The internet has redefined almost every aspect of human lives. Every industry, whether it is business, entertainment, education, or healthcare, has been influenced by the development of the internet. More and more people are coming online, relying on it for their daily activities and chores. The popularity of the internet presents an exciting opportunity for many entrepreneurs to do business.
Internet marketing involves marketing activities that are done online which involves different strategies such as search engine optimization, content marketing, social media marketing, and pay-per-click advertisement.
Table of Contents
7 Types of Internet Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO leads the way when it comes to the top growth channel for any industry. Though it takes the most effort and time, it has a long-term value if executed properly. SEO involves the process of effectively optimizing a website and its contents in order to increase its search ranking. In short, SEO helps to drive the number of visitors to a certain webpage. Google dominates the search engine world with a market share of 79.77%.
Search engines have crawlers that are used to crawl all publicly accessed sites and build an index of all its contents. When someone searches a particular keyword or phrase, the search engine will provide the most relevant and useful results at the top of the list. SEO has two sides:
On-page SEO – it is when the content and website are optimized through targeted keywords/phrases. This includes: increasing the website speed, including targeted keywords, using a structured data markup, etc.
Off-page SEO – it is when the website and content are optimized through methods outside the website or the content itself. It factors in other external signals such as brand mentions and social media presence. The most influential part of Off-page SEO is the use of backlinks wherein other websites links back to a particular site or content for reference.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising, as the name implies, is when a business or an individual pays an entity in order to showcase their products or services. Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram are the popular choices for paid advertisements. The advertisers are paid each time a user clicks the ads (pay-per-click or PPC). Other platforms charge differently depending on the marketing objective. The following are other ways on platforms charge for paid advertisements:
Cost-per-thousand-impressions (cost-per-mille or CPM) – charge each time the ad is viewed 1,000 times
Cost-per-View (CPV) – charge each view your video receives a certain amount of views from audiences
Cost-per-Action (Cost-per-Acquisition or CPA) – charge each time a user converts into a customer
Influencer marketing
An influencer is someone with a relatively huge online following such as mainstream celebrities, industry experts and micro-influencers (those with less than a hundred thousand followers).
Influencer marketing involves working with an influencer to promote a certain product or service through their social media accounts to their online followers.
Content Marketing
Great content can help to build brand awareness, trust, likability and so much more. Content marketing involves creating, distributing, and promoting online content that is strategically designed to engage, attract, and convert a target audience into customers.
There are many forms of content marketing that businesses use. Some examples include blog posts, videos, podcasts, emails, webinars, case studies, and even social media posts. Content marketing also works hand in hand with the other types of internet marketing such as SEO and social media marketing in order to get a higher ranking in search engines.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is all about connecting with people around the world. This marketing strategy involves acquiring the attention of the target audience through the use of different social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This type of marketing can be classified into two categories:
1. Organic/free – this focuses on building a community and deepening a website’s relationships with its consumers to encourage brand interest and loyalty.
2. Paid – This is another way to promote a business’s products or services through paid advertisements on social media platforms through different promotional options. A common strategy for paid ads in different social media marketing platforms is pay-per-click, or PPC. Less common is to buy Instagram likes.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing talks about online referral marketing where a business will set up its program and then pay commissions to external creators or websites to help increase traffic or to generate conversion. Affiliate marketing allows influencers and internet marketers to earn commission by promoting another company’s products or services.
This particular type of marketing is deeply intertwined with other digital marketing strategies such as content marketing, social media marketing, and influencer marketing since most of the affiliate links are being promoted in the contents or on social media by influencers.
Email Marketing
A lot of people might disregard email as a way to increase attention and conversion in an age when there are new ways to do so. However, email remains to be the top internet marketing strategy that is still effective at reaching a lot of people. Email marketing is all about using email to send direct marketing content to an online audience to keep businesses top of mind for existing customers and hopefully gain new ones. This works in partnership with the other types of marketing such as content and social media marketing.
The main objective of marketers is to connect with a lot of people in order to promote the products and services that businesses offer. The internet has made that task easier for them.
Annah Brooks a passionate young blogger who loves to write about SEO techniques, digital marketing, social media and more. She is currently working for GalaxyMarketing, one of the leading providers of views, likes, followers & real comments for YouTube, Twitter, Instagram & more social media networks.
