What is Internet Marketing? Define Internet Marketing
What is Internet Marketing? In broad terms, Internet Marketing refers to the promotion of a trade or business through the medium of the Internet. This is how a product or service is promoted and sold over the Internet. Internet marketing, also called web marketing, online marketing, and even “i” or “e” -Marketing uses the Internet to deliver all types of media to global and even local markets. The relatively low cost of disseminating information to a global audience makes it very unique compared to marketing in the past.
The interactive nature of the Internet has forced the evolution of its marketing strategy to include specialized expertise for handling instantaneous responses and eliciting the responses now present with this unique medium. Tools must be included in your Internet marketing system to accommodate this instant response.
The term also covers the after-sale relationship between a business and its customers as it includes both digital customer data management and electronic customer relationships. It is widely used in today’s business world and is referred to as ECRM – Electronic Customer Relationship Management. This makes the coverage even greater because it refers to the ongoing relationships supported by the Internet, email, and wireless media.
Internet marketing brings together the technical and creative aspects of the Internet including design, branding, promotion and advertising, and sales. Here are three main goals to help define Internet Marketing:
- Conveying the company’s message or presence in the market. Branding its culture, mission, and values and educating or detailing its products or services through a computer screen.
- Collect research data that is not limited by the demographics, individual preferences, or past requirements of existing customers and (groups, classes, stereotypes, etc.) as potential new customers.
- Actual sales, fee collection, distribution tracking, and follow-up of goods, services, or advertising space via the Internet.
The way a person reaches through the Internet to potential clients is through a different strategy. The more popular Marketing Strategy used by Internet Marketers is the Social, Content, and Paid marketing approach. Each of them has its attributes and limitations or deficiencies.
There are various Business Model terms associated with Internet Marketing.
E-COMMERCE (electronic commerce) refers to business over the Internet. Websites like Amazon.com and eBay are all e-commerce sites. The two main forms of e-commerce are Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B). So even though the neighbor’s baker doesn’t sell his cupcakes on the Internet, he takes advantage of the Internet to search and find the best-priced supplier of flour.
MAIN-BASED WEBSITE is an organization or group of websites that create value by capturing potential clients or sales prospects from the Internet for use by or sale to third parties.
AFFILIATED MARKETING is the process by which a product or service is promoted by many people or entities who receive a percentage of the profits when the product is purchased. The affiliate does not develop or produce it himself. The product owner or manufacturer has authority over who and how their products are sold and usually provides marketing materials to “affiliates”; i.e. Website links, capture pages, and banner ads that have encoded tracking – tools used to ensure affiliates get credit for the sale.
LOCAL INTERNET MARKETING is the process used by companies with “local customer bases” that traditionally sell with a warm market reference, signage, location visibility, and leveraging the Internet to find and build relationships with potential customers for later offline interactions.
BLACK HAT MARKETING is a form of Internet marketing or search engine optimization (SEO) which generally refers to the practice of using unethical techniques or using deceptive, abusive, or dishonest methods to get your search rankings up to drive more traffic to your website.
The birth and growth of Internet marketing have also marked the “personal world” of many individuals. With Internet Marketing offering individuals unlimited ways to promote and market themselves, products, services, and opportunities, the home business world has exploded.
