Is Internet Marketing Here To Stay?

It is 2020 and the coming decade will be a true test of the powers that digital marketing currently hold. A decade ago people were starting to realize how powerful online advertising has become and sure enough around 2015 local online advertising surpassed that of local offline (Click here for details). The question is if that trend will continue. While it is unlikely that digital advertising will lose its stronghold, it surely will evolve and develop new ways to reach the market.

But Can’t I Do It Myself?

If you are a small business owner, maybe you don’t need to market and are happy to rely solely on word of mouth. But the reality is, most small businesses could strongly benefit from marketing, particularly in the digital form. The thing is, most business owners feel competent and secure enough to handle the marketing themselves. Again, for some business owners that may work. For most businesses though, to truly get a good return on your investment, you will need to spend significant time working on advertising campaigns. So if the business owner tries to go it alone, likely she won’t have enough time to run the business itself. 

Why Does It Take So Much Time?

The reality is that online marketing is a dynamic field and as mentioned earlier, it will only continue to grow and become more complex. For now there are three main ways to market online: pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media advertising and search engine optimization (SEO). Each one of these can be broken down further into more areas.

PPC advertising most closely resembles old-school advertising. This is when you are clearly looking at an ad on a webpage and click on it to get more details. Think of clicking on it as the old-school equivalent of calling the business for more information. Popular blog websites and journalism websites are full of ads like this, but they are also found on Google at the very top of search results. 

Social media advertising has grown in popularity due to the large number of people that frequent websites like Facebook and Twitter. These website incorporate ads into users’ feeds so well that sometimes the user does not know or care that it is an advertisement. Many users’ actually prefer the ads to the posts of their social circle! Facebook allows advertisers to target specific demographics. This type of marketing can be further categorized by the social media platform you choose. Another big one is Youtube which generally takes more resources as you need to create a compelling video rather than just a simple post.

SEO refers to getting a website on top of Google or Bing or whichever search engine you want to optimize for. While technically this is free advertising because you don’t have to pay Google to get your website on top, it still requires a lot of time and resources to get on top, especially for competitive keywords. It can be further broken down into local, where you are trying to get local businesses ranked for a certain city like Denver, or even a state, like Colorado. This is compared to affiliate, where you try and get your own website on top to sell something to customers. 

It is for these reasons that you really do need a marketing expert on your team. Maybe you are looking for a the best digital marketing Denver has to offer? Or maybe you are in another city and looking for a digital expert? Keep in mind that many marketers work remotely so you do not have to live in the same city. Video calls are usually sufficient and just as effective as meeting in person. After you can’t make it from New York to Denver in a couple hours. It is a growing field so it is not hard to find somebody who will offer you their services, but not all marketers are created equal so ask for proof of prior results.