This is due to the fact that consumer habits have changed significantly in recent years. If you cannot keep up with the growth of digital competences of your target group, a problem will arise. Your customers – both a large proportion of the current ones and a large number of potential new ones – are already online. If you do not wait for them there, when the moment comes when they will start looking for services or products offered by your company, they will turn to the better digitally exposed competition.

Internet marketing, especially if your company has not carried out such activities before (or has conducted them to a minimal extent), is an activity that requires a large dose of knowledge at the very beginning. Moreover, to say that later the necessity to broaden marketing horizons grows exponentially would be a delicate hyperbole at best. It is also worth remembering that while some of the elements that make up the digital image of a brand can be done for free or with a low effort and budget, costs will increase as they develop.

How to start internet marketing? Which tools to use? Which are essential at the beginning and which can be postponed when the brand grows digitally?

SEO

Virtually every brand should have its own website. Thanks to this, you can provide customers with basic information about your services / products and, above all, let them find you. A well-made website will allow you to make the right first impression and provide the necessary contact details. The website should be readable, aesthetic, fast and adapted to User Experience standards (more about UX later in the text).

However, in order for the website to be properly visible, it is important to properly approach its positioning. When a user enters a phrase that interests him / her, it returns a list of several dozen or several hundred thousand results in a specific order. It is not accidental, and the constantly evolving Google algorithm is responsible for it. However, you can live in harmony with it and use good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices from the very beginning.

The SEO of websites and online stores can be divided into two categories. The first is changes that we can make on the website itself – sometimes the whole process is called on-site SEO, i.e. SEO performed directly on the website. They mainly include the creation and optimization of content in such a way that it is “easy to digest” both for the user and for the search engine bot who will regularly visit and analyze the website.

It also means that the content is saturated with keywords for which we want to position the page – they should appear in several places in the text (possibly also in the headings), but you should not overdo them with excessive, unnatural intensity, because this will reduce the readability and quality of the text itself. To gain space for content that does not overwhelm with quantity (no one likes to read a wall of text), you should think about starting a company blog. This will allow not only to increase the amount of content, but also to present the brand as it deserves – i.e. as an expert in a given industry. In addition to substantive articles on a given branch of the market, the blog is a great place to present employees, current achievements and corporate culture – so that customers can also see the “human face” of the company.

On-site SEO also focuses on the technical refinement of the website:
– improving its loading time (the vast majority of users will resign from visiting if the page loading takes more than a few seconds) – this can be achieved, among others, by image compression, code minification, transfer to a faster server, etc .;
– adaptation to display on screens of different resolutions (most of the internet traffic takes place via smartphones, which requires the use of other solutions than in the case of typical desktop versions – users of desktop and laptop computers, however, cannot be forgotten, there are also tablets);
– SSL certificate installation – it ensures encrypted communication between the website visitor and the server and is taken into account by Google bots;
– And many other aspects.

The second, no less important part of SEO is getting links leading to a given website, which is referred to by the term off-site SEO. It is they who signal to the network bot that, according to the social proof of rightness, the website is probably valuable and it is possible to raise its position in the search results. The key, however, is not to “hack” the right number of links from random pages – in SEO, the number must go hand in hand with quality. Tools such as Senuto or Ahrefs help in analyzing the link profile.

At the initial stage, the key information about SEO is the fact that SEO is a long-term process. Achieving satisfactory results is not possible in a week, month, and often even a year – it requires creating a plan and its proper implementation, adapting to the current algorithm updates and continuous training. What’s worse, once the results are achieved, it is easy to lose, for example, due to an ill-considered website update, which, for example, will cause problems with indexing individual subpages.

SEO audit

If you already have a website, it is worth checking carefully how it is doing in the search engine and what can be done to improve its positioning status. We are talking about performing an SEO audit, thanks to which you can check both the elements that can be improved on the site itself (on-site SEO) and the link profile (off-site SEO). On the web you can find many sites – both free and paid – with which you will automatically collect basic information on this topic. At Paraphrase Online com, we also prepared the possibility of conducting such a quick audit. The Google PageSpeed Insights tool, which checks the speed of operation and other basic elements that make up the “performance” of the website, may also be useful.

As a collection of general information, automatic SEO auditors and similar scripts are the first base for further actions. They only take into account the very basic factors influencing the position of the website, so if you think about SEO “seriously”, a professional audit by a specialist will be necessary. Multifaceted analysis allows you to develop a detailed SEO strategy, which in the vast majority of cases (except for extremely niche market sectors) is necessary to bring the website to meaningful results.

Google My Business

When a potential customer enters a company name, a section with details about the specific company often appears on the right next to the search results. Setting up such a business card is free, so you can display the most important data – phone number, address, opening hours or photos of the registered office. Thanks to this, the user has access to basic data without the need to search further, and you can make the right first impression. We write in detail about the GMF in a separate article on our blog.

Social Media

Social media is the modern equivalent of city centers. Depending on the current status of a given portal, they can be bustling (like Instagram or TikTok) or abandoned (like MySpace used to be). There is no doubt, however, that the presence in social media will be useful for most brands – they are perfect platforms for quick contact with the client – not only announcements “I am a given brand”, but also “maybe it’s worth establishing a dialogue?”.

The first question to be answered when considering setting up a brand account on social media is “which website is your target audience on?”. Each website is characterized by a slightly different user profile – due to the skillfully built up position of Facebook over the years, theoretically, you will find all age groups there, but Instagram and TikTok reach younger users better. Each platform has its own code – IG is an image-based platform, TikTok is mainly short videos, Twitter is primarily based on 280-character text messages.

Think about which website your brand fits best. A dynamic brand aimed at teenagers, with skilful profile management, will be great on TikTok, while in the case of care products for seniors, the presence there will probably end up in business terms as a waste of time and resources.

There are many brands in social media. This is a huge overload of information for the user. Due to this accumulation in social media, the company should stand out – not use a clichéd, boring narrative. You have a split second to catch the eye of a potential customer – don’t waste it on overproducing clichés.

It is worth knowing that the era of organic reach (that is, achieved without the support of paid ads) is gone forever. Your fanpage on Facebook will not be displayed to all users who once clicked “I like it” and they hope that it will allow them to update about new posts. Social networks are increasingly monetizing their activities and focus on presenting paid ads. For this reason, bearing in mind your presence in social media, it is worth allocating part of the budget, for example Facebook Ads – it is a waste of time for content creators to see the posts by a dozen or several dozen people.

Google Ads is a powerful advertising system that allows you to reach millions of potential customers.

The Google Ads ecosystem allows, among other things, to show ads:
– In search results – above and below organic results. This placement guarantees adequate exposure of the advertisement and is usually associated with clicks. An advertisement placed especially at the very top of SERPs, although marked appropriately, is sometimes confused with a traditionally positioned page.
– On YouTube – the largest video content portal in the world is also an excellent advertising platform. You can place ads before, during and after your videos (in the form of videos), as well as text overlays, product overlays. The system also allows the use of several other formats (e.g. at the top of the column with suggestions for other movies to watch).
– On millions of portals associated with the Google Display Network partner network. Thanks to this, you can display ads on many lifestyle, news or journalistic websites – the network brings together both small blogs run by hobbyists and the largest wide-range horizontal portals in the world. Furthermore, your ads may be shown to specific users – those who, for example, have previously visited your website or expressed interest in similar products. This is a great way to remind customers about yourself.
– In Discovery Ads – a graphic and video format based not on the sent ready materials, but on a set of elements that, based on self-learning algorithms, the system dynamically mixes, thanks to which it selects a creation that will generate the best results in a given place and under given conditions. Discovery Ads appear on Discover tabs, Gmail (“Offers” and “Communities” tabs) and YouTube (“Watch Later” panel and the platform’s home page).
– In Google Shopping – In the “shopping” tab of the search results page, there is a product price comparison platform. In addition, you can also advertise specific articles there over the “normal” results. What’s more, product ads can also appear in traditional SERPs – when a user enters a phrase in Google that suggests a product (for example, a drone or a thermal mug), Google Ads may display an ad for your product with an image, name, price and, of course, a link to the store’s website.
– And this is only a part of the possibilities of Google Ads!

What else is worth knowing about Google Ads? Out of reach, the system is distinguished by enormous targeting possibilities. Unlike, for example, a TV advertisement, we have the option of precisely specifying to whom the message is to be displayed, which prevents the budget from being wasted. The platform also enables dynamic adjustment of the target group based on the collected data, thanks to which it can rotate ads in real time to people who, according to the system, have the best prognosis for conversion. Supportive solutions such as POCM are also available, which adapt the data 24/7 thanks to self-learning algorithms.

Related to this is the fact that in order to take full advantage of Google Ads, the system must have “what” to collect data on, which is why it is a solution that requires a financial contribution.

How to start internet marketing?

The channels presented above are a good start for a brand that wants to start online marketing in its company. Of course, this is only the tip – digital marketing offers basically endless possibilities. The key is to choose the right channels – so that communication is consistent and results grow.

POCM – what is it anyway?

First, however, a short piece of information for those who have not come across this system so far. POCM is our tool that helps in improving the results of campaigns conducted in Google Ads. It is based on statistical models and self-learning algorithms that collect data about campaigns 24 hours a day and automatically optimize them so as to maximize the probability of achieving previously set goals.

When designing POCM, we especially had in mind that the platform should be simple and intuitive to use and that it would enable effective campaigns using the latest and most effective technologies, also for people who do not have specialized knowledge in the field of online advertising.

What’s with bidding strategies?

It sounds specialized and may sound complicated, but choosing a bid optimization strategy is not a plan for the Battle of Waterloo. Strategies are simply used to achieve a selected business goal that we want to achieve through a campaign. These goals may be different. At various stages of marketing activities, we may, for example, want as many people as possible to see our advertisement, to convert as many users as possible, or simply to reduce the costs associated with advertising as much as possible. A different strategy is used to achieve each of these goals. Its choice determines which parameters of the campaign the system will focus on the most in the optimization process.

As already mentioned, we currently have over 50 such strategies. We will not describe all the available options here, but we will focus on explaining what can be achieved with the most popular ones.

Maximize conversions based on your budget

In this strategy, the system uses the available budget in such a way that it appears evenly and as efficiently as possible. This means that if there is little money left, it goes first to the key phrases that generate the most conversions. Therefore, this strategy is a good solution for people who cannot afford large advertising expenses – thanks to it we minimize the likelihood of a budget constraint.

Maximize your income

If we choose a strategy to maximize revenue, the algorithms will focus not on individual key phrases or advertised products, but on entire campaigns. When we run many of them, they analyze the effectiveness of each of them (of course, provided that we have this strategy set for all of them), and then distributes the budget so that the total income from all of them is as high as possible. This strategy works best when the system has a lot of data, so it is intended for people with a large advertising budget and who can afford to run a large number of campaigns.

Target ROAS

Target ROAS is that the system aims to achieve a return on investment as determined by us. Let’s show it with an example – for example, we can assume that we want every dollar spent on advertising to bring us $ 3 profit. In this model, algorithms use data to identify key phrases or products that have yielded a large number of valuable conversions in the past. They set higher click rates for them, while other phrases / products have a lower rate. The danger with this strategy is setting an unrealistic, high ROAS, because it can lead to a budgetary constraint. Therefore, it is worth entrusting the determination of the return on investment to a specialist – he will set the achievable return and will gradually increase it, if the campaign produces satisfactory results.

Target CPA

In the target CPA, we define the rate that we are willing to spend on acquiring one user. However, this does not mean that each conversion will cost exactly the same. The system will analyze the behavior of users and on this basis it will reduce or increase rates on specific devices, at given hours, etc. However, it will always strive to ensure that the average cost of acquisition is at least as agreed. In this way, it will provide us with the greatest number of conversions at a given cost-per-acquisition. This strategy works especially when the specific cost of customer acquisition is important to us and when the algorithm has a lot of data on the basis of which it can predict user behavior.

Maximize clicks based on your budget

As you can guess, the goal of this strategy is to get as many clicks as possible within your budget. It’s similar to budget-based conversion maximization, and is an alternative when we don’t have conversion tracking implemented. It also works well when we have a very small budget, and thus few conversions – then there may be too little data for the system to correctly predict which phrases / products will bring the most of them. In addition, it is not always possible to determine a conversion action, and we often want to get as much traffic as possible on the page – then maximizing clicks will be a great solution.

Target Impression Share

This strategy allows you to achieve the assumed percentage of views – algorithms automatically set bids at such a level to win a certain number of auctions. When choosing this option, we have to decide which ad display place we want to fight for. There are three options here: first result on the page, displayed at the top of the results page, or displayed anywhere on the page. Here you can limit the maximum bid that the system can set, but for the campaign to work properly, it cannot be too low. Then it would be impossible to win the appropriate number of auctions.

Improved CPC

As part of the Enhanced CPC, we set a click bid for your ads ourselves, but the system may automatically increase it if it determines that there are conditions under which the likelihood of conversion has increased, or decreased when the chance of conversion is low. With Enhanced CPC – aka eCPC – you can optimize your bids to increase either the number of conversions or the value of your conversions.

A solution tailored to your needs

POCM users can use many other strategies available within the platform. After signing the contract, the customer is contacted by a specialist from the Support Department, created specifically to support the users of this particular platform. It proposes the best strategy and ad formats in a given industry and budget, choosing from the options available in the package selected by the client.

After accepting the plan, he sets up a campaign and optimizes it manually for a month, while the algorithms collect data in order to adjust the rates independently in the future, implementing the assumed strategy. After the first month, the company no longer interferes with the campaign, but the customer has the option of updating or adding new keywords, ads, etc. He can also view ad statistics and compare the results from different periods. Therefore, it is a platform that gives the client a lot of freedom, while providing advanced algorithms, and this in total gives a tool that allows you to create modern, constantly optimized campaigns with any budget.