|
Internet Marketing at one time consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites.
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.
Objectives
• Communicate a company's message about itself, its products, or its services online.
• Conduct research as to the nature (demographics, preferences, and needs) of existing and potential customers.
• Sell goods, services, or advertising space over the Internet.
Components
• Setting Up a Website , consisting of text, images and possibly audio and video elements used to convey the company's message online, to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company's products and/or services.
• Search Engine Marketing ( SEM) , which is marketing a website online via search engines, either by improving the site's natural (organic) ranking through search engine optimization (SEO), buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads or purchasing pay for inclusion ( PFI) listings in website directories, which are similar to offline yellow page listings.
• E-mail 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. This marketing is essentially the online equivalent of direct mail marketing.
• 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 re-publication 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.
Using Offline Elements with Internet Marketing Strategies
Unless you transact business only online, for example if you are an eBay reseller, you will probably want to include some traditional offline marketing elements in your overall marketing strategy, in addition to the elements in your Internet strategy in your marketing strategy.
Even those who conduct business only online might consider placing traditional ads in newspapers or magazines to bring prospects to their website to transact business online. Perfect examples of including offline elements as part of Internet marketing strategies are Expedia, Travelocity and Monster.com. While they are online businesses, they invest heavily in traditional advertising, including radio and TV advertising, to draw traffic to their sites where the actual business is conducted.
adapted from an article by R. Duermyer
|