struggle for content writers because the gap between human understanding and AI still exists. This is the reason why search engines, especially Google, are frequently updating their algorithms.

No matter what content marketing strategy you choose — may it be blog posts, videos, webinars, case studies or ebooks — you have to choose a topic that’s relevant to your business and your niche. This is how you serve value to your audience. Serving value to search engines will come in the form of keywords. Keyword research will help you know which words your target market uses most when typing their queries into search engines. A useful tool that will help you find relevant keywords is Spyfu.

If you’re new to the concept and want to explore what SEO can do for your business, there’s always the option of outsourcing SEO work or you can speak to SEO Consultants to learn more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The marketing world has been completely restructured with the advancement of technology and through internet marketing, there’s now an equal opportunity for businesses to compete. There are more ways you can optimize your internet marketing strategy, but these seven tips will help you start reaching qualified leads through internet marketing.

Defining your target market
Optimizing your website for both desktop and mobile
Incorporating Search Engine Optimization
Identifying which internet marketing strategy is worth allocating your budget to
Establishing your KPIs and goals
Activating a Google My Business account
Creating high-quality content

Keep these tips in mind to ensure that you’ll reap the benefits of your internet marketing efforts.