*This post is contributed by Beth Jones
Whether you are trying to expand your organization or grow your business, the answer is online marketing. The world has changed and now it’s cheap and easy to make a splash across the net. By doing this, you can get new support in your cause, funding for your business venture or an added interest to your idea. However, first you need to understand what internet marketing is and how it can help you.
There are a number of different types and forms of internet marketing. We’re going to look at some of the main, more useful ones with examples of how they could help people with individual situations. Let’s begin by examining SEO.
SEO
SEO is quite difficult to quantify and explain because it could be seen as an umbrella term. A number of different types of internet marketing are covered in this category. In fact, we could go as far to say that if you’re promoting your business, online you’ll be altering your SEO. Specifically, SEO refers to your site online and is expanded to search engine optimization. This means that, using SEO your site will have a better chance of appearing high up on SERPS. Search engine results pages are what consumers use to find a product, service or anything they are interested in online. Therefore, it is in your best interest to use some form of SEO.
To make your site SEO friendly, you can either use a professional marketer. Or, you can do some work on your site yourself. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to complete a job like this, and it can be quite easy. You should start by filling your blog or site with high-quality content. We recommend that you write as many articles as you can without diminishing the quality. Then, you will see your search ranking increase, though perhaps not to the extent you want it to. You will also need to use keywords and link building but only if it’s organic. You can not put a link into an article if it doesn’t fit. If you do this, you could receive a penalty from Google. Don’t forget that if you are blogging you must tag your articles with categories that match. That way you will get the attention of people interested in your blog.
Website Design
However, SEO is only half of the puzzle because you also need to think about website design. A successful SEO campaign isn’t going to mean much if once users find your site they don’t like what they see. A website says a lot about a business, organization or even a person. If you want to make a good impression your site needs to be unique and say exactly what you want it to. This is why some people choose to use specialist designers for their site. You may want to bring new attention to your church and get the support of the local public. You would first start with a local SEO campaign. But then you would need to consider how to style your site. At that point, you could arrange to use a church website service. They would create the site for you in a way specifically designed for your cause.
This type of specialist design is available for a whole range of different causes, communities, and industries. Now, you should be starting to understand how valuable a strong online marketing campaign can be. But, we’re not finished yet.
PPC
Next, we’re going to look at an alternate possibility to SEO. Specifically, we’re going to discuss pay by click marketing. Pay by click marketing is exactly what it says. You pay based on how many people click on the link to your site. We imagine quite a few as PPC means that your site will appear in the sponsored links on a SERP. While this may sound like an advantage, you should be aware that only thirty percent of users click these links. You also need to understand that you are paying for hits, not customers. If you get a thousand people clicking on your site but only 1 in 100 making a purchase, you could be in trouble. Similarly, if you’re just running a communal site, it could be a waste of money if people are clicking and leaving within seconds. So what can you do to make people stay and become a customer.
Remarketing
It’s possible to set up a remarketing campaign for your site. That means when people click on your page if they leave they will be tagged. Their IP address will then be followed by an ad for your company, organization or a product that you offer. This ad might lead them back to your site and give you another chance at peaking their interest.
Social Media
You might be aware that most, if not all, of these concepts, will cost money. But for a business, this isn’t a problem. You will have a fund for marketing that you can spend however you like, and we strongly recommend you invest in all forms of internet marketing. For an organization or perhaps a charity, the situation is different. You won’t have unlimited funds for marketing, and you should be looking at ways to advertise yourself for free. You can do this by using social media. On social networks, you can spread the word about your organization and generate new interest. You can even lead followers who have found your social profiles to your site. The best way to do this is to set up on all the online networks that you can think of. Update them regularly you will soon find you get more and more followers.
Finally, don’t forget to use the social networks to get information from your site shared across the web. Making something from your site go viral is one of the easiest ways to dramatically boost your SEO. This could be an article or blog post that has made an impression online.
Using these marketing techniques you will succeed no matter what your agenda is.
