Online marketing is a crucial part of your marketing strategy in 2022. If you’re not allocating sufficient resources to marketing your business online, then you’re missing out on the single most important way to get your name out there. Marketing couldn’t be more critical to a business’ success, especially in an era when the business world is so overcrowded with enterprises trying to make a name for themselves. Here’s our beginner’s guide to marketing yourself online in 2022, whether you’re a business or an influencer looking to make a name for yourself.
Build your brand
The most important aspect of online marketing is your brand. It represents everything about who you are and what you do; without a strong, clearly-communicated brand, you’ll struggle to carve out a niche. Think about every aspect of your branding and make sure it’s consistent. Your graphic design, copywriting, and approach to customer service will all inform your branding, as will surprising elements of your business like the hires you make and the clients you accept. Branding is critical in the online marketing world, so you really can’t afford to make serious mistakes in this area; it’s worth looking at an online guide in order to get your bearings.
Focus on link building
Link building is another crucial element of online marketing. It’s how you’ll get your website seen by more people organically, without resorting to underhanded black hat SEO or other reprehensible tactics. Link building sites like iNET VENTURES can help you to incorporate this aspect of your marketing into all the content you create; it’s not easy to figure out how to start with link building, so again, we’d recommend deferring to the experts on this one. Just remember not to forget about this often overlooked but critical element of writing content online, because it could come back to haunt you later on in your career if you do.
Focus on your niche
Marketing to everyone is never going to work. When you’re marketing your brand online, it’s important to focus on the people who are going to use your service or buy your product. That way, they’ll feel properly catered for, and you won’t waste valuable time trying to sell your services to people who will probably never want them. Using market research, build your campaign to target your chosen demographic. This means using the social media platforms they use, understanding the issues they face, and explaining why your product or service is something they should be interested in using. Doing this will boost your profile immeasurably.
Produce great content
When you’re marketing your business, you need to have something to point to as a marker of the quality of your service. This is why it’s crucial to produce great content. Whether you’re writing articles, creating videos, or even signing off emails or social media posts, everything you put out there counts as content. That’s why you need to make sure you’re always referencing your brand ideals when you’re making your content. People will come to associate you with high quality, and that will make them more likely to want to buy things from you or to use the service you’re offering. Content is king, and that’s still true even in 2021.
Optimise for SEO
Contrary to what many believe, SEO isn’t just about the keywords and phrases you use in your content. SEO extends to every aspect of your website and branding, from the graphic design you use through to the time it takes your pages to load. With that in mind, it’s vital to optimise all of your content for SEO, because if you don’t, you’ll be quickly pipped to the post by your competitors. Always keep SEO in the back of your mind when you’re working on your brand. Can customers easily find you? There are lots of tools online that allow you to see how well you’re performing in SEO terms, so refer to these as regularly as possible.
Build for responsive design
As of mid-2021, more than half of all web traffic came via mobile devices. You probably don’t need us to tell you, then, why building your website for mobile and tablet is important. Responsive design is the cornerstone of a great website; it should form a part of your SEO strategy. Your customers will appreciate being able to navigate around your website with ease no matter what platform they’re on, and that appreciation will be reflected by increased conversions, especially if your SEO strategy is sound elsewhere. Responsive design should be part of every web designer’s toolkit, so if your designer isn’t using it (or you aren’t), it’s time for a rethink.
Emphasise customer service
This is a marketing-adjacent tip, but the way you approach customer service works hand-in-hand with your marketing strategy. Without good customer service, all the hard work you’ve done building up good PR for your company or brand will be for naught. That’s why you need to make sure you have a robust customer service strategy in place. Always engage with comments and queries regarding your services, and always address customers in a respectful and polite manner. Deal with their queries efficiently and make sure they feel valued. This is the core of a great customer service approach, and it’s something you’ll need to succeed in online marketing.
We hope these beginner tips on how you can get started in the world of online marketing have been helpful. Are you starting up a new business or brand? How have you approached the challenge of online marketing?