Ideas For Effectively Monetizing Internet Marketing Campaigns

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

http://www.techwench.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/internet-marketing.jpg

Anupam Singh (1111173) | Sandheep Kumar VR (1111219)

Submitted To

Prof. Seema Gupta

IIMB

CCS Term 6

Ideas for effectively monetizing Internet Marketing Campaigns and Avoiding Pitfalls

http://www.linxsmart.com/images/internet-marketing-image.png

Contents

Internet Marketing Concepts

With the advent of the internet marketing media, the choices for the marketers to showcase their brands have increased considerably. Combined with the faster metrics to analyze viewership, targeting and on the fly content, online marketing sphere is a dynamic domain. The marketers feel a need to build on their capability to integrate with the internet paradigm. The learning points can act as gap fillers to help them better understand the internet medium and to devise strategies for tapping it.

The study of the various elements of advertising adds value to have a holistic understanding of the domain. The advertising scheme is based upon several components, which includes the keyword strategy. It is important to understand why the keyword strategy adds value for web advertisers. Keywords are very important for advertisements as they are used by search engines to find whether a particular website is relevant. Advertisers try to match the keywords with the phrases that they assume the potential customers to enter in a search engine like Google and Bing.

A proper keyword strategy is very important for the marketer. If the keyword is relevant to what the customer is searching for, the page containing the advertiser’s item details or the advertisement will be displayed. It is important to note that the advertiser may want the customer to see a particular page when a search query is entered or he may want a certain advertisement to be displayed that matches the search query. The second case is about paid search advertising while the first is the organic search results. The keyword strategy in both the cases is similar.

There are several key things that need to be considered why drafting the keyword strategy. The book also highlights these points. First, the keyword should be relevant to the product being sought for, the theme of the site, the core elements of the company, or the solution that the company or advertiser perceives to provide to the customer. Irrelevant keywords result in high bounce rates, customer dissatisfaction, loss of credibility and anxiety. The marketer should make sure that the keyword policy is taken care of. Keyword research is often employed to find the most relevant keywords. The competitiveness of the keywords chosen by the marketer can be assessed by online tools like Google Keyword Tool or HubSpot.

Secondly, it is important to design the web experience around these keywords and place them in locations that make it easier for web search engines to find them. By using a process called search engine optimization or SEO, the marketers can provide clues to the web designers to put the keywords in specific portions of the web page. Examples can be including the keywords in portions of the webpage like Meta, Head etc. The keywords should small, optimally less than 70 characters long. This helps in readability in web search results, and also is easier for the system to match with user queries. Tools like MarketingGrader assign a score to the website and help to find if it is optimized in the keyword strategy.

It sometimes gives a false belief that having keyword stuffing may help the website to get a higher rank in organic search results or in paid search listings. Web marketers should avoid keyword stuffing, which is having the keywords repeated all over the web page. The search engines are optimized to detect these and they disregard them. Also it is a bad user experience.

The SEO can be improved by having inbound links. Links that are inbound refer to other pages in the same website. Also if several other websites can point to the advertiser’s website, its page rank significantly improves. For example, if a company has a portfolio of products each of which have a website, they can point to each other internally and their page rank improves. Also including the keywords in the website URLs improves its rank significantly. A higher rank is directly related to the ease in which a prospective customer is able to locate the pages representing the brand. A higher rank is hence sought after by marketers to increase the eyeballs from the customers.

http://blog.seo4site.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Internet-Marketing.jpg

Fig. The Internet Marketing Tree

Business blogging is one area which the web marketers can harness to promote their brands. The blog can be a component of the business website. It adds dynamicity to the web content. The added fresh content can promote higher ranking to the websites. This higher ranking promotes more visitors that can transform into more potential for sale. The blogs can be hosted in popular blogging platforms like Wordpress, Drupal etc. The blog post can be linked to the main website via a hyperlink. Successful business employ blogs a communication medium to further the brand promise to the customers. The information shared in a blog may include recent innovations by the company, newer products, a campaign or news about the industry that may impact its customers. Blogs usually have a comments section for the reader to share the viewpoints about the content of the subject matter.

Successful blogs have a strong and compelling title linked to the business or the brand. It is well written and formatted. Adding multimedia content like images, video, voice and graphics makes the user experience more enriching and the interaction more fun. Having links in text add authenticity to the web content and also provide a reference point to the reader if they choose to explore more. A call to action button that redirects them to a form or a purchase page is also handy in the blog.

The purpose of blogging in the business world is all about generating leads. These leads can be traced by the sales departments and converted into a sale if possible. To convert website traffic into leads, the following four steps are very important – 1. Selecting what to offer like free materials like eBooks, webinar etc.; 2. Creating call to action buttons. The calls to action buttons are those buttons that provide user some incentives to click them. The incentive can be a free downloadable eBook, a webinar, option to receive newsletter to gain further information or a form for further follow-up. The content of the blog should create interest in the user so that they are more willing to click on the call to action button. 3. Creating the landing pages. This page is where the user lands after click on the call to action button and it should be relevant to it; 4. The final step is to test, measure and iterate the entire process.

Promoting content through social media is also a very lucrative option. Social websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn provide tremendous opportunities for web marketers to showcase their offerings. For example in Facebook, a company can register to create a profile. A good strategy is to register the profile-name same as the brand name and to upload a profile photo that is the brand logo or a winning product. The company then can use this page to announce new product launches, new promotional campaigns, competitions to involve the users as well as a media to get feedback from the users. This needs to be monitored to avoid any hate comments being spread. The company can allocate resources part time to answer any customer query or concern that comes up on the website.

Monitoring social media is also very important. Google alerts for the products, brand or industry can be delivered directly to the web marketer’s mailbox. HootSuite can help marketers save keywords to find out what is being said about their brands. Social media monitoring tool by HubSpot can create filters so that conversations relevant to the industry be tracked.

HootSuite tool can bring all the online media channels that the marketer is using under one integrated platform. Using it, the marketer can track the hot discussions, high ranking keywords, activity in the various campaigns across different social media website etc. Using a unified interface, the marketer can interact with and address issues raised by users across a number of social media websites. It also has several analytical functionalities that can help to tract metrics like usage behavior, top impact keywords, polling results etc.

http://www.spacecityseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/houston-internet-marketing.jpg

Fig. The Social Network and Company

Lead nurturing is an important concept where the marketer needs to be constantly in touch with the lead to eventually convert them into customers. They may use a system to pre qualify them as potential customers. Once pre qualified, more targeted emails can be sent to them giving more information about the offering. As the customer lists loose 75% of their entrants in a year, it is very important to update this list periodically with qualified leads. The users that come to the landing page should have an option to enroll themselves to receive further promotional information.

Optimizing promotion for mobile marketing is also often integrated with e-marketing. With the increasing usage of Smartphone, marketers try to develop mobile friendly versions of the websites. The website use simple code to determine the medium by which they are being access and then it can choose to display a version of it optimized to the screen size for the device. Services like sms based promotions, service messages in collaboration with mobile operators, WAP based mobile internet advertising are also fertile avenues to explore for the marketer.

Internet Marketing Ecosystem

Internet is an information source that is accessed by 2.45 billion people worldwide. This amounts to 35% of the world population of 7 billion (2011). It is a platform to search for information, connect with people, carry out business activities or just to express oneself. The million dollar homepage started a revolution in display ads and showed the immense monetization capabilities in the online medium. Advertising on this platform provides an immense opportunity to advertisers to target their offerings to people. They can showcase their products that match the information the users are looking for in the internet. This increases the chances to getting business and also increases the popularity of their brands. Website owners may use their online real estate to host these ads and earn revenue.

With several billions of unique URLs detected by search engines daily, the information source is definitely vast. If the site witness traffic and users are exposed to relevant ads, the probability of the users to be influenced by it increases. The financial dynamics of online advertising are hence greatly influenced by the site reputation, traffic witnessed, relevancy etc.

Cumulative Annual Growth Rate of online ads is about 24%. US reported an online ad spending of about $31.3 billion in 2011 up from $26 billion in 2010. Advertisers invested about 7.5% in 2008 of their budget in online ads, which is poised to increase to 15-18% in 2012 (Yankee Group Research Report).

http://www.stateofthemedia.org/files/2011/03/1-online-search-continues-to-dominate.png

Fig. Impact of Search in Online Advertising (Source: eMarketer)

http://www.stateofthemedia.org/files/2011/03/2-online-all-but-two-types-of-online-ads-increase.png

Fig. Internet Marketing Media Statistics (Source: eMarketer)

The key players in the online advertising market are highlighted below:

Advertisers – They have a product or service to offer and put up an advertisement to showcase it. Advertisers can be the actual producer of the good or service or they may be a third party representing the actual producer.

Publishers – Website owners who offer online real estate to host the advertisements are the publishers. They include search engines, news sites, blogs etc. The more popular the website, the more is the demand for an ad space and hence translates into a higher cut of the ad revenue for the publisher

Ad Agencies – Ad agencies are involved in generating the creative (the actual ad). They are hired on behalf of the advertisers or their representatives. With the advent of rich media ads, the agencies are delivering ads that are complex, visually diverse and immersive to the customers.

Ad Networks – To bring together the advertisers and publishers into a common platform where multiple publishers offer their real estate and multiple advertisers bring forward their ads, ad networks play an important role. It increases the market size and offers variety for both these parties. Both publishers and advertisers communicate with the network using a UI that tries to make their transaction seamless and smooth.

Ad Exchanges – Multiple ad networks are integrated using Ad exchanges. They act as a clearing house for ads. If an advertiser which belongs to ad network A wants to display an ad in an empty frame offered by a publisher in ad network B, the ad exchange facilitates it. The exchange puts up a markup on the cost to the advertiser for the service. It aids in market expansion and increasing the reach for both advertisers and publishers.

Users – They are the target of the advertisers. Users utilize the internet for their needs and are exposed to the advertisement. They may eventually buy the product or services offered by the advertiser and hence generate revenues for them. The objective of the advertisers is to maximize the conversion of the users into buyers of their offerings.

The world online ad spending is a showing a very positive growth trend. This growth is triggered by increasing internet usage in the developing countries. The following figures give the statistics for the US market.

US Online Ad Spending, 2010-2015 (billions and % change)

Fig. US Online Ad Spending (Source: eMarketer)

US Online Display* and Search** Ad Spending, 2010-2015 (billions)

Fig. Display Vs Search Ad Spending (Source: eMarketer)

The advertisements placed online are exposed to the users along with the information they are searching for, the page they are visiting or in an intermediate page or frame that is displayed before the actual page is displayed. The online ads are categorized as follows:

Floating ad: Moves across the user screen and floats over page contents

Expanding ad: Changes size and may affect the page contents

Polite ad: A ad which is broken down into several small pieces and downloaded in sequence so to avoid clogging the browser resources and effective rendering.

Wallpaper ad: The background is the page viewed is changed.

Trick banner: The web page simulates a dialog box with several buttons. An alert of informational message can be simulated.

Pop-up: A new window is opened covering the existing one. It is used to show an ad either in part or covering entire page.

Pop-under: Following the similar style of rendering as Pop-Up with the exception that the new window is rendered or sent in the background or below the active window and the viewer does not notice it till some active windows are killed.

Video ad: This takes the ad display to the next level with adding the movements to a static advertisement. The advertisers can employ the same content and style for both television and internet advertising. The video ad gives a feeling of watching the TV in a browser environment.

Map ad: Linking both textual elements and location data to develop a layer of metadata on top of the map. Additional advertisement information can be shown on top of place information in a map.

Mobile ad: A WAP, SMS or MMS based ad that may use multimedia elements.

Superstitial: A fully animated and active ad that can use pictures, video, location information mixed with active flash content to provide a 3D TV like experience.

Interstitial ad: A hard advertisement tactic where the user is shown a full page of ad before he is directed to the actual page of content.

An ad campaign may involve several forms of advertising programs. It may depend upon the mode of display, the carrier of the ad or based upon user preferences. The advertising programs that are commonly employed by the advertisers may include the following either singularly or as a combination:

E-mail advertising – With the option to voluntarily opt in or opt out, the users are sent specific emails with product and promotion details.

Display advertising – Using various types of elements like banners, windows and textual representation, display advertising is commonly found in a lot of websites. These elements can be composed of static or dynamic content, with an option to interact with the ad as well as audio-visual characteristics.

Affiliate marketing – It is a marketing practice where the brand advertisers place complete campaign with a number of publishers of small to large web real estate. The revenue model depends heavily on payment of fees when there is traffic generated to the target website. Campaign can be structure on a CPM or CPC format. The measured element can be a signup, filling forms or selling an item.

Behavioral targeting – Behavior targeting tracks the web users’ online behaviors and services an ad to the most appropriate target user. Cookies are usually employed. Depending upon past searches, site visits etc. a targeted ad is shown to the user.

Semantic advertising – The method uses the technique of semantic analysis to the website visits. Using complex algorithm based on pattern and text matching, the process maps the ads to the most relevant webpage based upon the content, subject, meaning and comments etc.

A display ad has a graphic associated with it that describes about the product. It may also be an interactive that allows the users to click on in, hover over it etc. Clicking or interacting with it takes the user to the page known as the landing page which has the details of the offerings from the advertiser. Sometimes the user may be exposed to several intermediate pages before the landing page loads. Clicking on the ad first leads to a call to the referrer page hosted by the ad network that records the click and metadata. It is used to record revenue, generate the metrics and other relevant information that may be communicated to the advertiser in an aggregate form.

A text ad in general is composed of the following parts:

Ad subject: Tries to lure the users’ attention in a short creative sentence. It provides basic information about the ad.

Ad description: Short description about the ad. It is no more than a couple of sentences.

Target URL: It is the URL of the landing page, where the user is directed to and hence interacts directly with the advertiser.

Display URL: It is the URL displayed to the user. It may not be the same as the target URL.

The revenue model deals with how the payment occurs in the online advertising space. The publishers or advertisers may opt-in for a relevant model to suit their needs. Several key revenue models are highlighted below:

CPC – Cost Per Click. The advertiser pays the ad network and the publisher when the user clicks in the ad

CPM – Cost Per Mille. It is the cost paid to the ad network and the publisher per 1000 impressions (number of times the ad is displayed to a user)

CPA – Cost Per Action. Payment is made when the user completion some action e.g. he fills an online form or completes a survey.

CPV – Cost Per Visitor. Payment is made when a user visits the advertiser website.

Cost Per Conversion – Payment is made when a user makes a purchase and hence a customer is acquired.

Fixed Cost – Payment is made for using a publisher frame for a campaign for fixed dates.

The general workflow for online ads follows the following steps:

The user enters the website URL in the browser to search for some information

The browser communicates with the webserver which responds to the request and the website starts loading in the browser

The website may have iframes for display of ads. These iframes point to the network ad server which stores the ads. The advertiser defines the ad campaign and stores the creative in the network ad server

The network ad server responds by choosing an ad corresponding to certain algorithms (which include revenue and relevance concepts)

The ad creative is inserted into the iframe and the page including the ads is rendered into the user web browser.

Sometimes large advertisers employ advertiser ad servers to contain the creative. In this case, the network ad server redirects the user browser to the advertiser ad server which responds with the appropriate ad to insert into the iframe.

The below architecture diagrams illustrate this scenarios discussed. The data flow diagram shows the flow across the advertiser, publisher and the user.

image

Fig. The Steps in Online Ad Servicing

Lead generation

There are multiple inexpensive methods of generating leads over Internet:

Using Search engine optimization, the amount of leads generated organically can be measured based upon keywords used by visitors.

Designing a viral video, creative photo, graphic with data or Internet meme

Applying the social networking methods to showcase the products and services

Article and Forum marketing

Crafting an Internet Marketing Strategy

Planning Online and Offline Marketing Strategies

Companies should ensure that they do not follow inconsistent strategies for both online and offline marketing. The goals for any strategy are to:

Determine the measurable goals of the strategy

Establish milestones to reach and a set calendar

Decide on quantitative goals and qualitative goals

Online Marketing Strategy Planning

Online marketing involves research to find out ideal customer’s personal values and target demographics. Some basic guidelines in researching customers are

• Target Audience – Identify the average customer who will be appealed by the product or service. This information is crucial to develop a marketing strategy. Using a nonintrusive way, we need to find out what kind of customer he is and his values when beginning to form a marketing strategy.

• Think of the Ideal Customer – Here we need to answer the question "What kind of customer do you want to develop a relationship with?" It can help in broadening the appeal of the product or service if the ideal customer is not the same as the average customer.

• Assess Values – This extends to the values a customer has in both the product and the means of marketing. A customer will expect good quality and pricing, but what will he expect when it comes to the ways you market to him? Is he interested in a video demonstrating the product or service? Does he want to read other customer reviews of the product or service?

• Provide Information – Customers expect information on the product or service they could potentially purchase. Become a resource of reliable and trustworthy information. It will build relationships with customers and brand the company as trustworthy.

Integrating Online and Offline Planning

The online and offline strategy planning should complement each another. The company’s ultimate goals should be kept in mind when managing a company’s website. Both the online and the offline strategy should be integrated when managing a website.

Planning and Creating a Website

An Internet marketing strategy for a company cannot be a complete online strategy if it does not own and run a website. A website is the easiest way for consumers to gather information about a product or a service of a company. The website should be up to date running with the newest tools. If the website is properly designed, search engines will be able to easily recognize this website as having results for what potential customers are looking for.

Planning a Website

There are so many websites in the Internet and companies are coming up with unique designs which make their website more interesting. There are certain preliminary steps that need to be taken when planning a website. They are

Selecting domain name

Selecting web host

Determining the site manager

Deciding who will come up with creative content for the site

Listing end goals, and

Formatting layout of the site

Selecting a Domain Name

The domain name, which is usually the company name, should be able to grab the attention of potential customers. There are certain things that need to be considered when deciding on the domain name

Match the Domain Name and URL – Domain name and URL are not necessarily the same. But it is better if they are the same. Domain names need to be registered with a registrar. An annual fee needs to be paid for the rights of the website name.

Domain Name Length – The domain name length should not be too long. It should be able to be easily posted in billboards, brochures and advertisements. The name should be simple and easily spellable.

Company Name – It should be determined whether to put the name of the company in the domain name or not depending on whether the company name is easy to remember or whether there are others companies with the same or similar name.

Selecting the Web Host

Information about sites is hosted in the web hosts, which are a network of servers and computers. Using the web hosts, users view and access the website’s pages. Thus it is necessary to sign up with a web host before the website is launched. Web hosting services can either be free or commercial.

Who Will Manage the Site?

Either a professional or an already hired employee can be used to make the website. A professional would have more experience in creating websites and would be more creative than a hired employee. However hiring a professional could be a costlier option and small companies might not be able to afford it.

Who Will Make the Site’s Creative Content?

The creative content on a site will be the company’s graphics, logos and reflects the brand of a company. The description of products and services can be done creatively depending on the target segment of the product sold by the company. Here too the company needs to decide whether to hire a professional or use a hired employee. The professional might have a creative background which will help him/her to come up with better content for the website than a hired employee.

What Will the Site’s Layout Be?

The first step should be to make a rough sketch of how exactly the site layout will be and how it will connect to other pages in the website. The user should be able to easily navigate across pages. Since the home page is the first page that the user would most likely visit, it is necessary to make a good impression using easy navigation and good aesthetic design. The message that the company is trustworthy should be got across to the use through the design of the pages. Text and visuals are used to convey all the information. Certain pages such as "About Us", "Contact Us" are very important and hence needs to be given more importance than other pages. The user should get the right feel about the company from the site and it should reflect the culture and brand of the company. Fonts and background colours are very important and they convey a message about the company to the user..

What Are the End Goals?

If the desire to create a website is to sell products, then there should be a product catalogue displaying the prices and features of all the products. An e-commerce software would be required to complete the sale.

Creating the Website

Once the planning is done and there is a clear direction, the website can be created. The following steps need to be taken while creating a website

Designing the Site’s Web Pages

Testing the Site

Getting Noticed

Designing the Site’s Web Pages

Softwares that act as CSS, ASCII and HTML editors will have to be used to create a website. Some softwares that can be used to design web pages are

Dreamweaver

CodeLobster

Notetab Light

HAPedit

PSPad

Arachnophilia

Notepad ++

HTML Kit

Bluefish

Each of the above softwares has its own features and tools. While creating a page, it should be ensure that navigation of site is simple and important information is emphasized. Highlight important information and use important key words that users generally use to search for the kind of products that the company produces.

Testing the Site

The site needs to be tested from popular browsers such as

Internet Explorer

Mozilla Firefox

Google Chrome

Opera

Safari

A wider audience can be reached by making the site work in all the browsers. One way to test the website is to have the site test driven by many multiple users. They should be able to find the website even without the URL or the company name. Identify distracting features in the page and redesign the site if needed.

Getting Noticed

Once the site is ready, it should be made available to popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. When people search for the company or for products of the company, the site should be visible. The company can also make a payment to the search engine operators to make the site listed at the top. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is another way to get the website noticed by creating content with keywords associated with the company or product.

Social Media and Content Marketing

Social media is a very important tool to establish a company’s presence. It makes the company more visible and allows content about the company and products to be shared by others. Content Marketing is also an effective tool to make the company’s presence known. It involves creating content to influence the consumer’s opinion about the company’s product.

Fig. The Social Media Graph

Marketing with Social Media

Twitter and Facebook are the most popular social media networks where a company can market itself and its products. Options such as "like" and "share" in Facebook and "tweet" in Twitter can help in increasing brand awareness. Social media connects people and website content, as shown in the above figure. It is a conglomerate of varied networks that can increase a company’s presence and the brand that needs to be sold.

Why Use Social Media?

Communication, Education, Collaboration and Entertainment are the four main reasons to use social media as a marketing tool.

Communication – Social media provides one of the best forms of communicating directly with the consumers. The company should be proactive in initiating communication with the consumers. Social media allows consumers to easily find the company

Education – Social media is a great forum to educate consumers about the brand and the products of the company. The company should create effective content to educate the consumers. Pictures, Videos or Blogs can be used to educate the consumers through social media

Collaboration – Social media offers a platform to collaborate different formats. Blogs can be embedded with videos along with some written content. Social media provides connections and through collaboration, connections work

Entertainment – Based on the type of image of the company or the product, entertainment can be used effectively in social media. The company needs to maintain an appropriate tone and image depending on the products it is trying to sell

Social Media Optimization (SEO)

Utilizing social media as part of internet marketing strategy is absolutely a must. More than just a fad, social media networks and tools can be optimized to increase company’s presence on the internet and engage viewers in the brand. Social Media Optimization (SEO) is a term used to describe how best to use networks and tools of social media to increase a company’s Internet presence. There are 5 rules to SEO: Creating shareable content, simplifying sharing, rewarding engagement, proactive sharing of content, and encouraging mashup. Let’s take a closer look at each of these rules.

Creating Shareable Content – Linkability is the first step to creating shareable content. It provides access to the company’s website and the content produced about the company and product. Linkability is done by having specific link buttons added to the webpage of the content. The content itself is what is going to create buzz and interest in the product, and even the company. Whether customers like it, share it, or dig it, it is the quality of content that will increase traffic and the presence of the product and company.

Simplifying Sharing – This rule is a sort of extension of the previous rule. While providing linkability and shareable content to company and product, the potential consumer should not feel overwhelmed by a vast array of button links across a webpage. There are multiple ways that a user is able to share content, whether it is embedding video, creating a hashtag, or simply posting the content’s link. Simplifying the way a user shares content involves making the process effortless and less time-consuming.

Rewarding Engagement – Engaging user conversation is important when interest needs to be created in a company or product. This can occur in many different formats, from forums to posting shareable content. Though there are many different ways to measure how users engage in conversation, what matters is that it occurs. It creates interest, and will want to make this interest worth it by rewarding users, such as with more content.

Proactive Sharing of Content – Company should take part in this sharing process as well. Be proactive in the Internet’s social media market by posting different versions of a certain kind of content to multiple social media outlets.

Encouraging Mashup – A mashup consists of users taking original content and adding in their own content, creating something new that can be shared with the world. Company will want users to recreate and remix content within reason, but it is a great method to get users to share. It is also a useful method because it gives the user a voice as well as the feeling of being part of the company or the product. In recent years, companies have held contests involving user generated content such as videos or pictures. The purpose of the contests is to get consumers involved in the product and spread the visibility of the product.

The Different Kinds of Social Media

So far, we have talked about how to utilize social media to optimal effect. Now let us focus on the different kinds of sites and tools that you can use to create an effective Internet marketing strategy. Here are some of the different social media tools and sites that one can use:

Social Networks

Social Sharing Services

Multimedia

Blogs

Content Marketing

Content marketing can be described as marketing involving the creation of content to increase your influence of a consumer’s opinion on your product. Essentially, it is marketing geared towards improving the quality and development of your message through different media. The different types of media can range from the Internet to the radio.

The Five Components of Content Marketing

We can break down content marketing into five major components. The five components are:

Editorial-Based

Marketing-Backed

Behavior-Driven

Multimedia

Targeted

Let’s have a look at each of these:

Editorial-Based – This means that the content published about a company or product is in long form and tells the reader relevant information. The written content must also have some value to it, or else will not be able to hold the attention of your readers. It must be informative, but entertaining enough to allow readers to want to continue reading. The content should also be educational so that it can be viewed with merit.

Marketing Backed – Companies have underlying sales and marketing objectives that they support with sales copy designed to drive a sale. Ultimately, any association wants to create new business through its content. The content, again, must be true and valuable. It should explain the benefits to the consumer that your products and services provide.

Behavior-Driven – This means that content marketing seeks to change the opinion of a customer and prospective consumer. A company would want potential customers to know that what it is selling is better than the competition and that it meets all the claims the company makes about it. The best way to alter a person’s opinion is to have a superior product in the first place. However, a person’s opinion of a product goes beyond the product itself.

Multi-Platform – A company should use different social media tools to fully advertise the company and the product. Use video, the written word, pictures, audio, or television ads. Marketing will spread quick and across a wider audience range by using multiple media platforms.

Targeted – Marketing should be targeted towards a particular demographic. Name the demographic, or even the ideal customer. If the company does, then it can perform a content marketing strategy. Marketing requires knowledge of customers, and if company does not know who they are, this can reflect poorly in the execution of marketing strategy as well as the reputation of the company.

How to Use Content Marketing in Social Media

With the Internet, content is more than just creating something that is elegantly written or making a video in high resolution. Content marketing on the web means you must use different outlets and different means to get a message across. The boundaries of the ways to get content to your audience have decreased with the Internet. Still, your content must be appropriate to your message and the reputation of your company. More importantly, your content must conform to the social media platform or tool that you decide on using to get your message across. Before we get into the ways content is created and perceived, let’s begin by thinking about how the buying process goes for a consumer. A consumer may start his buying process by shopping online and researching products through the Internet. They may read reviews on certain websites from certified experts, or they may read what casual Internet users have to say about our company or product.

This process of researching is actually tough for market analysts to observe because there is no definite, measurable way to analyze it. What we do know, though, is that however a consumer buys a product, social media was a part of the decision making and shopping process.

There are three steps to implementing content marketing into social media. They are:

Creation

Distribution

Engagement

The creation step is the step where you are most involved. The content is not going to make itself, so be prepared to take that initial step! However, creation is also in the users’ hands as well, in the form of user generated content like reviews. The distribution and engagement steps are the steps where control of the content is gradually transferred to the users. While you should also participate in distribution and engagement, the collective efforts of Internet users are going to do the bulk of the marketing work. Let us take a closer look at each of these steps.

Creation – By far, this is the most crucial step in initiating content marketing in social media. This step includes both you and the users. You will be most involved in this step, but this step and all proceeding steps can be broken down into two categories: the company and users.

Company – To get image and content out there, you must first create it. You have already done so by establishing a website and social networking profile. This content is appropriated based on whatever social networking site you use, as well as the website. The content may include things like comments, videos, and photos to showcase what you are selling or articles talking about how to use the product or discussing topics relevant to people who would use the products or services. The content you use in other kinds of social media tools is also dependent on company and the product you are selling. You may not use the same types of tools that someone else uses, but if you do, it must be appropriate.

Users – Users are another factor in this step, and they have complete freedom to create content and say whatever they want. If you have a superior product in the first place, you will not have to worry too much about this. Still, you should provide superior customer service to respond to negative feedback in case something bad happens with the product. It will serve as a kind of safety net, but do not count on it completely. Ultimately, the image you show to the customers is reflected in the content they generate, so serving their needs and creating good products and content in the first place is a must. They can make blogs and reviews about your product, and these can be read by millions of other people. Remember, what is said on the Internet can stay on the Internet indefinitely.

Distribution – Again, this step involves both the company and users to participate in. While you will be doing work involving setting up advertisements, writing up blogs, or creating a video, users will also be at work distributing content of yours and their own.

Company – Depending on the type of social media tool you use, you will be distributing content in unique ways that are different from users. For videos, you might be creating an advertisement or creating a video tutorial to place on your website or blog. A weekly podcast might be introduced through a site or program that allows users to purchase and download the podcast. Social networks are where the majority of content is distributed. You might see photos of new products posted to a Facebook wall, or presentations sent out over email.

Users – Users distribute content in much the same ways as a company. The biggest difference is that content may not necessarily be their own. Whereas companies distribute their own content, users will distribute content that they generate in addition to a company’s content. They will use social network sites to share links, videos and photos. Their content is also distributed for others to see on review websites, which in turn may also be shared. Sharing, bookmarking, tagging, liking, and tweeting are just some of the ways that users distribute any type of content.

Engagement – By this step, users have taken a majority of control over content marketing. You, as a company, we still be part of this step in the form of responding to feedback and improving your product and company based on the desires of your consumers. Be sure to participate in this part of the process because it will reflect well on your company’s image and reputation.

Company – Though you will not be as much of a participant in this step, you will still want to engage in the conversation and keep it going. This could take the form of Facebook comments or posts on forums. This could also take the form of a video addressing concerns and issues with a recent product, or future plans that your company plans on implementing. Be sure that whatever the case, the content of these social media tools is relevant to your users and that it is something they will want to hear.

Users – If the creation and distribution of your content and user generated content has created conversation in your company or product, you have very likely created interest in both of them. They will also engage in conversation in the form of comments, wall posts, and forum posts. Secondarily, if your product has created enough interest, it will go beyond the Internet and people will start to talk about your product with others.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a term that refers to increasing your web presence through the use of keywords and searchability. There are different ways that a company can go about using SEM and there are some important elements to keep in mind when starting this type of marketing. The term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also a term that can be used interchangeably with SEM, but there is a difference in meaning between the two. While SEM may refer to improving your presence through organic, or free, listings on a search engine, it also refers to paying for an advertisement on a search engine or using pay-per-click or cost-per-click advertising. SEO, on the other hand, refers only to organic listings through a search engine. While being the most cost effective means to increasing your web presence, it is also the most preferred way. The following sections will discuss the different methods to perform SEM and what the differences are between the methods. Because of the importance of SEO, we will mostly discuss this type of SEM.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As we stated before, SEO is the most cost effective and preferred way to increase your presence on the web. The reason SEO is so preferred is that it costs virtually nothing to perform. Unlike paid advertising, you are optimizing the content and searchability of your website or social media outlet profile to get prospective customers to find you. The most important and basic components to SEO in your Internet marketing strategy are keywords and keyword phrases. These are the backbone of SEO and understanding them is essential to starting to implement SEO.

Basics of the Keyword and Keyword Phrases

Before implementing SEO, let us discuss the basics of the keyword and keyword phrases. For simplification, we will refer to keywords and keyword phrases as simply keywords. What exactly are keywords? A keyword is a search term that a user might type into a search engine to find a website. For example, if you sell weight loss supplements, some of your keywords could include:

Weight Loss

Lose Weight

Weight Loss Supplements

Nutrition Supplements

Diet Pills

Diet Supplements

Weight Loss Pills

Weight Loss Powder

As you can see here, there are many different keywords that a user might type in for the same type of product. You will want to keep this in mind when determining the different kinds of keywords to put into the content of your website, as we will discuss in a later section.

Keywords can range from single words to long phrases, and you will want to be prepared to think of all the different types of keywords possible that are likely to be searched for by users. It is important to keep in mind that you can never have too many keywords as long as they are relevant to your company and the product you are trying to sell.

Determining Your Keywords

This will be an important part of your SEO strategy and will require effort on you and your team’s part. However, there are also free and paid resources on the Internet that can help you even further in fully optimizing you strategy. Do not forget to fully exploit these resources.

First, you are going to want to sit down and think of the most obvious keywords that people will type into a search engine. Think about what your customers are looking for and how they would phrase their search. Remember, your keywords must be relevant to the company and the product you are selling.

As you come up with different keywords, try to expand them into longer phrases or keywords you may not necessarily think of first. Give nouns certain descriptors that narrow down a particular kind of product. This will help you figure out and understand the less obvious keywords that you may have otherwise missed. Another helpful tip is to pluralize keywords that you have already come up with. Plural keywords can change the amount of results that come up in a search engine, so do not forget to include these on your list.

Now that you have an exhaustive list of keywords at your disposal, this would be a good time to use a keyword generating resource to come up with even more. There are many different keyword generating tools to use, including

Google Adwords

Micro Niche Finder

Wordtracker

Wordstream Keyword Analyzer

Of course, there are many other keyword generating tools out there, but they all operate on the same principle. If you type in a basic keyword, the tool will analyze what has been searched on the web that is related to the keyword. This is very useful because it will generate keywords that you may not have thought of. It will also tell you certain information about the keywords such as:

The rate of competition for showing up in the results when someone searches with that keyword

The number of global monthly searches that are made using that keyword

The number of local monthly searches for that keyword