There are two main categories of marketing and advertising strategies: short-term and long-term.
If you are looking to build traffic or maybe boost your sales rate in a short amount of time, then short-term strategies are a good choice. You can almost instantly acquire a great number of new customers just by placing an ad or sending a well-written message for a set price.
In contrast, long-term strategies are not that easy to handle. They require you to make a bigger investment, not only in time but also in money. Furthermore, the results are not evident right away.
Nevertheless, with time, they prove to be quite effective, and they can lead to a higher long-term ROI. Also, since their effectiveness grows over time, these strategies can sustain themselves far better than some other strategies.
The Best Long-Term Online Marketing Strategies
SEO
Search engine optimisation is a popular marketing strategy, and it is also one of our top choices.
SEO actually refers to a process that requires you to optimise your website, as well as your off-site targets. By doing so, you will potentially boost your search engine visibility and rankings.
Moreover, that boost should lead to more traffic for your website, which means that there is a great potential for high revenue.
Some of the benefits of using SEO are:
Adaptability
Your SEO strategy is based on keywords that you wish to target so as to boost your search engine visibility. And, since search engines are quite popular, not to mention the basis of online interactions, this sort of strategy is extremely adaptable. Therefore, almost all businesses can use it and adapt it according to their goals and needs.
Targeting
SEO cannot give you exact information about your domain authority. However, when it comes to some other metrics, it is quite precise. With it, you can keep up with your search engine ratings, as well as analyse data about your audience in detail.
Continuous authority
If you play your cards right, you can reap many benefits even after your campaign ends. Once you build up your authority with SEO, that authority will stay permanent. Thus, results will be coming in post-campaign as well.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a fantastic strategy on its own, but it has even more benefits if you use it with SEO. It is a great complement to SEO, and sometimes it’s even essential to your success.
No matter if you’re developing buying guides or entertainment pieces, content always has to be valuable both to your current and potential customers. So, you should know its three main aspects: development, publication and syndication of high-quality content.
But, why is content marketing important? Let’s see:
Trustworthiness and reputational benefits
Although you can use content marketing to drive more traffic to your website, that’s not the only thing this strategy can do. In fact, it can help build brand reputation, as well as trustworthiness that’s all too important to have within the target audience. If it’s successful, content marketing can help you retain more customers and build brand awareness and brand perceptions. What’s more, it can also boost the overall visibility of the brand.
A complementary strategy
A great thing about content marketing is that it’s self-sufficient. However, it’s also a fantastic complementary strategy for all other strategies on this list.
If you combine it with SEO, you can boost your organic search engine rankings. Meanwhile, when combined with email marketing, content marketing adds more value to your email marketing campaigns. It can even help you find the necessary material that will support your social media campaign.
Conversions
If you use the power of CTA (call-to-action) in your content marketing strategy, you could gain more conversions. That way, not only will you attract the right audience, but you will also get more customers at the same time.
Long-lasting value
Content is forever, or better yet, content will bring you value for as long as you use it. Therefore, every piece of writing you put up on your website will be bringing in online value for as long as it’s there. What’s more, every new piece will permanently add more value to your website and brand, and proceed to do so until you take it down.
Email Marketing
Digital communication has grown quite a bit over the years, but it hasn’t yet defeated emails.
Ever since email first appeared, email marketing has been a popular way of reaching your target audience. Most often, it’s based on newsletters, as well as promotional offers that you send to your subscribers.
Advantages of email marketing:
Incredible ROI
A few studies have shown that email marketing can bring you a far greater ROI than other marketing strategies. What’s more, if it’s very successful, it can even give you a 400% return on investment!
Great for attracting and retaining customers
Email marketing is a double threat due to its fantastic ability to not only bring in new customers but also help you retain them.
Easy to use
Lastly, we ought to mention that email marketing is not that difficult to implement. The lack of best practices and complex technical elements makes this strategy easy to use. Thus, you will only need to know some marketing fundamentals to use it to its full potential.
Social Media
The final strategy we would like to mention is social media. A social media strategy entails the use of platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to build brand reputation. However, you need to remember one thing: getting a high ROI at the start is not really possible. Nevertheless, over time, you will get to experience other benefits:
- Almost everything on social media is free, which is a good base for long-term profitability. You can create a page without paying a fee for it. Furthermore, posting on your business page is entirely free as well. Time is actually the greatest investment when it comes to this strategy.
- A social media strategy is a 4-in-1 solution. Once you build up your audience, you can use your business page for pretty much anything. You can implement various tactics and boost the audience engagement and the sales rate. What’s more, you can attract new customers, as well as promote your page, by posting regularly.
- A social media strategy has a great deal of potential. With a bit of luck or perfect timing, you can potentially “go viral” and experience an incredible boost in brand visibility.
Final thoughts
Now that we’ve revealed some of the best long-term online marketing strategies, it’s time to decide the ultimate winner. Or is it?
The winner doesn’t exist because your strategy choice depends on your goals. If you are looking for an incredible return on investment, then email marketing is a good idea. Meanwhile, if your ultimate goal is to reap long-term benefits and experience an almost unlimited growth, then you would be better off with content marketing.
Still, when you think about it, there is an even better idea here. If you want to make the most of your marketing budget, then try to combine these strategies.
They are all powerful in their own ways, and they will surely help you build your brand’s reputation and get more traffic and customers. However, by combining them, you will be giving yourself access to far greater results than you might think – results not one of these strategies can achieve on its own.
