So what is an online marketer?
Depending on who you ask, the definition of what is an online marketer could mean a variety of things. At one time, an online marketer was one who created websites, or who placed banner ads on others websites.
On the other end of the spectrum, there used to be (and still are) a ton of people telling you that online marketers can make a fortune overnight on the internet. These are the same who try to get you to buy some form of internet marketing software or training program.
Today, the online marketer (also known as an Internet marketer, or digital marketer) is evolving into a broader mix of roles, from individuals who are generating a bit of extra money on the side, to professionals in large organisations who use their skills to generate leads and sales in the billions of dollars.
The online marketer today has become an important role in almost all business – online, partly online, and even offline businesses. As the future unfolds, online marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company’s marketing mix. For some online businesses it’s the only form of marketing being practised.
So what does an online marketer actually do?
Essentially, an online marketer uses the Internet to do one or more of the following:
- Communicate a company’s message about itself it’s products or it’s services online.
- Help businesses connect with their target market, and build a following.
- Help businesses sell their goods or services.
There are several strategies which online marketers use to achieve these outcomes. These include:
Website Design
Setting up a website consisting of text images and possibly audio and video elements used to convey the company’s messages online. To inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company’s products and or services. The website may or may not include the ability to capture leads from potential customers or directly sell a product or service online. websites can be the internet equivalent of offline brochures or mail order catalogues, and they are a great way to establish your business identity.
Search Engine Marketing (SEO & SEM)
Then there is search engine marketing which is marketing a website online via search engines. either by improving the sites natural ranking through search engine optimisation, buying pay per click ads, or purchasing pay for inclusion listings in website directories, which are similar offline yellow page listings we used to use.
Email Marketing
Then we have email marketing, which is a method of distributing information about a product or service, or for soliciting feedback from customers about a product or service through email. email addresses of customers and prospective customers may be collected or purchased. Various methods are used such as the regular distribution of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company’s product or services. email marketing is essentially the online equivalent of direct mail marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has risen to be an important tool of every online marketer. After Google, the world’s most used website is Facebook, but there are other very popular social media platforms which online marketers can use to help businesses connect with their audience, and also make sales. Other popular social media platforms these days are Instagram, and TikTok. LinkedIn is also considered a social media platform, but it’s audience is business professionals.
Banner Advertising
Another component is banner advertising, which is the placement of ads on a website for a fee. The offline equivalent of this form online marketing would be traditional ads in newspapers or magazines. The Google Ads platform makes banner advertising easy for online marketers.
Press Releases
Online marketers also use online press releases which involve placing a news release story about a company, it’s website, it’s people, and or it’s products and services with an online wire service.
Blogs
Then there is blog marketing which is the act of posting comments, expressing opinions, or making announcements in a discussion, and can be accomplished either by hosting your own blog, or by posting comments and or urls in other blogs related to your product or service online.
What is an Online Marketer? – Your Say
We asked people from all over the world what their understanding is of “what is an online marketer?” Here’s what they had to say:
An online marketer is someone who specializes in promoting a business through the medium of the Internet. Online marketing in general is a very broad umbrella term and can include marketing activities like search engine optimization, paid search marketing, social media marketing, content creation and publication, and more.
Andy Cabasso, Postaga
Online marketer refers to people who use techniques available to a business to market, promote, and advertise products, services, or brand on the World Wide Web. They are like a preacher that preaches what your company is offering through online medium.
Kenny Trinh, Netbooknews
I founded a health & wellness brand named Greatist and sold it last year, so have had a lot of time to reflect– and have played in and around online marketing since. I’d say not all online marketers are made equal. Some are genius storytellers and others are digital sign spinners. At its core, though, a successful online marketer tells an authentic brand story that resonates with the product’s target consumer in a way that drives action.
Derek Flanzraich, Greatist
No complicated business jargon is required to explain this. A *marketer’s job* is to present a product/service to potential consumers in a way that triggers an action. An *online marketer does this through online channels*, such as social media, emails, search engines, and online ads.
If your business gained traction through tactics using the Internet, e.g., an increase to your foot traffic through a promotional email or from creating a free Facebook event, then you’re doing online marketing!
Hung Nguyen, Smallpdf
An online marketer is someone who promotes a product or business using the internet. This can be done via social media and ads on search engines. They see what is currently trending and try to fit their designated product in with those trends. For example, people could be using a certain keyword or phrase when searching for an item, so an online marketer will use this knowledge and incorporate it into the marketing so it will be visible to those people. Analytics and statistics are checked in order for people to be shown products that are specifically tailored to their searches.
Mike Falahee, Marygrove Awning Co.
An online marketer is an individual, or a team of people that promote a business product or service through a variety of online media. I believe there are many branches of online marketing such as video, social media, blogs, reviews, podcasts. An online marketer needs to adapt to change and not only work a standard 9-5 job but all around the clock in order to provide customer service to this reaching out to the business.
Ty Stewart, Simple Life Insure
Online Marketing can be seen as a sort of prelude to sales, where you are trying to build a strong brand recognition and draw people’s attention to your company’s services or products. There are many different methods that can be used, including outreach, networking, link building, content marketing and a variety of others, depending on just how innovative you want to get. The main goal as an online marketers is to build awareness, which is way strategies are often executed across multiple platforms.
Andrea Loubier, Mailbird
The job of an online marketer can consist of several aspects, but one that almost always falls within its boundaries is preparing content to attract visitors to your site. Once there, this potential customer may sign up for services, purchase a product or bookmark your site for an easy return visit..
Alexandra Zamolo, BEEKEEPER
Online marketers are innovative people, often with a sales background, who know how to hustle and draw attention to their brand. This can be done in a number of ways, whether it be sending out newsletters, writing guest posts for high-traffic sites, developing outreach strategies or ensuring that their site is filled with quality content. All of these things make up a good marketing campaign, which can be executed solely online.
Greg Brookes, Kettlebells Workouts
Online marketers have a special task to perform: they must devise innovative, creative strategies that will draw positive attention to their company in a way that will increase revenue. While this may sound rather complex, an expert online marketer will know numerous ways to get the job done – and it can all be accomplished online. Most campaigns include a mixture of outreach, content and email marketing, digital pr and other out-of-the-box solutions.
Chris Gadek, ADQUICK
An online marketer is an individual who engages a target audience through digital marketing channels. Online marketers could work for a business, a public organization, or simply be hobbyists. Digital channels used by online marketers include organic and paid search, social media, email, text message, and online media publications. The content that online marketers push through channels is typically meant to increase awareness of their brand, or nudge their target audience to purchase a product or service.
Bruce Hogan, SoftwarePundit
What is an online marketer? Not all that different from a traditional marketing person. The same principles apply: communicate the who, what, when and why and how you want to work/buy/join/support the organization to the right audience-for the most bang for the buck. Generating a steady stream of qualified leads keeps our clients and us in business.
And it’s the same core principles for small and large businesses. It’s getting your message to the people who would want to know who you are. Online marketing does have an aspect to it that I think is different, and that is the sheer amount of data we can collect now and analyze to hone our strategies. It’s staggering. That kind of data analysis used to only be something a larger company would have had access to by hiring out for the service. Now we have it at our fingertips. We can understand how our message is converting in realtime.
Sherri Arnaiz
An online marketer uses a selection of techniques to network and create mutual collaborations to draw attention to a company or organization. Most online marketers work directly with outreach campaigns, where they utilize email marketing strategies to connect with other companies who might be willing to exchange a backlink, accept a guest post contribution or find other unique ways to offer exposure. Many online marketers also respond to HARO (Help a Reporter Out) queries, where they can supply an expert quote and receive a backlink.
Blake Sutton, Electrical Knowledge
I’m Laura Chawke (O’ Connor), the owner and founder of beauty blog. I also have a bachelor’s degree in commerce and a master’s degree in economics.
My definition of an online marketer: In my opinion, an online marketer is a person who attempts to communicate the benefits of a product or service to the target market via an online form, in the hope that the target market will buy more of that particular product or service. Online marketing is an art of persuasion and can be achieved through targeted advertising, search engine optimization, or by building a social media presence.
Laura Chawke, Makeup Scholar
An online marketer is anyone who is making an effort to sell something online. Making an effort is the key phrase here. Simply putting up an online store and not making an effort to market or sell its products means you are an online store owner, not an online marketer. When you start running ads to your online store, start showing your store to friends and family, and start other ways of promoting it online, that is when you become an online marketer.
Stacy Caprio, Her.CEO
I’m Mira, co-founder of ComfyLiving and I wanted to share my view on online marketers.
Online marketer is a person committed to promoting a brand and its values in a variety of different channels. He or she ensures that a message is clear and optimized for a specific audience. Some of the most common channels that marketers use are social media accounts, online platforms, Google Ads or mass email tools.
Mira Rakicevic, ComfyLiving
An online marketer is not just someone who reaches audiences online, but also someone who uses online tools to reach audiences offline.
Online marketers know where to find online tools that get messages placed into print publications. There are specialized forums dedicated to finding editors and journalists who are putting together pieces for newspapers and television segments.
Online marketers often purchase sponsorship placements in print programs for trade shows, county fairs, sporting events, and more. These placements are usually initiated through online press releases and later negotiated online via e-mail.
Online marketers know how to use social media, online forums, and purchase ad buys to promote personal appearances, business gatherings, and other live events.
Steve Johnson, Too Much Tina Marketing
I am a senior editor and content strategist for bestcompany.com, a customer review site. I have worked in this field since 2018. I’ve had to explain my job to my grandparents several times — SEO is a relatively new thing.
An online marketer either focuses on ads or content marketing. Online marketers’s ads appear on Google and social media. Content marketers and search engine optimizers make a company’s website appear higher in Google search results. Much of this is done through content creation to answer potential client questions, establish thought leadership, and build trust.
Alice Stevens, Best Company
I’m Ethan, CEO of financial institutions – Goalry and Loanry.
An online marketer role is to drive traffic to websites in order to help a company/business owner generate more leads or sales. This can be accomplished through a plethora of channels, such as emails, paid ads, SEO, social media and content marketing.
Ethan Taub, Goalry
I want to share with you what I know about online marketers.
Online marketers are the one who market once business or it’s website across the web for a specific group or type of people using several online marketing channels to achieve its goals. There are several forms or names of online marketers, job titles like digital marketer, SEO Specialist or content marketers, ppc specialist and social media marketers are part of the big picture doing online marketing tasks.
Ulysis Cababan, RapidVisa.com
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and the owner of Wisdom Within Counseling in Niantic, Connecticut. I’m a yoga teacher and yoga therapist. I work with depressed adolescents and teens with body image issues. Therapy helps them cope with feelings in healthy, holistic ways, love themselves, and be socially confident. I run a group practice that focuses child and teen anxiety counseling using creative arts, outdoor nature therapies, and yoga.
An online marketer is someone who promotes their services or another person’s services online in virtual format. Someone who markets online might use different platforms like YouTube, social media, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and even Google ads. Sometimes people who market online have some thing that’s very valuable to offer and other times it’s very scam-based.
Katie Ziskind, Wisdom Within Counseling
What is an Online Marketer? In the most simplest of terms, an online marketer is somebody or someone that uses and leverages the online tools available to them to spread awareness about themselves, the product they’re selling, the service they’re providing or anything for that matter. The list of tools are many and to just name a few would be blogging, advertising, social media marketing.
Osama Khabab, MotionCue Video Production Agency
I am Norhanie Pangulima, a content ambassador at Hernorm.
At Hernorm, I work on creating SEO-optimized content about dating, relationships, digital marketing, social media and more.
The use of the internet has gotten a long way. Before, we used to use it in only education and research, but now, it is ramping in the world of business. I am a fan of buying products online and I find the internet very helpful in weighing which one should I buy. It greatly enables people and businesses to communicate more effectively and make transactions in a real-time or shorter time. As of April 2020, there are 4.57 billion people who are actively using the internet. That’s why business owners take advantage of the use of the internet to sell and advertise products.
So, what is an online marketer?
- An online marketer promotes his products through the use of online platforms or websites. With the power of the internet, a lot of websites were built and later on use for selling and advertising products. We have eBay and Amazon as the most popular examples. These websites are being used to display images and descriptions of their products as well as available payment methods and shipping options that are accessible to internet users.
- An online marketer promotes his products through digital devices. An online marketer uses mobile phones or computers to promote his products and services. He also uses these devices to transact with his customers.
Norhanie Pangulima, Hernorm
What is an Online Marketer? An online marketer is someone who connects potential customers to services
or products via the Internet using a combination of copy and art to entice prospects to learn more.
Jason Boyd, Fictionphile.com
To me, an online marketer is a person who’s skilled in the methods of promoting themselves on any type of screen. Digital marketers don’t need a formal education, either; the best ones learn by doing.
Kenzi Wood, Kenzi Writes LLC
Online marketing is selling a product or a service of a brand or a company over the internet. This is what I use to market my own brand over the World Wide Web. Now, in order to be successful in online marketing just like me, you have to know everything about the internet of things. I realized early on that online marketing is the most inexpensive way of reaching my target audience meaning my customers.
To be successful in your endeavors on being an online marketer, you’ve got to have an online presence. You’ve got to also establish a positive online reputation. You can achieve this by giving good service or selling great products which give you the best reviews. You can use social media platforms as an opportunity for engaging your target audiences rather than spending on ads. You can also blog about your product or service. This is another way to converse with your target audience for you to get feedback from your customers.
Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic. 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog. 78% of Internet users conduct product research online. The number of marketers who say Facebook is “critical” or “important” to their business has increased 83% in just 2 years.
Shari Smith, Shari – Sells
An online marketer is someone who does their marketing activities online to make a sale. This includes search engine optimization, email marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing. Online marketing is a profitable and accessible strategy for businesses of all sizes.
To get started with online marketing, you need to put together a website or social media accounts to establish your expertise, draw in new leads, and convert leads into sales.
When people start coming to your site and social media accounts, you can capture email, phone number, and other personal information for follow-up that will convert leads into sales.
You can measure your online marketing results by using different analytics. There are different free tools on the web to track the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.
Randy VanderVaate, Funeral Funds
Online marketing has changed how we conduct and grow our business nowadays. Almost everyone is going online, ditching the more traditional means of marketing. The top reason is businessmen and entrepreneurs find online marketing 62% cheaper while being actually capable of producing 3 times more leads than traditional means.
This is why I ended up being a content ambassador myself. Although before, I’ve always thought that anyone who sells anything online is already considered an online marketer, I was kind of wrong. And here’s what I’ve learned about them:
They promote and generate online traffic
When it comes to online marketing, one of your basic jobs is to conceptualize and create a method or a content that will provide their brand or business massive amounts of online traffic such as views, likes, follows, and shares.
They are online platform wizards
Online marketers have extensive knowledge about everything one must know in order to use online platforms for business purposes. They know what kind of content to conjure in order to sell your brand, or which “spells” to use so that online consumers will choose your product or service.
Samantha Moss, Romantific.com
As someone who works in the online world, I have had a lot of time to consider the different fields which are involved with the internet, bringing me to the following opinion of what an online marketer is: Since the internet has such a broad landscape of channels, I feel that online marketing also takes on a broad description.
To me, online marketers are individuals who take part in the marketing process (e.g. spreading awareness, promoting a brand, etc.) through a web-based channel. Whether it be social media, email, SEO, Google Ads, or anything else relating to the internet, my opinion is that, if your marketing process involves one or more of these channels, you can consider yourself an online marketer.
I wouldn’t say personal use of the internet can be considered online marketing, since there’s no specific goal other than posting content for your friends and family. If there is a goal, and it has something to do with growing a business, profile, brand, etc. then the line between being a consumer and an online marketer is blurred (content creators, for example, might be considered online marketers as they fall under this definition).
Carla Diaz, Broadband Search
I started a global branding and marketing firm 19 years ago. You do not exist today if you cannot be found online. As a business you must have a website and I¹d argue businesses always need SEO because the whole point of having a web site is to make it easy for customers to find you. Being invisible online is a terrible strategy so making sure your site is keyword rich, mobile friendly, loads quickly and produces meaningful content today is the price of entry. That also happens to be a great foundation for effective SEO.
Your home page is the most important to hook in prospective clients and customers if it does not load quickly or they do not see something that grabs their attention the opportunity will be lost. It must include enough of your value proposition to start the conversation so they will click further to learn more about your product or service. The goal is to make the navigation intuitive and easy so they follow the breadcrumbs to get their questions answered or problems solved. When your brand foundation its strong the metrics show that you shorten the sales cycle and people spend more time on your site.
I started my company when websites were basically a brochure online and search was a novelty. The sites have gotten fancier over the years and search engines have changed their algorithms to keep up with customer demand for better and more relevant search capability. Online marketers decide which tools to use to best reach their target audience.
As far as online marketing goes I am a big fan of SEO, social media especially LinkedIn and Content Marketing. Because we are always online now 24/7 it is easy to get sucked into it but you do not have to let it run your life! My advice is to pick a few things you enjoy doing and do them really well. You cannot be everywhere all the time so choose high impact activities that work for you and play to your strengths.
It does not matter which platform you choose just pick one or 2 that are authentic to you. It should look and sound like you and the brand you have built. Whether yours is polished or more informal, chatty or academic, humorous or snarky, it is a way for your personality to come through. Everyone is not going to like you or hire you but for the ones who would be a great fit for you make sure they feel and keep a connection and give them a reason to remember you so that when they need your help they think of you first.
Paige Arnof-Fenn, Mavens & Moguls
An online marketer is anyone trying to publicize a good or service online. Traditionally you may think of digital marketing professionals, who are experts in helping all types of businesses (online and offline) grow an online presence. They may also build build exclusively online businesses like affiliate marketing or e-commerce sites. In today’s digital age most businesses have to transform themselves to become online marketers.
Anna Yen, FamilyFI
An online marketer is someone who uses online channels and content to generate leads and sales. It’s someone that uses digital technologies and tools to create and optimize campaigns based on data and insights available in online marketing analytics tools.
Djordje Milicevic, StableWP
What are your thoughts about what an online marketer is? Leave a comment below!