Companies have got no choice but to evolve with the new digital age that we’re in. Gone are the days of relying on brochures, pamphlets and posters as the most important part of any marketing strategy.

A strong marketing strategy can set your business aside from the rest and set it up for great success. There are so many ways to do marketing online but luckily we don’t have to try all of them out. There are true, tried and tested strategies that are the key components to every company’s success. These have been narrowed down from over at least 100 strategies and they work for almost any type of online business.

Not only will these techniques help boost your business’s online presence but it will also improve your overall performance.

Email Marketing

What is email marketing and why is it necessary

Email marketing you’re able to send personalized emails to your customers updating them about new products and services, discounts and promotions. This enhances the relationship with your customers and potential customers.

Email marketing is really effective. You’re able to reach more customers through their mobiles phones. It can be used as a great tool for interaction between you and your customers. It’s also an easy way to measure your marketing efforts.

Here are some email marketing tips to get you started

Build your email list – having a form that captures the details of the potential clients on your website is a start. You have to be clear about what your users will be signing up for.
Encourage signups – include a signup cat(call to action) on your homepage, contact page or at the bottom of your homepage.
Create your email type – do you want to send out promotional emails Sales and loyalty emails for your customers. The type of email you send should be determined by the type of business you have.
Creating specific emails and email designs – the way to do this is to separate your clients by their demographics ( gender, age, location), those who have previously made any type of purchase or even engagement.
Analyze the performance of your emails – after it has been sent, this will tell you whether you’re reaching your customers in a positive or more negative light.
Be consistent – consistency is key to holding and maintaining and good relationship with your clients. Consistency helps build trust, your clients will be expecting an email from you daily or weekly.

Things to avoid in email marketing

Forgetting to be mobile friendly – the majority of your audience will be using their mobile phones to check social media and their emails. having an email that’s not mobile-friendly can do a great disservice to you.
Not being professional – I don’t blame the common internet user to be a bit skeptical of new websites. Being professional will surely help you with one foot in the door.
Check your grammar – seems like an obvious one but often overlooked by many. Grammar and spelling are really important factors. Bad grammar and misspelling words can look really unprofessional. An app I recommend is Grammarly, it checked your grammar and spelling as you’re typing.

Use SEO (search engine optimization)

What is SEO and why is it necessary?

SEO also is known as search engine optimization is the simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what the site is offering. It’s basically like quality control for websites

SEO is what helps your business appear at the top of search engine results. The higher your website is on the search engine the more people will see your site as a source of credibility. This, in turn, will potentially drive more traffic to your website.

SEO can be a challenging thing to deal with when you’re getting started but it’s essential especially in today’s competitive market.

With a strong SEO strategy, your website will be associated with keywords that allow people to find your services. This will increase your chance of an individual choosing your website over many others. With this advantage, you’ll be able to build an even more strong and effective SEO strategy.

SEO is not much of an investment you’re creating and posting new content on a regular. It is well worth the extra effort if it’s just to make sure that your site is indexed properly.

Here are some SEO tips if you’re new to the concept

Link your homepage to your popular posts
An important part to SEO should be to ensure that your link authority gets directed from your homepage to your most important subpages. By creating clear links you’ll ensure that it’s useful from a user experience standpoint as well.
Avoid using big images
Having large images can slow down the rate at which the page loads up. By optimizing the size of your image and reloading it, you’re making it easier for yourself and improving your site speed.
Use forums and social hubs
This can help you uncover really valuable keywords before any other site. By monitoring conversations on social media within your niche. You’ll often pick up on the frequently asked questions and most spoken about topics.

Things to avoid when using SEO

Using incorrect keywords – going overboard with keywords can negatively affect your SEO performance
Publishing content that’s not original – this is one thing that can drastically affect your SEO performance. Your site will be downgraded and be pushed to the bottom of the search engine results.
Low-quality content – not putting much effort into your content can really do you a disservice. Take time out to produce good quality content.

Use Affiliate marketing

Underrated and often underestimated, affiliate programs can be extremely effective.

For people who believe in your business, they can share your information and assist you in growing your market on a commission based platform. Not only will this get more people involved, but it also shows your potential clients that you sometimes take time to engage with them.

What is an affiliate program and why is it necessary?

Affiliate program or marketing is a type of performance-based marketing. It’s a key strategy that allows your business to prosper. This is where other people can earn a small commission by bringing new visitors and customers to your site.

An affiliate program helps improve your sales, you’ll be able to keep most of your profits and drives more traffic to your site. It’ll expand the size of your potential customers, increase the approach of your brand and it will manage your affiliates and your ads.

These might not seem like a really important thing but the impact is immense and the benefit is definitely worth it.

Here are some tips for building a really good affiliate network

Join an affiliate network
It can be quite complicated at first but it’s one of the quickest ways to expand your affiliate network.
Make your affiliate policy clear
Your approach has to be clear and easy to follow with the important information, like what to do, how it works and how much money will be awarded.
Promote an affiliate program
By promoting your own program, you’ll attract many affiliates and increase your reach. The more people are aware of it the more will joining your program.

Here are things to avoid in affiliate marketing

Irrelevant keywords – not using the proper keywords will reduce the number of people that find your site.
Not checking your analytics -without checking your analytics you won’t be able to track t performance if your website and you don’t know how to improve your site.
Sticking to the old – not changing up your tactic can make your website redundant and this will reduce your engagement.

Social Media Marketing

What is social media and why is it necessary?

Everybody knows what social is. Social Media is an ever-changing web-based technology that allows vast amounts of people to share information through virtual networks Md communities.

Social can helps increase awareness of your business or brand. You’ll be able to reach a large number of people (potential customers). Since it’s ever-changing and constantly evolving, it’s safe to say that it’s one of the best things to use.

You see, with social media, there are a lot of platforms to choose from. Not every platform will be suitable for your business, nonetheless, it’s a great way to communicate with your target audience.

Here are some tips for choosing the correct social media platform

Identify who your audience is – this is where you identify and narrow down on your niche. What would their age, gender or educational level be Your audience demographics, the level of income and their interests in and around your topic.
YouTube – Youtube has become one of the biggest and most frequently used social media platforms. Being able to search any “day” or “how to” videos with minimum effort. It’s no surprise that many businesses are taking a liking to it.
YouTube Advertising is one of the best things to use to bring more awareness to your brand. Over a billion hours of hours are watched daily.

Instagram – Instagram is a really good place to generate new leads. Along with Pinterest, Instagram is one of the fastest growing social platforms that reach a ridiculously vast audience, especially younger people.
Instagram advertising, also known as promotions can help you reach more people but it’s not as effective as YouTube ads.

Linkedin – Linkedin, connecting the working class and professionals. This app is well known to target the older audience. It Also has a narrowed down search for anything particular.
This is one of the best apps to get B2B leads and for looking for future employees.

Twitter – Twitter is a great platform that can be used for any type of company. Since it offers real-life updates and uses hashtags to group conversations and topics. It’s the perfect platform to use when wanting to do offline events and engagement.
Pinterest – Pinterest is a female-dominated platform. Mostly used for scrapbooking and pinning, it’s perfect for retail. It’s proven to have a strong link to retail sales.
Facebook – Facebook is used to connect people and get in contact with an old friend. It’s the perfect platform to use for building loyalty and holding older customers.
This is effective and an inexpensive way to get across to like-minded users.

When it comes to social media, there are tons of marketing tips and tricks one could use. Being clued up about all the ways one could possibly use as part of your marketing strategy.

Things to avoid in Social media marketing

Sticking to one platform – not broadening the number of platforms you use will surely keep your business in a very deprived state.
Choosing all the platforms – not every platform is suitable for each business. Some of them will increase audience engagement and others will decrease your audience engagement.
Not acting like a person – your audience needs to know that they can relate to you, if they cannot relate to you then there’s no point in following you.

Blogging

What is blogging and is it necessary?

Producing and writing content that’s relevant to your business. This is a way of communicating with your audience and spreading a message.

Blogging allows you to engage with your target audience and current customers of a personal level. This allows you to build a strong relationship with your customers and loyal customer base

Blogging is one of the best ways to better your SEO and raise your rank on the search engine results.

This is one of the most important ways to improve your marketing strategy and SEO. Most businesses use blogs as a side to their website.

Here are some quick tips and tricks to starting your blog

Get your blog online – you must have a blog post to get your blog online. You also need blogging software.
Build our content strategy – this is an important part of blogging. Knowing your niche will help you with your content creation and strategy.
Have a regular posting schedule – Having a regular schedule will help you build trust with your niche. You’ll be setting the expectation for yourself and your niche.
Promote your posts – promoting your blog is one way to drive traffic to your blog. You should focus as much time on promoting as you do writing content.

Things to avoid in blogging

Digressing – it’s common to get distracted but straying off the point in your blog is a surefire to losing subscriber and followers.
Your writing is too rigid – it might seem like common sense to write in a ridiculously professional manner but sometimes this can be off-putting. Write like your talking, you’ll seem more relatable to your audience.
Not being consistent – consistency is key. Being inconsistent will confuse your audience. If you post 5 articles a week and then 2 the following week, it’ll be difficult to build the habit of consistency.

All of these tips will allow you to post consistent keyword which will assist yours in your search engine strategy.

Learn Web Design

So, what is web design and why is it necessary?

When people talk about web design, they’re referring to the design of websites that are displayed on the Internet. A web designer focuses on

The appearance of the website -relates to the colors, font, and images used.

Layout – refers to how information is structured and categorized.

In some cases the content on the site.

The design of your website can either make or break your business’s online presence. It actually makes a difference on how your target audience views your business or company and potentially turn them into your customers.

Often overlooked and pushed to the side, we don’t usually think that web design can be used as one of our marketing strategy tactics. Our website, more often than not influences how long and how often our visitors come to the page and stay on it. With having an online business, your website is definitely the center of your digital marketing efforts. One thing to note is that it does not matter how much time and effort you put into your strategy, you’ll still lose customers. This is part of a natural business cycle and in the end, you’ll gain new customers and possibly keep them.

If you don’t have the skills to design a website then hiring someone will be a good investment to your business. Hire someone who is able to design a more modern, mobile friendly and an attention-grabbing website.

Here are some tips if you’re new to web design

Fill up all the blank spaces
Blank spaces can be filled with any color. Use a color that’s easily caught by the eye. It also works well with plain text which can ease the reading experience.

Create something unique
In the world of today, there are so many lookalikes and replicas of popular sites. To attract and keep the traffic, focus on developing a feature that will only be associated with your site.

Create a mobile-friendly site
This is a big one, considering that the majority use their mobile phones for almost everything. Doing research, using it for social media, etc.

Things to avoid when using web design

Hard to find contact info – your subscribers need to be able to contact you easily. Contacts don’t want to have to work hard to get in touch with you.
Choosing an unclear font – the desire to fancy and stand out from the crowd is real but having a font that isn’t clear to your audience can be extremely distracting and off-putting.
Not answering visitors questions – by answering your visitor’s questions you’ll be turning them into potential subscriber and customers

Understand your audience and speak TO them.
Understanding who your audience is and what motivates and drives them will be essential. You’ll find it easy to build a good relationship with your audience.

Not the usual tip but some advice. A common mistake most small businesses make when trying to reach their audience is how they communicate. It’s not just about getting your content to be noticed or getting your message across, it’s about how you do it.

There’s a difference between speaking TO you audience and AT them. When learning how to communicate with your audience, learn about their demographics, learn about their emotional desires when it comes to products. Catering to the needs of your audience is important. By learning these little personal details about your clients you’ll learn their language and mildly about their persona. This will help your audience feel more connected to you on a personal level. Your audience will also feel as though you can relate to them, which builds more trust between you and your audience.

Having sound knowledge of the above can definitely help you get started at planning your business’s online marketing strategy.

The list above is a solid 100% successful way of building a good online business strategy. This list is compacted and put together from tried tested strategies.

Marketing is forever changing along with technology and social media, moving forward with the times will ensure that your business moves toward smoothly. The best thing you can do is to consistently educate yourself because… consistency is key.