First, it is worth remembering that not everything is worth, that is to say, there are businesses that by their characteristics or the characteristics of the environment in which they operate, are not viable to develop an online marketing strategy (let us take the example of a company that Offers online gambling services and that by its nature could not use Google’s SEM advertising to advertise in certain countries such as Russia, where it is not allowed according to its advertising policies and principles).
On the other hand, in many cases not all the disciplines that online marketing puts within our reach are adequate to promote a product and / or service on the internet.
Here is a brief description of the main disciplines of online marketing, and of its utilities:
ADVERTISING IN SEARCHERS (SEM)
This type of paid advertising is suitable for those who want to get quick results on the internet, either get a direct response from our target audience, or develop a branding strategy.
The cost models it includes are: CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPA (cost per action or conversion achieved).
In addition, one of its main advantages is the possibility of exhaustively measuring its profitability, based on the configuration of specific objectives that are desired to achieve (sales, contact requests, subscriptions, visits to the specific page of a website, … ) And the monitoring of the achievement of them.
- SEM advertising can be targeted to Search or Display Networks:
- Search targeting is appropriate when we want our ad to show to interested users in an “active” way in our product or service. These ads will appear in the results of any internet search engine (in Spain mainly Google).
- Display orientation pursues branding goals. It is suitable for companies that want to publicize their brand among their target audience. These ads can appear on a multitude of websites and in different formats (text, static or dynamic image, video).
Following the example above, our display ad could appear in portals whose theme is related to the world of the baby, or any website that browse women between 25 and 45 years, or in others that include the keyword “Baby carts”, and we could even combine several of these strategies.
One of the variations of SEM advertising that best results offers is REMARKETING.
This technique is a good option when we have a list of users who have already interacted with our website and intend to capture them as clients in a visit after the first. These users, for a time, will see ads from our website or a specific product and with a certain message.
In our example, we could remarket to people who had started the process of buying one of our baby carts but did not finish it, with the message “Buy Now and Get a Discount Coupon”.
POSITIONING IN SEARCHERS (SEO)
Your objective is to optimize the website so that it positions itself in the first natural results of the search engines for certain searches, and thus increase the free traffic to your web.
- Advantages: every click that is achieved through this route is free, in addition, statistics say that a significant percentage of users who perform a search, obviate payment ads and directly click on these results from the natural part of the search engine .
- Disadvantages: the results are not as immediate as those achieved thanks to SEM advertising. The optimization process is slow and laborious; And it is not possible to guarantee a certain position in the top nor that it is durable, since this depends on many factors, among them the algorithms of Google change continuously.
EMAIL MARKETING
If you already have a list of important clients accumulated in your database, it may be interesting to use it to send bulk and / or segmented emails to them.
With email marketing you can promote sales by offering some type of discount, boosting the cross selling of products, etc.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Ads on social networks like Facebook or Linkedin can be used for different purposes, from promoting the brand, getting visits to our social network page or our website, getting some concrete action from the users.
This discipline also has its advantages and disadvantages derived from the very nature of social networks. They are interesting if our target audience uses them and has a defined profile.
Among all the disciplines offered by online marketing, we will choose the one or those that best fit our business model and it will be important to monitor them continuously to analyze their results
