I am a certified Online Marketing Manager (ptm Academy Munich) and would be happy to help you make your website successful and achieve your goals (KPIs). In other words, sell products or services. Online marketing encompasses all technical and content-related measures such as onsite search engine optimization (SEO) and on-page SEO, as well as all other activities to gain visibility on the internet and rank as high as possible in search results for specific keywords on relevant search engines. In Germany, according to Sistrix, approximately 55–60% of users click on one of the first three search results. Internationally, 70–80% respond to the top 3.
Online marketing comprises several areas:
- Content marketing, which means gaining visibility through content in various formats such as blogs, news, videos, white papers, books, graphics, case studies, or guides, and generating reader interactions to turn them into prospects for your offering and customers.
- Online advertising, i.e., placing ads online with Google AdSense or native advertising—ad copy that resembles editorial content and is placed through service providers in established, high-reach newspapers and magazines such as Focus, Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), or on social media. As an experienced media professional—I have worked for years as a journalist, copywriter, and photographer for SZ, television stations, and radio stations—I can also provide optimal support in public relations (PR).
- Search engine marketing means placing ads in search engines and optimizing the website for positioning in search results.
- Email marketing: People are curious, and you offer more than just your products or services—information, news, and stories (storytelling). With emails, you keep interested parties informed, send discount codes, or provide updates on new products, services, an important software upgrade, or innovative features.
- Influencer marketing: Influencers tell their followers on social media about products, for example, try them out, and introduce new ones. This is how you become known to your target audience. Authenticity and credibility play a major role in this.
- Affiliate marketing: In this form of marketing, publishers write about products that interest them. Whiskey enthusiasts, for example, develop websites about high-proof rarities and link to online shop websites. Those who like cigars or books publish websites about them. They earn commissions when a user follows the link and then purchases a whiskey from Scotland or the latest novel from Austria.
- Social media marketing: This involves creating content for social media—text, photos, and videos—to report on your new book, your business consultancy, or the latest perfume or artwork from your online shop. Here too, storytelling and authentic communication play a particularly important role.
How does online marketing work?
First, I discuss with you what exactly you want to achieve with it. What is your offering, who is your target audience, what is your branding and market positioning, what is your unique selling point? In other words, what makes your service or products unique and new compared to the competition? Then I analyze the current state of your website with colleagues, meaning the content and technical structure. Because only when the website is optimally structured both technically and content-wise to be found by search engine bots and for them to capture the content structure as effectively as possible will it rank best with other measures. Anyone who promises you the moon is not reputable, because there are now around 1.1 billion websites worldwide (Netcraft Web Server Survey, W3Techs), of which one-fifth to one-third pursue commercial goals. That’s 220 to 330 million. Consequently, costs increase if you enter a market late with your offering.
The next step is to define exactly what you want to achieve with online marketing, i.e., your goals, and as specifically as possible as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For example, 15% more sales of the new product line XY in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Or 12% more revenue from artworks within Germany, or gaining at least 20,000 new subscribers for your company newsletter. This allows online marketing measures to be best measured and their effectiveness assessed.
