To "break through" to customers, you need more than a good product and excellent service. Your target audience must somehow know that you exist and that your brand offers something unique. Marketing exists precisely for this purpose. The lion's share of activities related to this area are conducted online today. Wondering what this form of marketing is all about? Read on.
Marketing: Definition
Let's start with the absolute basics, i.e. by explaining what marketing is in general.
Marketing encompasses all company activities that support the sale of services and products, performed using developed techniques and methods to influence potential buyers. Marketing is customer- and market-oriented, and also aims to build brand awareness. Knowing the general concept of marketing, one can answer the question: what is internet marketing (e-marketing) ? It's one of the varieties of classic marketing.
What is internet marketing?
Internet marketing encompasses activities and strategies that support the sale of services and products and the creation of a positive company image via the Internet. In other words, internet marketing encompasses all advertising activities of a business in the digital space.
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[See also: Definition of Internet Marketing ]
Electronic marketing is a rapidly developing form of marketing, driven by the growth of sales and the presence of companies online. Additional factors contributing to the rapid growth of e-marketing include:
- continuous development of technology,
- changes in search engine algorithms,
- the constant emergence of new and innovative platforms to which promotional activities must be adapted.
Conducting marketing activities is therefore a huge, but also very interesting challenge, which requires extensive knowledge of social behavior on the Internet.
Internet marketing and classic marketing
Online marketing encompasses many disciplines, each requiring a dedicated specialist. Therefore, small and even medium-sized businesses must focus on the most effective marketing channels. The umbrella term "internet marketing" encompasses tools such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, LinkedIn Ads, Allegro Ads, content marketing, influencer marketing, UX, and web analytics. Each of these disciplines is further layered and requires constant optimization, testing, and drawing the right conclusions.
Online marketing differs from traditional marketing in its significantly improved ability to reach target groups, as well as its payment model, which allows us to focus solely on actual clicks to a given website. This means that in online marketing, we typically pay for reaching people potentially and actually interested in our product or service.
What is internet marketing?
The most effective e-marketing activities involve:
These are the aspects we will focus on in this post.
Positioning the website
Website positioning involves activities aimed at improving a website's position in search results for specific phrases. A website should appear in the top 10 search engine results, as most web users limit their searches to that location. Increasing website traffic translates into increased sales, brand recognition, and brand trust. Positioning is often used interchangeably with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
However, the concept of positioning is much broader, as it includes SEO, SEM activities, link building and content marketing.
SEO, link building, content marketing
Website optimization (SEO) involves adapting a website to the search engine's algorithm preferences, both technically and content-wise . A website should function efficiently and quickly. Navigating the site should be effortless for the user (and Google's crawler).
The content on the website should be interesting, substantive, presented in a clear, understandable manner, and should contain keywords and phrases (determined after defining the target user). However, the text should not be overloaded with keywords and phrases. It should include topics, headings with keywords, and paragraphs. If the website is being designed from scratch, its URL should also contain keywords. The text appearing on the website should be unique. Unique content is a fundamental principle in SEO.
While it may take one to several months to see the results of website optimization, they are long-term and effective. It's important to remember, however, that it's difficult to precisely predict what positioning potential a website will achieve after several months of optimization. However, properly conducted SEO efforts will undoubtedly yield results.
Link building involves acquiring links from other websites. It's best to acquire links from websites that contain valuable content and have a high search engine ranking. Links can be obtained from industry-specific websites, event pages (e.g., trade shows) in which the company has participated, local media, or by posting a video on YouTube.
Content marketing helps build a company's expert image. It involves maintaining a company blog with specialized texts, organizing webcasts, distributing newsletters to dedicated audiences, and e-books. These include sponsored articles. These activities are intended to distinguish the company from the competition, build customer trust and loyalty, and foster positive customer relationships.
Google Ads Advertising (SEM)
What is online marketing using Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords )? It involves promoting your website to the top of search results using the Google Ads advertising system. Paid search engine results appear alongside organic results (these are the results that naturally appear in the search engine after a user enters a search term). Pay-per-click (PCC) campaigns are the most common on the market. These search results are presented with a subtle "advertisement" tag. In fact, most users don't identify this method as advertising, as they already receive what they were looking for after clicking. It's more of an answer or solution than traditional, poorly targeted website advertising, and therefore highly effective.
Google Ads advertising is recommended for companies that expect immediate results from their advertising efforts. It's very easy to initiate, effective, and reaches the target user based on developed keywords and phrases.
The Google Ads advertising system (renamed Google Ads on July 24, 2018) also allows, for example, the placement of graphic ads on the Google advertising network (portals such as OLX, wizaz.pl, wp.pl, etc.), which covers basically the entire Polish Internet, as well as initiating campaigns on YouTube.
Affiliate networks, blogosphere, social media
Affiliate programs (affiliate networks)
Affiliate programs involve a partnership between the owner of an affiliate network (provider), an advertiser, a website owner, and a customer. The company selling the product or service pays the advertiser a commission on sales. Affiliate programs are a great solution for businesses that don't compete with each other. Examples include a pet shop advertising a dog grooming salon, or a food blogger advertising mixers or knives.
Leveraging the blogosphere and social media
In recent years, the development of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SnapChat has provided professionals with unprecedented opportunities for advertising, building a positive image, and increasing a company's online visibility. For example, you can create a company fan page on Facebook, which is a very effective way to promote your business.
When promoting a company on social media , it's important to carefully consider the advertising strategy, as the company is being evaluated by customers. Activities must be conducted skillfully, sensitively, and with respect for the norms adopted in a given cultural environment.
What is internet marketing in the blogosphere? Advertising in the blogosphere primarily consists of product and service reviews. Bloggers receive a product to test, which they then review on their blog. Blog advertising can also take the form of a recommendation included in a post. Blogs can include banner ads or brand endorsements with the blogger's image. An example would be a fashion blogger endorsing a clothing company.
Advertising and marketing – is there any difference?
As you may have noticed, when writing about e-marketing, we mention traditionally understood advertising rather briefly. Does this mean that the definition of online advertising doesn't fit within the marketing umbrella? Absolutely not! Quite the opposite. Advertising activities are part of marketing activities. However, if you consider online marketing, advertising in the traditional sense doesn't play such a crucial role.
Yes, as we mentioned, various forms are used – for example:
And of course, it's worth utilizing them in your promotional strategy, but online, you can't rely solely on classic, paid promotion. This is because the mechanisms by which the internet operates are completely different. Consequently, the definition of online advertising has also changed compared to the scope of classic advertising.
What does this mean in practice? However, online marketing should be based primarily on activities aimed at building organic traffic. The kind that is self-propelled, including through referrals, shares, and effective lead generation. Advertising on the website and elsewhere—understood as banners or sponsored links that users are expected to click—should only support broad-based communication.
Remarketing and online advertising
An interesting way to utilize traditional online advertising – including social media – is through remarketing. How does it work? Simply put:
- the user lands on your product page, browses it but does not make a purchase,
- data about the fact that he visited your website and what he viewed is saved in the cookies of his browser,
- the content of these files is analyzed by special algorithms, which leads to the potential customer seeing online advertising related to the content of your website on the websites they visit later,
- At every step, the user receives a gentle reminder about the planned purchase and… is subtly pushed further in the marketing funnel, towards finalizing the transaction.
It's worth remembering, however, that to fully utilize the potential of ads constructed this way, it's essential to consider all the other elements that comprise digital marketing. Without combining traditional advertising with effective SEO , content marketing, and social media activities, your efforts may be completely wasted.
The bottom line? Before you begin any online marketing activities, develop a sound strategy. This is the starting point for a better understanding of how to effectively connect with your audience online.
Of course, in this post we've presented only the basic and flagship examples of online marketing. There are countless specific methods, and in some respects, the only limit is our imagination.
You can learn more about internet marketing in this post, which presents our free online marketing guide!
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- basic assumptions of marketing and its importance in business operations,
- how internet marketing drives sales and evolves with technology,
- why online marketing gives you more control and effectiveness than traditional marketing,
- the main areas of internet marketing, such as SEO, link building, content marketing, Google Ads advertising, and activities in social media and affiliate programs,
- the relationship between advertising and marketing,
- the role of remarketing in reaching users.
