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Virtual marketing: what this is and why you need it for your business!
Do you want to get a 24/7 online money-making machine? Virtual marketing is for you!
Virtual marketing, a synonym of digital or online marketing, is the ensemble of strategies and tactics that provides personalized, attention-grabbing marketing support for your website, emails, and social media activities without the need for expensive sales staff or costly physical events. As the name says, it is marketing gone online. Many businesses are still neglecting to be active online, but since the first COVID-19 outbreak, this form of marketing has become even more essential for any business.
In this article, you will learn what virtual marketing is, why your business needs it, and how to use it.
What Is virtual marketing?
First things first, let's define more precisely what uncovers the term virtual marketing.
Like traditional marketing, the aim is to bridge the gap between your targeted market and your products or services. The difference is that it doesn't rely on the physical presence of people in a shop, in networking events, at a booth during a conference. It works for you 24/7 using online technologies such as websites, social media, emails, all supported by automation software.
You can build a virtual money-making machine that will generate (non-virtual) revenues, even if you are not there, provided that you can fulfill the orders online. If not, it can still be beneficial to get leads and orders that you will treat as you usually do.
The source of those leads will be virtual; the rest of the process will be traditional.
The different components of virtual marketing are:
- a website that acts as an online display of your brand, your products
- an email list of all visitors or customers who sign up to get information from your brand
- social media accounts to develop online brand awareness and bring visitors to your website
- content creation and promotion to generate traffic and leads
- paid ads
- landing pages
- sales pages
When tied all together, they will work for you provided that you keep producing relevant content and distribute it to the platforms where your customers hang out.
Why Does Your Business Need It?
People are online.
What do they do? They consume content and network for most of them.
This means that you can get the attention of millions of people to your business. But only if you know how to put your content in front of them and captivate their attention enough to make them pay attention to your brand and come to you to learn more.
This is the power of virtual marketing.
You don't have to stand for hours trying to get a few people to stop at your booth at a meeting or an exhibition. You can attract thousands or millions of people remotely, automatically, and convert them (at least partly) into customers.
24/7 worldwide if you want to.
Does it work?
Let's take a quick but remarkable example: Apple.
They started with TV ads in the 80s, but they became masters in virtual marketing. Probably the most efficient campaigns you can find.
The result is the impressive growth of the company.
Apple quarterly revenue ($bn)
How Can You Use Virtual Marketing in Your Business?
First of all, you need a website. There are plenty of options to create one, and I wrote a website creation guide that can help you if you need it.
As we discussed before, virtual marketing uses a range of tactics. There are many ways to achieve the same goal: capturing people online to convince them to buy your products.
You may use one or several of the following:
- SEO content marketing
- Publications
- Videos/webinars
- Podcasts
- Social media marketing
- Online forums
- Online communities
- Email marketing
- Paid ads (PPC: pay-per-click)
- Influencer marketing
- Online networking: events, LinkedIn.
- Business directories
It is a lot of options, and you may even find more.
You may feel overwhelmed when looking at this list, but you don't have to do all of these. You can choose one and expand later.
How Can You Get Started Using Virtual Marketing for Your Business?
Since I don't want you to stare at the list of the previous section without knowing where to start and what to do, I will give you the blueprint to get you started with virtual marketing.
Here are the 4 steps I recommend you follow:
- Know your target audience
- Create a website for your business
- Run a blog for your business
- Use content marketing
Each of them requires some expertise and investment, but you can learn it if you want to do it yourself or I can help you 😊
Takeaway:
Traditional marketing is important, but virtual marketing can bring in new and different customers. By creating a website and using a content marketing strategy, you are building an automated sales system that runs 24/7 to make you more money.
If you want to discuss how to make this happen, contact me.