Basics of Internet marketing, Internet marketing.

What is Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is a set of actions aimed at promoting goods and services on the Internet.

Contextual advertising or SEO promotion are just separate parts of Internet marketing. And today, for successful online campaigns, you have to use and even combine many channels. So, Internet marketing is about an integrated approach to promotion.

Main goals of internet marketing:

• increasing website traffic;
• promotion and sale of new services and products;
• increasing sales;
• improving the company's image;
• increasing brand awareness.

Books about marketing tools

• Marketing without a budget. 50 working tools (Mann I.B.). The book offers a detailed guide to creating a business from scratch with minimal cost. Suitable for those who are trying themselves in the marketing profession.
• Internet Marketing. A complete collection of practical tools (Virin F.Yu.). The publication provides step-by-step instructions for promoting products on the Internet using modern methods and channels. The book is necessary for those working in the field of online advertising and managers of Internet projects due to the author’s research into promotion schemes in the largest Russian companies.
• Marketing tools for the sales department (Mann I., Turusina A., Ukolova E.). The publication is positioned as an effective way to increase sales at all stages of marketing, including direct work with the buyer. The advantages of the book include the described process of using a particular tool: budget, time-consuming, difficulties and features of use, key guidelines and subtleties of implementation. The manual will be useful to sales managers, commercial directors and marketers.
• Exhibition as a marketing tool (Nazarenko L.F.). The mechanism of holding exhibitions is illustrated in the book by systematizing the types of exhibitions, their features and capabilities. The author also analyzes the activities of Russian companies that often organize exhibition events. The publication is suitable for entrepreneurs, executives and managers and becomes a step-by-step guide to the exhibition.
• Internet Marketing. The Best Free Tools (Jim Cockrum). The book talks about revolutionary ways of marketing both in the online environment and in conditions of “close” competition. The guide is suitable for absolutely any person involved in advertising, with any budget and with high results.

Internet marketing or traditional channels?

To answer this question, just look at the statistics. According to the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia (AKAR), the only growing media in 2020 was the Internet. The volume of the digital segment increased by 21% and reached RUB 169–171 billion.

Traditional media (TV, radio, press and outdoor advertising) are losing their positions every year. For example, in 2020, the performance of these segments decreased by 7%.

Source:
AKAR
Pros and cons

Among the advantages of Internet marketing:

Access to target audience.

You can promote your products and services in any part of the world and reach exactly the audience you need. In addition, the Internet audience is growing every year. For example, this year the number of Internet users among Russians over 16 years old in 2020 increased from 91 million to 94.4 million people. This is 79.8% of the country's adult population. Moreover, the greatest dynamics were shown by representatives of the 65+ category. And thanks to Internet marketing tools, you will have access to all these people.

Ability to track campaign performance.

Various analytics tools allow you to monitor all stages of user interaction with an advertisement. This helps you understand which creatives, platforms and settings were most successful.

Constant interaction with the audience.

The emergence of new formats and new platforms allows you to establish communication with regular customers, find new ones, increase brand loyalty and awareness, and also find insights for the next campaigns.

Availability of tools built on AI technology

. Every year, launching and automating campaigns becomes easier, thanks to the emergence of such tools. Algorithms are able to independently compose advertisements, set bids, find target audiences and optimize campaigns.

Opportunity to get first results in a short time

. Setting up your campaigns correctly and engaging creative can really boost sales in the first weeks. However, a more comprehensive approach to Internet marketing will, of course, take more time.

The disadvantages include:

High competition.

In recent years, a huge number of companies have engaged in Internet promotion, so competition in almost every segment will increase.

High cost of promotion.

If you approach Internet marketing comprehensively, you will have to set aside a considerable budget for launching campaigns. Indeed, in addition to paying for advertising on the sites themselves, it is necessary to carry out preparatory work, find specialists, connect additional tools (which in most cases are paid), and so on.

What tools are suitable for a beginner?

Digital marketing includes a large number of tools, including contextual and targeted advertising, SMM, email marketing, native advertising, SEO promotion, viral marketing and much more. We talk about them in more detail in this material.

It is quite difficult for a newcomer to the digital field to independently study all the possibilities of digital marketing and apply them effectively. There is a risk of investing in expensive promotion and getting minimal results from it. It’s best to start with the simplest tools that will teach you how to work with your audience and create interesting content.

To grow and develop in this area, in parallel with your first steps, you need to read books on Internet marketing, communicate with experts and take training courses. For example, the “Profession - Internet Marketer” course from Skillbox will help you master basic tools, identify your target audience, and manage advertising campaigns.

Course “I am an Internet Marketer PRO”

A two-year training course for a deep dive into the profession of Internet marketer. You will understand the intricacies of end-to-end analytics and performance marketing, learn how to build effective advertising strategies and manage advertising campaigns.

• The first six months of study are free of charge.
• The first clients are in just four months.
• Unlimited access to course materials.
• Learning from real problems.
• Career consultations and employment assistance.

Course program

How to develop a strategy

It is a carefully developed strategy that will help to avoid unsystematic management of companies, to understand which platforms, channels and tools will be used and what results this should bring.

At the first stage

analyze existing data. If you have a website or landing page, then use Yandex.Metrics and Google.Analytics to analyze information about traffic and conversions, data about visitors, the most popular pages of the site, etc. If you have previously launched advertising campaigns in Direct or Ads, also look at the data for them. Analyze social networks: number of subscribers, content, feedback. Review your competitors' websites and social media.

Second stage

will be the determination of Internet marketing goals. They must be related to the company's business goals and, as a rule, to financial performance.

At the third stage

It is necessary to accurately define your target audience and the products offered to them. Make a portrait of the client, try to determine his “pains”, as well as the benefits that your product will bring him.

Depending on the target audience and your product in the next step

promotion channels will be determined. Already here ideas for future creatives and their formats may begin to appear.

Fifth stage

will be the determination of the budget, performance indicators, that is, setting KPIs, as well as the choice of analytics tools.

The strategy may change throughout the work. Firstly, some channels may not be suitable for your business, and secondly, the advertising platforms themselves often make changes, offer new opportunities and new tools. So, making adjustments to the strategy is absolutely normal.

Marketing Funnels

There is a classic Marketing Funnel, that is, this is the path to making a purchasing decision. The point is to reach as many potential customers as possible at the top of the funnel and get a few active buyers in a bottleneck.

This is a certain principle of distribution of sales, from the first contact to the purchase.

• Top of the funnel - a person does not yet know that he has a problem or knows, but does nothing, does not connect it with himself and his plans.
• Middle of the funnel - a person actively collects information about what options exist to solve the problem, how much it costs, etc.
• Bottom of the funnel - a person knows what he wants to buy (what will solve his problem), how much it costs, and already chooses who to buy from, studies the conditions, delivery, guarantees, etc.

For example. There is a product or service that we need to sell. Accordingly, they need to be reported and informed. Further, attract interest with the help of distinctive advantages, individual properties, by solving problems or issues. And if we were able to understand our target audience and interest them, we get a sale. The client makes a purchase.

However, this is only the beginning of working with the client. So that he subsequently recommends it, buys it as a gift to a friend, colleague - he must like it. He tried it, we need to find out his opinion - motivation for writing reviews, surveys, SMS or e-mail mailing with an individual offer for a repeat purchase.

It is necessary to constantly work with the buyer without losing sight of him. With the right interaction, we get a loyal customer who will recommend or make a repeat purchase in the future.

Internet Marketing Tools

They can be divided into several categories depending on the goals: increasing sales volume, increasing sales frequency, increasing brand awareness.

Landing.

This is a special page to which targeted traffic from search engines or advertising channels is sent. It can be presented in two formats:

• as a separate one-page site;
• as a separate page as part of a multi-page site (for example, a page with a promotion or special offers).

The landing page must convince the user to take the target action (buy, leave an application, register, and so on).

Web analytics.

Its main purpose is to collect and analyze data about website visitors in order to optimize or improve it. With data in hand, you can identify the site’s weaknesses, find out the audience and its needs, determine the tasks that the site should solve and draw up a plan to improve its effectiveness. More information about web analytics tools can be found in our article “What is web analytics, as well as services and systems for its implementation.”

SEO.

This is work on optimizing the site to bring it to the top of search queries. SEO involves creating the semantic core of a site, that is, those words and phrases that most accurately describe your activities and for which your site will be displayed when users search for it. In addition, it is necessary to check the technical side of the site: is there an adaptive version, are there any duplicate pages, loading speed, and so on.

Media advertising.

This is advertising in the format of banners (image only or text and graphic blocks), videos, animations, etc. It is located:

• on the Google Display Network and YouTube;
• in the Yandex Advertising Network and in search results;
• in mobile applications.

SMM.

Social networks are one of the most convenient channels for building communication with the audience and distributing content. Here you can create your own community that will be loyal to your brand and its products. In addition, targeted advertising on social networks is also a fairly effective tool.

Contextual advertising.

This is the display of paid ads in search results. One of the most popular and effective internet marketing tools. Your ads are shown to users who are interested in purchasing and searching for information right here and now. The two main platforms for placing contextual advertising are Google Ads and Yandex.Direct. Each of them periodically adds innovations that help make campaigns more effective. For example, Yandex introduced the ability to add eight quick links to ads at once. And in search results, of course, such an ad is immediately noticeable:

Content marketing.

This tool can bring quality traffic to your site, as well as regular and loyal readers. The usefulness of the material and its interesting presentation are perhaps the two most important principles of content.

Email newsletters.

They work well when you want to stay in touch with your regular customers and encourage them to make repeat purchases. Some campaigns use email marketing in tandem with content marketing to create useful newsletters or even small educational email courses.

Additional tools.

Chatbots in social networks, chats with online operators on the website, call back services. In short, everything that will help the user learn more about the product and ultimately make a purchase.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Internet Marketing

The questions below are often asked by beginners or people who are not very familiar with this concept.

1) Why do you need internet marketing?

The long-term perspective of any marketing is to increase company profits. Internet marketing is no exception here.

You can achieve promotion results using its tools: advertising, e-mail, newsletters, electronic free bulletin boards and others.

In a general sense, marketing on the Internet performs the function of attracting new customers to the company and encouraging them to engage in active commercial activities on the global network.

2) What is professional web marketing?

Professional online marketing means deep and comprehensive mastery of its tools to achieve the goals set for a specialist or the marketing department of a commercial project.

There are advertisements on the Internet for training companies and organizations that, for an appropriate fee, promise to turn everyone into web marketing specialists. It is difficult to judge how professional the level of such institutions is.

Self-education, in our opinion, is the best way to learn this craft.

3) What is SEO promotion and why promote sites in search engines?

SEO promotion is a set of measures to optimize a website (its program code, design, ease of navigation - everything plays a role) and the information on it in order to rank this resource higher in search engine results.

If search robots do not notice your resource, its presence in the Internet space becomes purely nominal. For a website to have conversion and commercial impact, you need to work on its content. Content marketing is an important condition for the profitability of a resource.

Right now, there are sites operating on the Internet that earn millions in profits every day: their income is partly due to competent marketing policies.

You need to understand all this professionally, then you will have no end to your clients (employers and customers).

4) How to make money using Internet marketing?

Everything will depend on your current knowledge and skills.

There are several options here:

• create your own website or blog and make money on it by advertising;
• become a freelancer (private specialist) and sell consulting services to companies;
• get a permanent job as a marketer in a popular project.

Whatever method you choose, at a minimum you will begin to gain invaluable experience, and at a maximum you will increase your monthly income several times, because the Internet allows you to do this with a certain level of professional training.

5) Where do they teach the profession of Internet marketer and is it possible to become one on your own?

So far there are no universities in Russia that professionally teach Internet marketing. But in our opinion, this is rather an advantage for people starting such an interesting activity. You can find a lot of free information on this topic on the Internet, especially on thematic websites and YouTube.

As they say, “take it, I don’t want it!”

It’s even better if you come to already experienced Internet marketers for courses, advice or personal paid consultations.

As a last resort, you can immediately “rush into battle” by getting a job as an assistant on the team of a popular Internet project and completing an internship there. Once you gain experience, you can start your own projects or work for a good salary.

How to evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns

One of the main advantages of Internet marketing is the most accurate assessment of its effectiveness. If you are promoting on several channels at once, then it is better to use end-to-end analytics.

End-to-end analytics collects data from connected advertising accounts, CRM systems, online chats, and call tracking on one platform. Knowing what path the user has taken, we will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising channels, calculate the return on investment in advertising and income and expenses from each client.

One of the important indicators here will be LTV (life time value) - the customer’s life cycle. It shows the amount of profit you get from one client over the entire period of your cooperation with him. LTV is calculated as follows:

LTV = revenue per customer – cost of attracting and retaining a customer

More detailed information about end-to-end analytics and its configuration can be found in our article.

The set of tracked metrics depends on the promotion channel and the goals set, but the following can be considered basic:

• Cost per click (CPC). How much does it cost for one user who clicked on an advertisement to the site?
• Behavioral metrics (number of site visitors, page viewing depth, time spent on the site, bounce rate - the number of users who left the site almost immediately or visited no more than one page).
• Cost of one target action (CPA). Shows how much money was spent per user who completed a conversion action.
• Impression to conversion ratio (CTR). Helps to understand how attractive the ad is to users.
• Cost per order (CPO). It is calculated as the ratio of the advertising budget to the number of orders.

Briefly about the main thing

While I was writing the article, I realized that if there is no detailed explanation of each approach with clear examples and explanations (such as about CPA marketing), it is very difficult to understand it, especially if you have not encountered this before.

The most disgusting thing and the worst news for you is that these Internet marketing tools work alone very, very poorly.

If you want to create a normal business and a customer attraction system that even remotely resembles an autonomous one, you will have to use everything in a complex. Eg.

1. On social networks, the audience is warmed up using content marketing or video marketing;
2. Then it goes to your blog, where it is converted into potential clients;
3. It is achieved through email marketing.

The scheme is the simplest and most conventional; for example, retargeting, offline pointers and other delights of squeezing your client are not specified here. But I think you got the meaning right.

Do you want more clients? Use more tools. But always look for the golden mean, otherwise you will fall apart.

Internet Marketing Trends

Consistency is not about internet marketing. Tools and approaches that are popular today may become obsolete tomorrow. That is why specialists are required to be mobile, the ability to learn on the go, the ability to quickly grasp trends, adapt their product to them and understand which methods no longer work and which ones are worth paying attention to.

In 2020, the main trend was the “humanization” of advertising.
This carried over into 2020. Brands no longer try to aggressively market their products, but instead try to engage the user in a dialogue. To do this, the emphasis is on: Content marketing.
Useful and high-quality materials on blogs and social networks will increase user loyalty and help win their trust. In addition, really cool texts spread themselves: readers like and share them on social networks. Native advertising also still holds its position. In addition to text formats, cards, instructions, podcasts are also added to them. For example, Yandex.Taxi, together with Lifehacker, creates podcasts that last approximately the same length as one taxi ride.

Podcasts have a good future ahead. According to the IAB forecast, in December 2020 the podcast audience will reach 10.5 million per month, and in December 2024 - 27.9 million. Podcasts already have their own established audience. They are becoming an attribute of the modern “advanced” Internet user and are perceived as one of the tools for self-development. Among the most popular podcast topics:

Source: adindex.ru
Personal brand.
Following a person is more interesting than following a company. However, promoting a personal brand does not necessarily have to be done only by the leader or its founder. Getting to know employees, their success stories, quick interviews, stories about situations in which they helped clients, useful advice, answers to questions - all this works great for the company’s brand. People are interested in reading authored content, which is less limited by boundaries and creates the impression of a “living” text, not verified by the marketing department or PR service.

Video.

One trend is the creation of company YouTube channels in the style of personal vlogs. Vlogging gives your target audience the opportunity to see behind the scenes of a company's life. Such videos endear people and draw attention to the brand, product or service.

Live video will also not go unnoticed. During live broadcasts, you can present your product or service, talk about the company’s new products, invite an expert and arrange a webinar, ask for the audience’s opinion, show your office or production.

As for the technical side of video, the vertical format is still popular, and this is unlikely to change in the near future. Gadgets are most often kept in a vertical position, so this makes sense. Dynamic shooting and short videos are also still in trend. The optimal length of a video is considered to be 15-20 seconds (according to IAB).

Analytics

A tool without which effective work on the Internet is impossible is analytics. Analytics helps evaluate the effectiveness of a website, contextual and display advertising, and free online marketing tools . In this section, we will talk about three tools that every online store needs. These are Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica and call tracking - call tracking.

Google Analytics

Google analytics service helps analyze user behavior on the website and in mobile applications. Even the best online marketing tools will be ineffective if you don't know how they work for your audience and website. Therefore, analytics is an indispensable tool for an Internet marketer.

Traffic overview in Google Analytics

In Google Analytics you can:

• track the actions of visitors on the site;
• count conversion at each stage of the sales funnel: visiting the site, downloading materials, registration, purchase, repeat purchases;
• compare the effectiveness of different promotion channels;
• analyze visitors’ actions in real time;
• create your own reports and solve other tasks.

Yandex.Metrica

Yandex's analytics tool also provides information about visitor actions, conversions, and traffic sources. In addition, Yandex.Metrica has unique tools: maps and a web viewer.

In the “Maps” section, you can analyze clicks on the page - how many times links were followed, buttons were clicked. The heat map will show in color which elements of the page are clicked on most often.

The web viewer records user actions on the page. By analyzing records, you can understand how convenient it is to work with your site.

Call tracking

Not all customers will decide to buy a product after seeing an advertisement or reading information on a website. Many purchases, especially in online stores, are made after calling and talking with the manager. To track and analyze calls on the website, call tracking services are used.

Call tracking helps you get answers to the following questions:

• what kind of advertising led to the call - a contextual ad, an article in a magazine, offline advertising;
• how the new Internet marketing tool worked compared to the old ones;
• what ad or banner the client saw;
• how the seller spoke to the client.

By analyzing call sources, you can choose more effective advertising channels. Audio recordings of conversations help you understand what to improve in the work of salespeople - responsiveness, knowledge about the product, or, perhaps, the ability to work with customer objections.

Other internet marketing trends include:

SEO.

Algorithms have changed significantly. And now, in order to reach the top of search results, you need to pay attention to the behavior of users on the site. Namely, on such metrics as viewing depth, time and transition to other pages of the site. And here again, you can’t do without high-quality and useful content that will help improve these metrics.

SMM.

Games, augmented reality tools (for example, masks on Instagram), tests - in a word, entertainment formats will remain trendy in 2020. Companies also need to be prepared for the fact that social networks will continue to become a platform not only for entertainment, but also for feedback from users, where they will express their opinion about the product, complain, praise and wait for an immediate reaction from company representatives.

Contextual advertising.

Here, every year, specialists have more and more tools for automating processes, which means routine tasks can be entrusted to the algorithms of advertising platforms and focus on creating creatives. Another trend for 2020 is voice search and assistants (Alice from Yandex, OK Google, Google Assistant and Siri). So in 2020, you need to pay special attention to adapting advertising campaigns to voice queries.

The role of the Internet in business

The role of the Internet is becoming more profound every year. Spending on online advertising has increased in 2020, and many companies are increasingly allocating budgets to the digital sector.

Contextual advertising specialist

Surely you have seen advertisements marked “Advertising” in search engines. This is the context.

Examples of Google Ads

Yandex.Direct (Google Ads) specialists are in demand along with SEO specialists, because paid search traffic is very effective. Contextual advertising helps the client receive applications literally on the day the advertising campaign is launched. With its help, you can quickly test a niche and find out the demand for a new product or service.

The director also collects the semantic core, writes the ads themselves, monitors the advertising campaign budget, and analyzes its effectiveness.

Bottom line

The result of proper Internet marketing is always increased website conversion and increased sales. In fact, Internet marketing is a key factor in the development of any modern business, as more and more people around the world make the Internet their main source of information and services. Remember how long ago you turned to newspaper or magazine advertisements for some important information? Most likely, many years ago - they were successfully replaced by the Internet. Soon, most purchases will also be made via the Internet, the percentage of such transactions is steadily growing, which means the need for competent Internet marketing will be higher and higher.

Alas, in Russia Internet marketing is still quite young, and some companies perceive it as a kind of fashion statement, and marketing departments often employ people without special knowledge. Truly effective returns from Internet marketing are possible only if they are carried out by professionals who understand all the intricacies and know exactly how and what to promote.

In any advertising campaign, the lion's share of success also depends on such parameters as the quality of the product being promoted and the patience of the advertiser during this promotion. A low-quality and unnecessary product cannot be sold either with the help of ingenious Internet marketing, or through the most aggressive one - even if the sellers “grab customers by the hands.” The result will look a little better if the company has an excellent product, but lacks patience and respect for the target audience. Attempts to sell a product “quickly”, without careful attention to your potential client, are doomed to failure, no matter how confident the company’s marketers are that they themselves know how to sell faster and better. The secret of Internet marketing is very simple: promotion begins with respect.

What it is

Internet marketing is a type of marketing. Therefore, if you expect to see something unimaginably new now, then this will not happen.

Also, if you have little understanding of conventional marketing, then the Internet will be even worse for a beginner, even if you work according to ready-made instructions and video manuals.

Internet marketing is about online tools. This means that this discipline does not study the target audience, AIDA, effective advertising, Hunt's ladder, decomposition and other basic topics.

Therefore, starting to study marketing right away by learning online promotion is a bad idea. So you will turn out to be a good technician, but a bad marketer.

The same goes for strategy. Internet marketing is a way to achieve an overall strategy. Of course, inside you also determine how to act to achieve your goals, but the main course is set by classical marketing, which is based on competitor analysis, market research and dozens of other variables.

For those starting their path in marketing, I advise you to first read all the materials from my selection

On the topic: Books about marketing: Top 13 from our library.

Lifehack . To search for competitors, I recommend the following services: Livedune (using the promotional code “INSCALE” 30% discount + 7 days of access), Publer, Instaspy, Spywords, Keys. They will definitely help you keep your finger on the pulse.