Internet Marketing features the many ways in which companies promote their products, services and other parts of their business. This term is also known as web marketing, online marketing, digital marketing or eMarketing.
Why Internet Marketing?
1. The creation of the internet has made it possible for companies of all sizes the effectively promote their brands and products in a very cost effective manner relative to traditional media. For example, the Direct Marketing Association “Power of Direct” found that email accounts for $40.56 for every dollar spent on it in 2011, compared to mail catalogs’ ROI (Return On Investment) of $7.30, search’s return of $22.24, Internet display advertising’s ROI of $19.72 and mobile’s ROI of $10.51.
2. More importantly, if you want to reach new customers and build a long-term relationship with existing customers, the internet is where you need to be. Here you are providing them with 24/7 access to your business, brand and products.
Internet Marketing Objectives
In essence, Internet marketing is:
• Communicating your company’s message about your business, products, or services.
• Conducting research on potential customers, existing customers, competitors, the market and industry leaders.
• Selling your products and services over the internet, or encouraging the purchasing of your goods and services in your physical store through marketing on the internet.
Key components:
What is Optimization?
Optimization or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) includes the many methods companies use to increase their organic ranking on search engines for a specific keyword or keyword phrase. When websites have not directly paid the search engine to show up in that certain position in the search engine, this is known as organic (or free) rankings. For the majority of businesses, optimization is the main driver of traffic to their websites. This is because most users will search for information using keywords or keyword phrases in search engines, instead of searching for actual business.
Optimization consists of Online Search Engine Optimization and Off-site Optimization. First you need on-site optimization, this optimization optimizes components of your website to help with ranking for certain keywords. Then you need to perform off-page optimization (optimization not completed on your website). Driving traffic to a specific site is the backbone of internet marketing.
What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?
These are ads that appear next to the organic search results and are paid based on the amount of people who click on the ad. Basically you create an ad and pay for it to appear for a certain keyword or keyword phrase in the search engine results. The cost per click depends on how competitive the keyword is and the number of clicks it usually gets. Google Adwords Tool from the search giant Google is the dominant leader in PPC advertising.
How To Use Social Media?
Social media marketing involves promoting your business within the different forms of social media, from social networks such as Facebook to article sites such as Ezine articles. Over the past few years, social media marketing has emerged as a proven marketing channel for building a long-term relationships with customers and ultimately improving your bottom line. From letting you to share the latest updates on your company and products, offering a means to send instant discounts and specials to customers, and listening to and finding out about your customers – what they like or dislike about your company, what competitors products they like and why… all kinds of great information that you can use to make your business more successful.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a free, yet effective way to share information or encourage responses from particular clients such as purchasing using special promotional codes. Email Marketing works best when readers have opted into receiving your email updates.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the various options to take, there are many internet marketing tools you can try to help you more effectively and efficiently engage and manage your internet marketing initiatives. Just remember to trial any internet marketing tools you’re interested in prior to purchasing!
I hoped that helped you understand what is internet marketing, optimization, PPC and the other components of internet marketing.
So if you’re still asking yourself why and what is internet marketing? Well, as a final word, internet marketing has made it easier for smaller businesses to compete on a level playing field with the big multinational companies because of its cost effectiveness. And you can’t say no to that!