Recent Project and Job Topics > Marketing
Marketing Online Businesses
Whether it's a store, platform, content site, or blog, your online business is going to need marketing. Selling products or services means attracting paying customers, and selling advertising means attracting advertisers and an audience. All of this falls under marketing online business, but the actual tactics used by different types of businesses may vary. There is a large toolbox to choose from, but the main subsets of marketing online business are audience acquisition and monetization. For all types of online businesses, tracking and optimizing the important metrics is key to profitability and growth.
Audience acquisition is a must for any online business, but the type of audience depends on the type of business. Content businesses such as blogs, magazines and forums benefit most from forming a loyal core of repeat visitors. When visitors spend a lot of time on the site and return often, or contribute in comments or forums, the web site benefits from an engaged audience. This makes it possible to sell subscriptions or advertising, and create a viable business by providing valuable content or a venue for user generated content.
When it comes to marketing, online business focused on content should not allocate a high budget to audience acquisition, but mostly employ low cost methods such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, and viral marketing. If designed correctly, these types of sites have a strong built-in viral component, where visitors bring their contacts into the discussion or simply pass on the links to interesting content. Needless to say, top quality content is the first step to audience acquisition, and tracking visitor habits is required for improving content as well as selling advertising.
eCommerce sites also benefit from loyal audiences, but the bottom line is measured by purchases, so the priority is to get visitors to buy. Experts in marketing online business have many best practices for maximizing the chance a given visitor will make a purchase, and successful sites generate sales from one or more percent of all visitors. For this type of business, each visitor is a lot more valuable, and it makes sense to spend more on attracting them. While the first step is, as always, designing a top quality site that incites visitors to open their wallets, these types of businesses allocate more of their marketing efforts to paid methods such as advertising and affiliate programs.
The beauty of marketing online business is its accountability: with the right tracking tools, it's relatively simple to measure the return on investment of each marketing activity. Skilled online marketers can determine the optimal price to pay for each type of ad, based on how well it converts to sales, and structure affiliate commissions with maximum profitability in mind. Of course, many ecommerce sites benefit from loyal communities as well, from products with die-hard fans posting their stories on the web sites, to marketplace sites with buyers and sellers engaging in lively discussion. However, even in this type of hybrid model, the majority of the marketing spend is allocated toward driving sales, with community- and audience-building carried out via lower-cost methods.
Other than direct sales, online businesses can monetize, or bring in revenue and profits, via advertising sales and partnerships. Content sites that successfully bring in an audience can sell advertising or join affiliate programs. The easiest way to start bringing in ad revenue is placing Google ads on the site, but there are many other options. A large part of marketing online business is differentiating between and choosing the best combination of clients and partners for a content site to maintain a quality experience for the audience while building profitability.
Some web sites sell advertising through large third party platforms such as Google and Yahoo, others join ad networks based on their industry vertical or target audience, and many choose to create their own advertising program, selling ads directly to advertisers. Selling advertising directly requires a sales force (or some time on the owner's part, if the business is a solo endeavor), as well as a good understanding of the types of potential advertisers and how to approach them. A professional specializing in marketing online business can be helpful here to create a segmentation of clients and promotional materials to use when selling to them.
Joining affiliate programs is another way to drive revenues from content, and is best suited to sites specializing in a specific topic or industry vertical. This creates a natural match between the audience and products to which they may be referred, such as a literature review site that posts affiliate links to online shops in book reviews, and collects a percentage of the sale from the bookseller. Finally, a content site can sell its own content in ebooks and other bundles: even when most of the content is available for free, customers are willing to pay to access it in a well-organized, attractively designed format. Which of these strategies is right for your business? Consider getting advice from a consultant who has spent years marketing online business, and reap the rewards.
