You've probably heard of Chandler Bolt by now. But if you haven't heard, in this article you will learn more about him and how his story can help you.
To read the full article on Chandler from Business Insider, click here.
You may be wondering, how did it get here?
This is where the power and beauty of online marketing comes into play.
This 21-year-old boy made hundreds of thousands of dollars, right from his own home.
No need for fame, exclusive interviews, invitations to any talk show, just good online marketing.
You don't need to know much about who Chandler Bolt is. It is enough to know that he has made a lot of money and is helping others to do the same.
his company, Self-Publishing School, helps people publish books on Amazon and earn money from it.
This is a good thing especially for introverts!
In the past, extroverts were much more likely to become rich and successful.
Why? Because it involves a lot of communication and socializing.
You had to hire staff and build a huge company. Or, for a career in art, music, movies, etc., you had to communicate with every person in your industry and get them to know you.
Although the relationships you have with other people are still a huge business, today you can get them right from your couch, it's much easier and more convenient.
Nowadays, you can build your own business right from the comfort of your own home, whenever you want.
But for your business to be successful, you need the help of online marketing.
What is online marketing?
It's good to know that not every digital marketing campaign is automatically a form of online marketing.
Online marketing is any tool, strategy or method of promoting the company name to the public. Advertisements can take many different forms, and some strategies focus on subtle messages rather than overt advertisements.
Thus, online marketing is the way in which you can attract people in your direction, through the Internet, to bring profit to your company.
There are, however, 7 sub-categories of online marketing.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You have surely heard of Search Engine Optimization by now. We have discussed this topic before on blog our website.
But to better understand online marketing and what it entails, it is important to master this strategy very well as it is essential in the online field.
As mentioned in the other posts, SEO is the process of optimizing your online content so that search engines will show it as a top result for searches based on a specific keyword.
In order to do SEO correctly and successfully, you need to follow some very important steps:
Step 1: Publish a great infographic
Step 2: Simple (but effective) link prospecting
Step 3: Display your infographic
Step 4: Make free content too
Step 5: Add contextual links
Seems easy, right? It is easy if you follow the steps properly, but it will take some time before you see the desired result.
Through this backlink you can learn more about infographics.
To help you better understand how SEO works and its features, we have prepared some useful links about the key words, about the correct building of links and about the criteria for achieving a rank site (the top).
SEO contains 2 sectors by which it works: On-page and Off-page.
On-page SEO
Most on-page SEO activities are not related to direct ranking factors, but rather to indirect factors such as hit rate and time on site.
For example, a common on-page SEO task is optimizing the meta description and title.
The title and meta description are what appear as a result of a Google search.
While placing keywords in the title and description can help users navigate through your content faster, it doesn't directly help you rank higher.
So simply putting keywords in the meta description and title is not an option.
However, they help increase the click rate. When the title and meta descriptions are more compelling or related to the topic a particular person is searching for, you can expect more traffic to your site.
And the higher the hit rate, the higher the chances of ranking as well as possible in the top searches.
Google aims to provide the best possible user experience. So if Google notices that your post ranked #10 has a higher hit rate than the one above you, they'll move your content up in the top.
On-page SEO consists of a few major elements that you need to be aware of:
- Crawl errors
- Keyword research
- Page optimization
- Speed
Crawl errors
Crawler errors can range from a 404 error (bad link) to duplicate content. All these problems can bring your website:
- Slow speed
- Rank affected
- Penalties from Google
- Increased risk of users leaving your site
If you've ever seen something like this on your site, it's a broken link error that can cause major problems:
404 errors can hit your traffic hard if another external source links to them.
If you have displayed your content on another site, but that link is broken, you risk losing a lot of traffic to your site.
One of the fastest tools to fix crawl errors that might be affecting your site is Screaming Frog.
It's a technical SEO tool that can scan your site for free, giving you detailed information on what you need to fix and how to do it:
Keyword research
Keyword research is a fundamental process in any online SEO marketing game plan.
Keywords are what you search for in a search engine to find the content you are looking for.
For example, type “Online Marketing Guide” into Google – that would be a keyword. And pages can target these keywords to compete in rankings.
There are a few types of keywords that you need to know before conducting a basic keyword research strategy. There are two major types of keywords:
- Long keywords: consist of 3-5+ words. These are often easier to target due to specificity, less traffic and less competition
- Main or Shorter Keywords: These are one-word or two-word keywords that are more general. For example, "winter jacket" would be a competitive keyword.
It is best to make a mix between the two terms for the best SEO strategy.
To perform the best combination of keywords, you need is a keyword tool such as Moz or AdWords Keyword Planner.
Simply enter the core topic you want to talk about in your next post or page:
Searching for your base keyword will give you a list of metrics that will indicate volume (how many searches there are per month), difficulty (competition ranking for it), and the number of hits that come from the search.
It will also give you keyword suggestions.
In general, when you want to choose keywords for your next blog post, you need to find longer terms with volume higher and scores of difficulty smaller.
Page optimization
On-page optimization is a critical step in the SEO process. On page optimization involves performing basic tasks to optimize your page for specific keywords and search engines.
Everything from URLs to internal links can impact the performance of your page.
This on-page SEO checklist can help you keep up with every post you make:
These factors can help you build your on-page content in the most accurate and user-friendly way possible.
Improve your page speed
One of the biggest factors to ensure your success is improving the speed at which your page loads.
When it comes to search engine optimization, you'll want to have content that loads as quickly as possible. Google also favors sites that load quickly.
So, the faster your site speed is, the higher you'll rise in the rankings:
Google's current standards state that the best speed is three seconds at most. However, most businesses in every industry are still too slow:
Google provides free tools for measuring your speed to every user, such as Test my site and Pagespeed Insights. They can help you improve your site speed in an efficient way by providing detailed solutions for any speed related issues you may have.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is the exact opposite of on-page optimization.
To improve your off-page search engine optimization, you need link building, external publishing of your content (on other sites, different from your own), or social media promotion.
Link building
Link building is the most important factor in any off-page SEO strategy. a video from 2016 featuring Andrey Lipattsev, a Senior Search Quality Strategist at Google, suggests that a site's links and content have been named as the top two ranking factors for a site.
This has been confirmed, even by Google.
Link building may seem difficult, but it is necessary to use the strategy with SEO, for online marketing done in a correct way.
Ranking high with links involves a lot, from the total number of links to the quality of those links and the diversity of the sources.
In order to be able to rank as high as possible in the leaderboard, you will need to use the rule 90/10 of link building:
What exactly does it entail? This suggests that 90% of your time should be spent creating high quality content and 10% building links.
Because without quality content, you won't get the traffic and sales you need on your website.
Currently, the best way to create backlinks is through influencers.
Influencers, at the moment, are the best source of promotion of any type of product or service.
Below are some links that can help you in creating and building backlinks:
- The Advanced Guide to Link Building
- 9 Resource Links That Will Increase Your Search Rankings
- How to build high quality backlinks
- 13 Effective Link Building Strategies for Busy Marketers
Posting content on social media is a great way to indirectly contribute to your off-page SEO strategy.
When you share your latest posts on social media, you help spread them to new audiences. Thus, you attract more users and you can get more recognition for your brand.
A tool like Buffer might help you schedule your content in advance:
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is the SEO version, only in this case, you can pay to get to the top of the search results, instead of waiting even a few months for your efforts to promote and optimize content with SEO.
And since it's the first thing people see on the page, you'll probably get a lot of hits to your site. But, you'll need to pay for each hit.
Depending on the keyword you want to appear as a result, there are different prices.
Keywords that people search for a lot are more competitive and therefore more expensive.
Some keywords can cost up to several hundred dollars per click.
It is indeed a great strategy, but it only works if you have the ability and certainty to recoup your advertising costs immediately.
Try not to throw tens of thousands of dollars into campaigns Google AdWords, without making sure that everything is profitable and you will manage to recover your investment.
To be successful with SEM, you need to offer a paid product or service, so if you want to produce free content, don't waste your time and money with SEM.
Fortunately, avoiding the mistakes of paying for worthless clicks isn't as hard as you might think. You just need to have a very well laid out marketing plan.
Google AdWords is a very good way to get much more profit than the investment you will make, but you have to be very prepared in that case.
Jerry Banfield is a great resource before you start using Google AdWords, whether you are a large business or a simple entrepreneur.
Jerry made a living as a full-time instructor on Udemy, often generating $30,000 or more in monthly income.
- Content marketing
Jon Morrow is a successful content creator.
his blog, Boost Blog Traffic, has over 500,000 monthly readers.
Content marketing is all about providing relevant and timely value to your audience.
The first step to doing this is to know your company's basic information well. That's what Jon did and he was able to turn his blog into a six figure, monthly income.
You rarely find people who can give you an AZ guide in any field, especially if that person has also excelled in that field.
Jon Morrow manages to give his readers, step-by-step, everything they need to know so they can win like he did.
In addition, he also brings visitors to his blog, which could help you learn about other branches of online marketing such as email marketing, Google Analytics, and how to build relationships online.
Jon's marketing strategy is quite clever, one that manages to attract readers and make them want to learn more, eventually reading the entire posted article. That's the key, actually.
The way Jon talks about the topics covered on the blog is unprecedented. It refers to a specific blogging problem like a disease. Obviously, anyone would want to know how it's treated, right? Thus, a curiosity is created on the part of the readers and they are attracted to that topic.
The content it is different and can take any form like pictures, podcasts, blogs, videos, etc.
So. if blogging is not your forte or passion, you can choose to do something else, and as long as you create content that users can relate to, then you will surely be successful.
In order to have a great content marketing strategy, it is important to create quality content that is relevant to everyone.
- Marketing on social media
Social media is in power now. This industry is gigantic and its growth rate is getting higher and higher and I don't think it will slow down anytime soon.
By now, there are hundreds of social networks.
This topic is vast and would require an entire guide, but if you want to be successful with social media, the best person for this field is Gary Vaynerchuk.
He has written three New York Times bestsellers (two of which focus exclusively on how to use social media for your business) and runs one of the largest media agencies in the world.
On Twitter, he managed to gather 1.64 million followers, thanks to his wisdom and engagement with a lot of people.
Several million people follow his every move, on all social platforms. If you follow him closely, you can learn the art of social media from him.
One of the biggest ideas from Gary is "content follows context".
He espouses the idea, "Content is king, but context is god." What he means is that if you don't respect the context of each social media platform, you won't be successful.
For example, could I have posted this blog post as an Instagram post? Not! It wouldn't have been appropriate and it wouldn't have made any sense.
That's what blogs and YouTube are for.
So instead of using social media as a distribution channel for the content you've created on a particular platform, try to tailor your content to the context you're in, for each platform.
Below are some useful links that could help you be successful with social media:
- 17 Facebook Post Ideas for Small Business Entrepreneurs
- 20 Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest Features You Didn't Know Existed
- Instagram Marketing: The Complete Guide to Guaranteed Instagram Success
- Largest Social Media Study: When is the best time to post, study based on 4.8 million tweets
- Social networks used in marketing
At the moment, Instagram is the most used and easiest to use platform for promotion and advertising.
This, being much more focused on the visual (compared to Facebook), makes the whole browsing process much simpler and the information easier to process.
Snapchat it is also a platform with great potential for promoting a brand, less known than Instagram or Facebook.
Like Instagram, Snapchat is just as visual-centric, but it's more limited in what it offers, with more of an option to post "stories" rather than permanent posts or posts that last longer than 24 hours .
However, Snapchat is heavily used for marketing purposes.
Facebook is the most well-known social media platform and perhaps still the most used.
But, in recent years, it has decreased considerably, with users moving to other platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat.
Facebook is the only platform (currently) that has all the necessary features, from updating a status, to adding a story or a picture, etc. Promotional opportunities are numerous.
Twitter is a very simple platform to run promotional ads, which is starting to grow more and more.
- Pay per click (PPC)
Pay-per-click (PPC) means exactly what the name says, you pay for every hit you get to a specific ad you've created.
Sounds similar to SEM, (Search Engine Marketing), right? Well, SEM is part of the PPC promotion category.
The most popular platforms that are used for Pay-per-click promotion are Facebook and Google AdWords.
On Facebook, you can make an ad, just like you make a post: first specify the type of audience you are targeting (you can be specific with data such as age, gender, country, etc.), and then add the amount you are willing to to pay it for each click.
Facebook will then do its job and run your ad in each user's news feed (according to the data you specified).
What's important to note is that PPC uses a much more subtle way of showing ads to its users. These ads appear like simple Facebook posts, making it much easier to like and attract customers. In addition, because of the specific information you add at the beginning of the ad creation related to your target customers, it is much easier to ensure that your ad is seen by relevant customers interested in your product/service.
Google AdWords
For PPC promotion, Google AdWords is the best and most popular platform you can use.
For example, net revenue from digital advertising was nearly $30 million in 2016 and $45 million in 2019.
The second best and most popular platform is Facebook, but Google AdWords is way ahead of it because Google is the biggest and most popular search engine in the world.
Being the platform with the most users, everyone wants to use it to promote their products/services.
You can use other platforms to promote, but you won't have the same guaranteed success.
Google AdWords is based on an auction system. Specifically, you need to bid on different keywords that you need.
These words can cost anywhere from $1 to over $500, depending on how much profit they could make from running the ads.
The search network
The AdWords search network allows all advertisers to publish text-based ads targeting a specific keyword to appear in search results. For example, when you see the results of a search marked with "Ad" it is the search network:
Why is the search network the best solution for PPC strategy?
Well, the difference between Google and Facebook is that users search for different keywords and thus Google also turns them into ads that can help them. While on Facebook, people don't log in to look at ads, they're looking to interact with people.
Advertising through display ads
This is another way that Google offers to its users that you can advertise.
The display ad network accesses Google-approved sites, allowing advertisers to serve image-based ads based on topic and keyword context.
For example, these ads come from the Display Network:
AdSense is somewhat the opposite of the display ad network. Instead of paying to display ads on Google, AdSense allows users to generate revenue by displaying ads on their site.
So, graphic advertising is a PPC strategy, through which you can create image (visual) ads and pay for each click, while Adsense allows its users to generate money by displaying ads on the site.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a function of display advertising and is the process of bringing back users who have previously purchased from your business.
If you have remarketing enabled, you can use ads to target users who visited your site but didn't place an order.
This allows you to bring those users back for a second, third or fourth chance at purchasing from your business.
An example in this case of a strong remarketing ad on the display network is from Blue Corona:
Remarketing can be used by anyone, very simply, with the help of the graphic recipe from Google AdWords.
- Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is the type of marketing where an advertiser is rewarded for mentioning a brand/entrepreneur/company etc.
It's exactly how it happens today, with influencers, on Instagram or Facebook. A public figure mentions a brand name to their followers, generating sales for that company. Then the brand rewards her for the advertisement made through different products sold by them or even money.
Another example is Amazon, they also have an affiliate program where you can generate a special link for every product page they have.
You can then put that link on your blog, on your Instagram page, or send it to friends you want to recommend that product to. For any referral using your link and product purchase, you will receive a small commission from Amazon for referring that customer.
Email marketing is about communicating directly with your audience and customers.
Email beats a lot of social media platforms when it comes to users. In fact, you have a 40% better chance of winning a new customer through email than through Facebook or Twitter.
In addition, email is a good long-term method of contacting potential customers.
Do you remember the last time you changed your email address? It's been a while, hasn't it?
Changing email only comes with a lot of headaches, so people rarely change them. This makes an email address valuable and long-lasting contact information.
founder Videofruit, Bryan Harris, might help you understand better.
In the past two years, he launched his blog, starting from $0 to a six-figure business. His last run earned $220,750.
He says the biggest asset to his business is his email list.
In 2014, he grew his own list from 0 subscribers to over 10,000.
Bryan is not the only one who has made a profitable business out of building an email list, but he is the best when it comes to teaching you how to do it.
The best email marketing tools
No good email marketing campaign is complete without a proper set of tools.
Sending emails directly through an email platform like Gmail to your customer limits your ability to personalize and ultimately bring in customers.
A good email marketing tool can help you streamline your efforts and consolidate your tools into one, saving you time and money while improving overall productivity.
The most popular email marketing tool at the moment is MailChimp. It gives you the ability to create stunning email templates suitable for any type of domain.
You can also do everything from scheduling email campaigns to automating, segmenting and personalizing them and more.
Conclusion
So online marketing is the real deal. Thanks to the power of the Internet, anyone can become financially independent through Internet marketing.
It's easy to say, but much harder to do. Whatever you want to do well in life, it will be difficult to achieve.
Online marketing is no different.
I hope this guide will help you do just that.
Frequent questions
What is online marketing?
Online marketing is how you spread the word about your products and services through digital channels. Ways you can do this: paid ads, social media, emails, blogging, SEO, etc.
Is Online Marketing Expensive?
Online marketing provides you with free as well as paid traffic sources. The free ones bring results more slowly. Paid ones can get you immediate results like PPC ads.
What are Drip campaigns?
Drip campaigns are simply automated email campaigns that send remarketing emails to non-responders.
For example, if a user doesn't respond to the first email about your offer, you can get back to them with a second automated email in the following days to remind them e.g. of limited supply.
What are the trends in email marketing?
Current perspectives on email marketing are centered on two specific topics:
- Personalization
- segmentation
Personalization is one of the biggest success factors for an email marketing campaign.
Segmentation focuses on dividing your email list of customers into specific groups, allowing you to target them with much more specific content.
How can you get paid in affiliate marketing?
You usually get paid every time your referral leads to a sale.
One of the most popular ways to generate affiliate sales and get paid is by blogging or creating content around these products.