Do you know Internet marketing? Well, depending on whom you ask, the term Internet marketing can mean a variety of things. At one time, internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are loads of companies telling you that you can make a fortune overnight on the internet and who try to sell you some form of internet marketing program. Today, internet marketing or online marketing is evolving into a broader mix of components a company can use as a means of increasing sales, even if your business is done completely online, partly online, or completely offline.
The decision to use internet marketing as part of a company's overall marketing strategy is strictly up to the company, of course. But as a rule, internet 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 practiced. Essentially, internet marketing is using the internet to do one or more of the following: communicate a company's message about itself, its products, or its services online, conduct research as to the nature, such as the demographics, preferences, and needs of existing and potential customers, and to sell goods, services, or advertising space over the internet.
There are several internet marketing components you should know. Components of internet marketing or online marketing may include 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 equivalents of offline brochures or mail order catalogs, and they are a great way to establish your business identity. Then there is search engine marketing, which is marketing a website online via search engines, either by improving the site's natural ranking through search engine optimization buying pay-per-click ads, or purchasing pay-for-inclusion listings in website directories, which are similar to offline yellow page listings.
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. Another component is banner advertising, which is the placement of ads on a website for a fee. The offline equivalent of this form of online marketing would be traditional ads in newspapers or magazines. We also have online press releases, which involve placing a newsworthy story about a company, its website, its people, and/or its products and services with an online wire service.
Then there is blog marketing, which is the act of posting comments, expressing opinions, or making announcements in a discussion forum, and can be accomplished either by hosting your own blog or by posting comments and/or and/or URLs in other blogs related to your product or service online. We also have article marketing, which involves writing articles related to your business and having them published online on syndicated article sites.
These articles then have a tendency to spread around the internet since the article services permit republication, provided that all of the links in the article are maintained. Article marketing can result in a traffic boost for your website, and the distribution of syndicated articles can promote your brand to a wide audience. Finally, there is social media marketing, which can involve social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and social bookmarking sites like Digg.
As you can see, there are many parts to internet marketing to consider. We will cover these in more depth later.
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