Marketing your company on the internet is the standard and basic practice for any company of any size. Your customers spend a considerable part of their waking lives online. So it makes sense to reach out to them where they can be found.

Forget newspapers, billboards and TV advertising. Internet marketing is where you can engage with potential customers and effectively promote your brand. So, what are the basics of internet marketing? If you’re just getting started, here’s what you need to know:

1) Banner Ads are Old News

When advertising on the internet was just getting started banner ads were hugely successful marketing tools. Now, however, they appear on every site you visit. They’re much less effective than they were. People find banner ads annoying to the point that many internet users now install ad blockers to stop these advertisements appearing and disrupting their internet experience altogether.

In response to this development, online advertisers are choosing other avenues to spread the word about their brands and their products.

2) Content is King

One avenue that marketers have explored is content marketing. Content refers to blog posts, videos, infographics, photographs, podcasts, e-courses – basically anything that interests, entertains or informs your customers. Content should be linked to your company but it shouldn’t be used solely to plug specific products. Content needs to be more subtle and less salesy than that if it’s to be effective.

Creating and promoting content has to be a central part of your online marketing strategy. Done correctly, it will build your brand in the eyes of your customers, it will give you endless posts for your social media pages and it will boost your standing with Google.

3) Google Rules

Google plays a huge role in the success or failure of an online business. Every marketer should brush up on what Google likes and what it doesn’t in order to maximise the effectiveness of their business website and online marketing efforts.

When you understand a little about Google’s algorithm and how your customers are using Google to search for your products, you can use this information to adapt your website and your content. This is called SEO (search engine optimisation) and it makes it much more likely that your web pages will rank highly for particular Google searches. And that more people will come across your company as a result.

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4) Social Media Marketing

Marketing through social media is another popular route. But very few businesses need to maintain a presence on all social media sites. First you need to find out where your target market like to hang out. And then devote your time and energy to those platforms.

You should be consistently posting high quality content to your social media sites. You should also be using social media to engage with your customers. This will encourage shares, which boost your social standing – another factor that Google considers when ranking websites. It will also help to create a positive brand image for your enterprise.

5) Free and Paid Advertising

You can get a long way with internet marketing without spending a penny. But devoting a budget to your online marketing will see your efforts reap greater rewards. You can pay Google to appear at the top of search results. You can pay social media sites for the placement of advertisements, sponsored posts and (in the case of Snapchat) sponsored filters. And you can pay the best social media influencers to plug your product.

If you’re spending money on your internet advertising, you need to develop a strategy for judging the ROI (return on investment). That way you can be sure that the money you’re spending is generating profit for your company.

We hope these internet marketing basics will set you on the way to a successful online marketing strategy. Delve a little deeper and you’ll find a world of promotional opportunity awaits.

Author: Lily Kaligian is an editor at Businesscheck.co.nz and Bizinfo.in. She creates a variety of articles about careers, entrepreneurship, technology, business, education, as well as travel and personal development.