Many companies face the same problem in the first few years of their founding or when taking their first steps in online marketing. Digital popularity and their own digital communication channels are lacking or at least not particularly effective in terms of their own target groups.
It makes sense to rely on the big gatekeepers and rely on SEO, Google AdWords , Facebook ads, listing your own products on Amazon... to attract visitors to your own website and, in the best case, to generate sales. Many big players such as Zalando and the companies in the Scout Group (Immobillienscout, Friendscout...) have grown particularly through SEO and SEA. This route is easier than making advance investments that sometimes last for years until you have built up something of your own, independent - but this strategy is tricky.
As a result, many companies and online marketers are increasingly becoming pawns of the big gatekeepers Google, Facebook, Amazon… and are aligning their online marketing strategies with these external systems.
The battle between the Internet giants for dominance on the Internet has been in full swing for years, with the aim of capturing a large portion of the traffic and transactions on the Internet and capitalising on them.
Google, Facebook and Amazon are in the best positions here. All three started from different starting points. Google as a search engine , Facebook as a social network and Amazon as an online bookseller. But the air is getting thinner! Now they are moving towards each other at breakneck speed. While Amazon is fighting for products and retailers, the battle is currently over content.
The greatest danger for online marketing is the curtailment of opportunities and autonomy. Imagine if Google and/or Facebook were the only online marketing channels. You would be hopelessly trapped within the limits of the system and at the mercy of your own sensitivities without any basis of your own.
That's why you should diversify, have courage and build your own systems alongside third-party channels, through which you can position yourself with excellent online marketing and products. Because this peru phone number data can quickly become impossible if online marketing is standardized in third-party systems. Then at some point it will just be a question of who has the biggest budget... Don't let it get that far!
But diversifying channels is not enough. Create something of your own, something independent that you can fully influence yourself. A strong brand with inbound potential and your own target group-oriented and efficient communication system.
It is not the quick and easy way, but it is sustainable and creates value. The goal should be to generate at least 40-50% of visitors to your own website via brand traffic such as direct access, brand or navigation search queries , feed readers, newsletters, etc., where you can maintain a direct influence on the monetization of your own content through conversion and usability optimization. I have already explained the advantages of brand traffic in detail in the article Digital Brand Building: The Importance of Brand for Online Marketing and Digital Brand Building: Why Good Branding Contributes to All Your Key Figures.
The rest should be a mix of organic search engine traffic, PPC advertising , visitors from social media, referrals, etc., depending on the business model. This is a healthy mix and the risk of dependency is manageable. Creating a marketing strategy around third-party systems such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. rather than your own website or systems is not sustainable.
The brand and its own autonomous communication channels such as newsletters, blogs, websites... as their own assets should generally be the central link between all (online) marketing measures. Brand building and the development of your own independent communication channels should therefore always be at the center of a long-term (online) marketing strategy.
Read more in the article Why Google, Facebook & Co should not be the core of your marketing strategy .