Internet Marketing

What is Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing including low costs in distributing information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of instant response, and in eliciting response, are unique qualities of the medium.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods include search engine marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, interactive advertising, blog marketing, and viral marketing.

Internet marketing is the process of growing and promoting an organization using online media. Internet marketing does not simply mean 'building a website' or 'promoting a website'. Somewhere behind that website is a real organization with real goals.

Internet marketing strategy includes all aspects of online advertising products, services, and websites, including market research, email marketing, and direct sales.

Benefits of Internet Marketing

One of the benefits associated with Internet marketing is the availability of great amounts of information. Consumers can access the Internet and research products, as well as purchase them at any hour of any day. Companies that use Internet marketing can also save money because of a reduced need for a sales force. Overall, Internet marketing can help expand from a local market to national and international market places. Compared to traditional media, such as print, radio and TV, Internet marketing can have a relatively low cost of entry .

It should be mentioned that, although it may seem a relatively simple task to enter the world of online marketing, sound business strategies still apply. There is still an emphasis on business goals, namely CVP analysis when determining strategy and the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

There are important characteristics that differentiate internet marketing from "offline marketing":

One-to-one vs. one-to-many approach: the targeted user, is typically browsing the internet on their own, and the marketing messages reach them personally. This can be very clearly seen in search marketing, where the users find advertisements targeted to specific keywords that the users asked for.

Demographics targeting vs. behavioral targeting: offline marketers typically segment their markets according to age group, sex, geography, and other general factors. Online marketers have the luxury of targeting by activity. This is a deeper form of targeting since the advertiser knows that the target audience are people who do a certain activity (upload pictures, have blogs, etc.) instead of just expecting that a certain group of people will like their new product or service.

Measurability: Almost all aspects of an online campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers either pays per banner impression (CPM), pays per click (PPC), or pays per action accomplished. Therefore, it is easy to understand which messages or offering are more appealing to the audience.

Response and immediate results: Since the online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on the message, go to a website, and perform a targeted action, the results of campaigns are immediately measured and tracked. On the other hand, someone driving a car who sees a billboard, will at best be interested and might decide to get more information at some time.

Internet Marketing Strategies

Every company of any size should be making both short and long-term Internet marketing investments on a consistent basis. I won’t belabor all the reasons why, suffice it to say that with 173 million US eyeballs on the Internet last month it has become the most important media platform for communicating with both prospects and customers.

Since so many website owners and developers seem to have either forgotten or never learned some of the most important A, B, C’s for Internet marketing success, let’s take a minute to review:

A - You have to have a great site! The bar is high now and so are user expectations. You can drive a ton of traffic to a website but if they don’t want what you got when they get there, then you won’t have success. I am always amazed at how poorly so many websites are designed, not to mention how badly they communicate their value propositions and product/service offerings. For example, if you could only do one thing on my website, will it be the one most important thing I really want you to do? Or will you be distracted by all the other stuff? Most sites fail this simple little test.

B - You must have a real Internet business model that works! (Should I repeat this one for emphasis?) This is a lot easier said than done. Just think about all those thousands of well funded Internet companies with great management teams who failed miserably and most of which had pure ad models at the time. I remember when Yahoo lost a majority of their ad sales when the bubble burst and the first thing they did was to diversify their revenue streams by adding Yahoo Personals and HotJobs.com. These hosted software services provide recurring revenues and help to diversify their revenues in large markets. What is your model? Are all your eggs all in one basket?

C – Assuming you have A + B (otherwise it’s a waste of time and money to add C), then add C which is as much quality traffic as you can possibly find at a reasonable price. Yes, of course that includes CPC campaigns and natural search traffic, but your long-term Internet marketing strategies should go beyond these basics.

For example, I like to ask companies this question, “Why would you only have one website, when you could be promoting five? Or why would you have five, when you could have five hundred?” Does that sound extreme to you? Believe me it’s not. I operate a one man company (well, except for a few virtual worker bees in India and Argentina) yet have more than a thousand websites in my network of sites. So yes, I can say with certainty that growing your domain names portfolio is a critically important component towards accomplishing your short and long-term Internet marketing objectives.

And according to the other “domainers” I know, who like me attend the Traffic conferences, domain names are the real estate of the Internet and like land, “they aren’t making it anymore!” Are you building your domain names portfolio? If not, you definitely should be! This is an important part of your short and long-term Internet marketing strategies.