Working with a marketing company

An online marketing company employs specialists, who help increase a company’s sales. This is done through a number of activities, which are defined in a marketing strategy. What commercial activities are involved varies from client to client.

A marketing strategy is created based on brand perception goals and revenue goals. Of course, the budget that may be spent on online marketing also counts. Concrete activities of a marketing company are in the areas of SEO marketing, online advertising, social media marketing, content marketing and affiliate marketing.

A marketing company combines campaigns

An online marketing company usually engages in marketing activities on multiple fronts. Principally, clients can choose a strategy focused on one type of marketing. However, it is more effective to be active on several fronts at the same time.(1)

A marketing company can assist with marketing activities in multiple directions: marketing through search engines, content marketing, marketing through online advertising, advertising on social media and advertising through partner companies. All of these types of marketing from a marketing company will be discussed in a bit more detail.

Online advertising

Any online marketing company will be familiar with online advertising. This is one of the most well-known ways to promote a company, a service or a product. The most well-known way to advertise is through Google Adwords. It is quite complicated to set up campaigns with ads with the desired effect.

First, the marketing company and the client must determine the target audience that the campaign will focus on. Next is to analyze the language used by the target audience. From that, the most effective keywords can be distilled. Finally, a marketing company creates advertisements and the campaign can start.

Over the course of an online ad campaign, results come in about the effect of the ads. From this, conclusions can be drawn about the effectiveness of the campaign. Analyzing the data from the ads is complicated.

A marketing company can help you with that. Based on this data, the ads can be optimized. Placing ads with Google Adwords is not free. But if ads are used properly, the revenues are many times higher than the ads cost. In that case, an online marketing company will speak of a successful campaign. (2)

A marketing company and search engines

Unlike online advertising, marketing through search engines is free. The effect of this form of marketing is also different. Because advertising online provides a rapid increase in sales. With search engine marketing, you have to be more patient before results can be seen. An online marketing company can explain that this is because search engine marketing focuses on the relevant visitors for the website.

It takes longer for the search engines to figure out which ones they are and which keywords are being used by those visitors. implementing search engine marketing properly is a long and intensive process, but it provides additional visitors for a long time.(3)

The concrete activities required for search engine marketing can be distinguished into identifying the target audience, researching the keywords of that audience, selecting the right keywords, optimizing the content on the client’s website, adjusting the structure of the website and making the website easily accessible technically.

All those steps under the guidance of an online marketing company are necessary to help search engines index the website. If the online marketing company can do this successfully, the corporate website will rise in search engine rankings after a few months. Of course, this applies only to the keywords for which the website is optimized.

Affiliate marketing by a marketing company

Realizing sales through multiple partners is called affiliate marketing. The principle is not that complicated, but you need a marketing company to realize this form of marketing. The client and central party is the selling party. That is the company that offers the products and services online in a web shop. (4)

For different categories of products, there are partner companies, which advertise them. If they succeed in enticing a visitor to make a purchase, the visitor will be redirected to the selling party. Upon a successful sale, the partner company receives compensation.

In a successful transaction based on affiliate marketing, both parties benefit. The selling party earns something from the product and the party advertising gets a percentage of that. Marketing based on affiliate marketing requires a thorough knowledge of the market. That’s why you need the help of a marketing company.

There are many examples of this type of marketing on the Internet. There are numerous sites that focus on one type of product, such as vacuum cleaners, televisions, insurance, etc. Deals at a large number of sellers of those products are bundled, and with each conversion, the site receives commission from the selling party. A marketing agency can advise on this.

Marketing on social media

If a client’s target audience of an online marketing company is very active on social media, that is another channel that can be utilized. Social media can be used by promoting website products and content through posts.

In addition, it can be advertised on social media. With platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, this can be particularly effective. These platforms have detailed information from users. This allows the target group to be defined in extreme detail, even by region if there is a need. Here, the advice of an online marketing agency is essential.

When a social media marketing campaign is part of a marketing strategy, the results are usually excellent. This is mainly due to the large number of users of these platforms. Many potential customers can be reached with a campaign.

As a company, it is a good idea to hire an online marketing company to set up a social media campaign. Because such an agency specializes in this type of campaign, they manage to skyrocket the number of visitors to the company website. Keep in mind, that a social media advertising campaign works for a relatively short period of time. During the campaign you can realize a huge increase in sales. (5)

Content marketing

Content marketing deals with the content of an online marketing agency’s client’s website. The goal of content marketing is to provide quality content that is tailored to the target audience.(6)

An online marketing company will recommend posting new content frequently so that visitors have a reason to revisit your website on a regular basis. The ultimate goal of content marketing is higher conversion. After all, visitors should be encouraged to make purchases in the web shop.

The effect of content marketing is, that other websites will post links to the content on the marketing company’s client’s website. If these are relevant sites, it adds to the authority of the client’s website.

Content marketing has a close relationship with search engine marketing. Because a combination of good keywords and relevance will cause the website to rise in search engine rankings, which in turn will drive more visitors to the website. So the knife cuts several ways. With content marketing, a marketing company will often recommend a combination with social media marketing.

The importance of the right marketing strategy

It will be clear that there are an enormous number of ways to frame a marketing strategy. This can only be done with the help of an online marketing company. The main driver for choosing a particular strategy is the goal of the strategy.

Is the intention to turn social media into a sales channel? Or is the goal to increase awareness of the company name? Companies looking to market a new product usually prefer quick success. Talk to a marketing agency about this so that the right strategy is chosen. (7)

The role of a marketing company

An online marketing company employs specialists, who can select from the palette of types of online marketing the activities that will best achieve a client’s goals.

Thereby, the target audience and the available budget are the determining factors for the advice of a marketing company. If the people in the target audience use search engines almost exclusively, it makes little sense to advertise on social media. If maximum budget is a limiting factor, more attention can be paid to search engine marketing and perhaps content marketing.

Why an online marketing strategy?

A marketing company can also help make an informed decision about whether to expend energy on expanding online marketing activities at all. If a company does not know whether it is sufficiently visible to its target audience, an online marketing company can conduct an analysis of its website effectiveness and findability.

Based on the outcome, a decision can be made to do nothing, work on improving visibility or perhaps get started with affiliate marketing.