There are multiple ways to use the internet for driving and attracting business, such as social media, content marketing, search engine marketing, and search engine optimization. If you are a small business owner that has until now solely relied on traditional advertising methods, using the internet to connect with customers might seem daunting, especially if you are a brick-and-mortar establishment that usually depends on foot traffic.
Online marketing is not as intimidating as it seems, though, and there are plenty of resources out there for you to turn to—and getting virtual attention will be well worth it for your business. Before you begin, it will be helpful if you understand a bit more about what each method of digital marketing entails, so let’s go over two common techniques: affiliate and email marketing.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when an individual promotes a company’s products and earns a commission whenever someone makes a purchase. A popular blogger, for instance, can join an affiliate marketing program through an online retailer, write a post as usual and include a specialized link to the retailer’s site, and the business pays them when the link proves successful.
Business.com reports that spending on affiliate marketing is expected to surpass $6.8 billion by 2020, and affiliate marketing generates 16 percent of total online orders. Your success depends on the people who sign up to work with you, but it’s a cheap and efficient way to spread brand awareness.
What Are The Pros And Cons Of Affiliate Marketing?
Anyone with internet access can become an affiliate marketer. From your perspective, this is advantageous because you do not have to resort to professional agencies—people who are convinced that they have a large enough online presence can sell for you. This is also helpful because you only need to pay affiliate marketers when they make a sale; you don’t have to spend money hoping an online ad campaign might work. Affiliate programs also make it easy to track where the money is coming from, so you can see which marketers and platforms are proving the most successful.
On the other hand, you will only reap the benefits of affiliate marketing if said marketers know what they are doing. While you are not spending money for people to work it out, you will have to put effort into spreading the news about your affiliate program so that interested individuals sign up for it. Doing so increases the likelihood that people with popular platforms find you and share your links with their audiences.
What Is Email Marketing?
As you can surmise, email marketing entails using emails to communicate information to your customers. Email marketing can be tricky, and there are ways to do it poorly—spam emails detailing information about products and discounts that flood your inbox are, as The Balance notes, examples of email marketing at its worst. People understandably make efforts to avoid ending up on mass email lists and receiving impersonal junk. Email marketing at its best, however, is meant to keep customers informed about new offerings and changes in your business that are relevant to them.
What Are The Pros And Cons Of Email Marketing?
Email marketing is effective when your messages are personalized, such as offering birthday discounts to individuals if they decide to share this information with you. When the emails you send are pertinent to recipients and not a bombardment of spam, they can incentivize customer loyalty and provide a quick means of communication.
Email is also advantageous because even more people use it than social media. It’s inexpensive, and it’s easy to track campaign performances. Joining an email list usually requires consent, so you have a method of communicating with customers and their permission to do so—and you can even let people tailor how many emails they want to receive, based on factors like the number of messages per month or kinds of content. If enough people want to join your subscription list, you can also communicate with high amounts of people rapidly.
On the downside, you need to keep your messages fresh and creative so that they do not lose relevance. Your content will affect whether or not people’s inboxes flag your emails as spam, or if people simply assume your emails are junk and ignore them. It’s also possible that the people on your mailing list are not actually interested in your business, so make sure that you are targeting the right audience before you waste your time. To save character space and avoid burdening your messages with long (but necessary) links, you can also use URL shorteners to skyrocket marketing.
Digital marketing is beneficial for countless businesses, even brick-and-mortar establishments that are new to the online space. It’s important to know what you are signing up for before you dive in, though, so educate yourself about the various ways to market through the internet. What kinds of digital marketing do you believe are right for your business?
