With television, radio, and mailing marketing ROI slowly dropping (it is reported that an estimated 86% of television viewers skip commercials), Internet Marketing has become the way of the future. As Internet marketing has endeavored and succeeded in finding its footing over the last few years, the market has continued to evolve and develop success stories and provide new avenues for businesses to reach potential customers. Although many of these success stories have varied histories, most have relied on the following 5 methods:

1. Email Marketing

Contrary to popular belief, email is still a powerful tool for online marketing. With 72% of U.S. using email, it still ranks as the most effective method to reach new customers and build relationships. The Direct Marketing Association reports an astronomical average of 4,300% ROI from email campaigns – campaigns, we would like to point out, that don’t involve the extra expense of publishing any hardcopy material intended for distribution.

2. Social Media Marketing

With Twitter tweets recently being fed into Google searches, the vital reach that social media can afford businesses has become much more apparent and can possibly become even more effective in the foreseeable future. “It’s another way for organizations and people on Twitter to reach a global audience at the most relevant moments,” says Ardan Arac, senior product manager for Google, specifically of the deal between Google and Twitter.

It is estimated that businesses will spend up to $8.3 billion on social media marketing in 2015 alone and with that number projected to double within the next five years, businesses are scrambling to set up effective social media marketing campaigns as soon as possible through sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube; however, the biggest challenge still facing companies that venture into the social media platform is maintaining interactivity with customers that they’ve reached with as little as an estimated 20% actually responding to online comments.

3. Content Marketing

34% of Fortune 500 companies now maintain active blogs according to Forbes. Blogging not only helps increase SEO and maintain traffic to your website, but it can also help establish your site as an authority in your field. Forbes points to the Moz Blog of SEOMoz.com as the perfect example of this in work: “[the blog is] the gateway into one of the largest and most established online marketing communities on the Internet – and it happens to be conveniently hosted on their own branded web property.” Plus, businesses that publish fifteen or more blog posts per month generate up to five times more traffic when compared to companies that do not.

4. Visual Marketing

Images and video have become much more dominant in online marketing over the last couple of years, leaving sites that do not incorporate enough visuals looking like dried-up wastelands of yesteryear. The very fact that YouTube has become the world’s second largest search engine behind only Google is indicative of this trend along with the advent of popular social media platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Vine (sites that are dependent solely on visual content). Not only is it eye catching, but visual media can also help customers become engrossed in a site or blog that is punctuated by pictures instead of long, uninterrupted text blocks.

5. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is what ties all of the above together. With the public’s ever-increasing dependency on mobile devices, more and more people have been relying on smartphones and tablets to access their emails (64%), participate in social media (71%), and watch videos (75%). Additionally, the last couple of month’s have seen the roll-out of Google’s not-so-aptly dubbed Mobilegeddon – Google’s evolution towards ranking sites that are mobile-friendly higher in search results. The statistics are overwhelming and emblematic of the current necessity to produce mobile-friendly content and websites (especially in light of the fact that over half of all E-commerce purchases are made on smartphones).

Based in Rochester, New York, Netsville is an Internet Property Management company specializing in managing the Digital Marketing, Technical, and Business Solutions for our customers since 1994. For more information, please click here.