Strategies for Online Marketing

 

 Businesses in the contemporary society appreciate the importance of online marketing.  Importantly, they recognize the cost implications of online marketing platforms compared to conventional marketing platforms such as TVs and radios.  Online marketing is one of the cheap ways of building and enhancing a brand, which is the symbol, design, term, name or any feature that identifies a product or company or service from others.  However, in order to optimize the returns from online marketing, appropriate marketing strategies should be employed.  It does not pay to only place the products on online platforms; it pays to drive traffic to the platform and to turn the traffic to buyers. It is important to note that whereas as online or internet marketing may be equalized to performance marketing, online advertising or performance marketing, they are different. Online marketing is a focus-oriented use of internet tools such as e-mails, social media sites to drive users to certain sites so that they can order or buy some products or services. That means the benchmark in online marketing is being present on the web. In cognizance of this, the article highlights some of the evidence based online marketing strategies that small and medium enterprises should adopt.

             Affiliate Marketing

            This strategy entails promoting services and products on a different website. Among the common organizations that offer such service include Amazon, eBay and Jumia.  In this case, a business contracts promotional firm, which is termed as a partner to promote its products. The partner can place product pictures, banners or links of the merchant on its website such that traffic on the partner’s website can be redirected to the merchant’s website or get contacts of the merchant.  

            E-mail marketing

            The strategy targets e-mail owners; the e-mails are customized and would consist of the businesses’ brand, link to the website or social media site or message. E-mail marketing may be employed in different ways such as by sending periodic newsletters to customers for purposes of enhancing their loyalty or carrying out stand alone campaigns for new or existing product for some season.

             Keyword advertising

             This strategy entails using keyword searches to find relevant business offerings. For instance, business dealing is second hand clothes in Tanga- Tanzania, may use keywords such as; clothes, or wears in Tanga on the search engine.  An internet user in need of clothes may just type the words clothes in Tanga and the business features on the search engine. The strategy requires the business to use the most relevant keyword.  The business has to bid for the keyword; the cost depends on how competitive the keyword is.

            Online advertising

             This is similar to TV or radio advertising; the difference is it is cheaper because of the ability to generate high quality videos at a low cost. Furthermore, online users prefer watching short videos. Online advertising requires appropriate content creation that retains the attention of viewers.