Demystifying 3 Of The Most Powerful Marketing Strategies For Online Business Success

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It’s a tough world out there in cyberspace. Several studies have shown that only one in ten e-commerce businesses survive longer than four months. Beating the odds is really about beating the competition and that, in turn, is about convincing customers that of the ten storefronts available to them, yours is the one they will choose. When a dozen or more websites are selling a similar product or service to yours at a similar price point, that can be easier said than done. Having perfectly tuned marketing strategies that make optimum use of the best tools is your first step toward success. Effective marketing means your products and services reach and appeal to your target audience, increasing sales. Here are three of the most powerful marketing strategies for online business success.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important aspect of increasing the visibility of your business. The term SEO in itself covers a multitude of techniques. In short, if you sell lipstick online, then you would like your site to be at the top of the results page when someone types “buy lipstick online” into Google. We all know you will struggle to achieve that over some of the big brands and retailers. However, an SEO consultant will offer ideas for other keywords, perhaps targeting a geographical area (buy lipstick online in New York) or other selling points (buy organic vegan lipstick online).

Deciding on your keywords is the first step to diving deeper into the rabbit hole of SEO. You then need to consider the key aspects of SEO: relevance and authority. Relevance is easier to address, although it is laborious, time-consuming work. It is all about on-page optimization, which essentially means going through all your web pages to ensure keywords appear in headings, URLs, meta descriptions, and so on. Once you have done so, making a practice of ensuring that all new pages are optimized is easier.

Establishing authority is more difficult as it is not entirely in your control. When other websites link back to your pages for reference, it implies to Google and other search engines that your website is authoritative. Building links is a complicated business, however, and is fraught with risk. There are, for example, shady operators who sell links from poor-quality spammy sites that only exist to provide backlinks. Google is not taken in by these sorts of practices and is quite prepared to penalize sites that use underhand techniques. Therefore it’s important that backlinks are genuinely earned and come from reputable sites.

2. PPC

The issue with those SEO techniques mentioned above is they take time, maybe months, to gain traction. PPC stands for “pay per click” and it gets you a shortcut to the top of the search results. Again, it is all down to choosing the right keywords, but then you essentially “bid” on them to be featured in the paid results at the top of the results page.

PPC gets mixed reviews in the business community. The fact is that it’s effective if it is done right. Choosing the right keywords and knowing how much to bid is key, and these are specialist areas of expertise. For this reason, it’s worth getting some professional PPC support to get optimum value from a PPC campaign. Ultimately, it is the businesses that try to handle their own PPC that end up with red faces and write it off as a waste of money!

3. Social media marketing

The latest data says that around four billion people use social media. That’s more than half the world’s population. Roughly three billion are on Facebook alone. There has never been so powerful a way of reaching so many people, and frankly, if you don’t use social media marketing, you’re missing out.

Before the internet, businesses engaged with customers by getting to know them and chatting in-store about the latest products, the industry, and even about the latest gossip. Social media provides the means of doing exactly that in the digital age. On one hand, it drives traffic to the company’s website, boosting SEO, and sales. On another, social media engagement is a way to enhance brand recognition and loyalty and to stay one step ahead of the rest.

You also need to adjust your social media marketing strategy according to different social media platforms. Here are a few examples:

Facebook: The primary audience is Gen X and millennials. It’s ideal for B2C brand awareness and maybe a little advertising
Tiktok: The primary audience is Gen Z. It’s ideal for B2C brand awareness through video content
LinkedIn: The primary audience is Gen Z, baby boomers, and millennials. It’s ideal for fostering B2B relationships, business development, and social selling.

We could categorize Twitter, Instagram, and so on in the same way. In addition, consider marketing products across success blogs, or starting a blog relevant to your business on your website.

How to market on social media

Creating a social media marketing strategy can be made easy by this five-stage process:

Research buyer personas and target audience.
Determine which social media platforms are most appropriate to focus on.
Establish the relevant KPIs.
Take a look at what your competitors are doing. Reflect this back into stages 2 and 3.
Set to work creating unique and interesting content.
Plan a schedule for the publication of your content.

Adjust your marketing strategies now

SEO, PPC, and social media marketing are just three of a whole range of digital marketing tools. They look simple from the outside, but there is a big difference between giving them lip service to check the box and really getting them to work for you and your business. Take some time to revisit your SEO, PPC, and social media marketing strategies. Optimized, they can make all the difference in making sure your business is among the successful minority that stands the test of time.

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Alaine Meier is a blogger at LadyBossBlogger. She graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with a BA in Economics and a minor in Environmental Studies.

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