Internet for Marketing
The internet was a new advertising venue just ten years ago, and today it has taken over the marketing world. The latest focus of the many online marketing strategies has been social media. It’s taking over and marketers are scrambling to alter their strategies to keep up. One internet marketing advantage is the flexibility for change. It’s a lot easier to alter a website than it is to pull billboard ads, re-do a TV commercial, or change a print ad once it has already gone to print. The stats below are probably already outdated as you read this, but they should give you an idea of what we’re dealing with on the internet.
- There are almost 2 billion internet users worldwide, making up almost 30% of the population.
- There are 247 billion emails sent per day on average.
- There are 126 million blogs on the Internet (BlogPulse).
- There are 27.3 million Tweets per day at Twitter.
- There are 260 billion page views per month at Facebook and 350 million users.
- One billion YouTube videos are viewed per day.
- About 30 percent of mobile phone users have internet access through their phones.
In today’s economy it is no longer sufficient to place ads in the Yellow Pages and the local newspaper and hope for the best. If you do not start getting familiar with internet marketing and advertising now, chances are you will soon get outpaced by those competitors who are already familiar with it…if they’re not outpacing you already.
If you have a business and want to reach prospective clients and follow up effectively, your marketing efforts must focus on the internet. If you are planning on starting a business of your own, you can not ignore the internet. In fact, it is the best way to get started and the quickest way to reach profitability. If you do not use the advantages that the internet provides, you need to plan on working a lot harder to achieve the same results.
Internet marketing ties together the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along many different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, email marketing, mobile advertising, and Web 2.0 strategies.
Advantages on Internet Marketing
There are too many advantages of using Internet marketing as the modern tool and strategy to draw more customers to trigger unprecedented growth. Let’s explore some of the key ones:
- Internet marketing has been more effective when measured on the aspect of product meeting the eyes of an end user.
- You can design and woo your customers in a better way without much time and investments on an Internet Marketing enabled campaign. With less cycle time you can meet more needs of your customers when compared to conventional channel.
- It meets the eye of the target much faster and in a concentrated way.
- You can manage your leads and convert them into opportunities in a faster manner too.
- It provides a clear cut communication between the customer and the service provider.
- Internet marketing leads to product innovation. Vendors are informed about the preferences and likings of the end user and they manufacture or present the services in a desired manner.
- Proliferation of your service portfolio is easy and simple online. In no time you can create a campaign and send it across, major social networks including LinkedIn. Twitter or Facebook. You can better your online revenues and increase your bottom-line over the period of time.
- With better customer satisfaction and increased bottom-line you are sure to become a prominent entity in the segment of your industry.
- More trustworthy image of self or business online. It has helped in new customer acquisition and growth even in the challenging times of recession.
Types of Internet Marketing
It is broadly divided in to the following types:
- Display advertising: the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website or blog to drive traffic to a company’s own website and increase product awareness.
- Search engine marketing (SEM): a form of marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion, or through the use of free search engine optimization techniques.
- Search engine optimization (SEO): the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.
- Social media marketing: the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Email marketing: involves directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using electronic mail.
- Referral marketing: a method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of mouth.
- Affiliate marketing: a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
- Inbound marketing: involves creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.
- Video marketing: This type of marketing specializes in creating videos that engage the viewer into a buying state by presenting information in video form and guiding them to a product or service Online video is increasingly becoming more popular among internet users and companies are seeing it as a viable method of attracting customers.
Internet Marketing techniques
The internet has become a revolution in marketing. Certain methods such as bulk email cost companies next to nothing, but can bring much revenue in sales. There are different strategies which suit a variety of business needs as
- Bulk Email Marketing: If a large number of customers have subscribed to business mailing list, just think of an offer that customers would have trouble resisting, and send them an email. A big advantage of bulk email is the very low cost of reaching people that have indicated they are interested in offerings by company.
- Search Engine Optimization: It relies on providing more details to search engines so that company’s product and service content is more useful, easily searchable and appears at top to your visitors than your competitors web sites.
- Social Media Marketing: People like spending a lot of their time on social media sites, and with a clever campaign companies can reach an enormous number.
- Pay Per Click Marketing: A way of getting new customers on to your subscriber list is to use Pay Per Click advertising, still a targeted means of getting your offer in front of potential new clients. This is more expensive, as you have to pay the advertising network (such as Google, Facebook or Bing) for every click, but the cost of re-marketing to these clients drops over time. The important thing is to have a focused message, and a “landing page” that targets that customers needs.
Internet for Communication
The Internet could be used for communication in many different ways. For example, email messages are sent over the internet. When people make websites that is using the internet to communicate information to the readers. The internet can also be used for instant messaging (texting) or even Voice over Internet Provider (VoIP) which allows live video/audio conversations with people across the internet at other computers or even telephones.
The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets and small artisans and traders. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.
Tools for communication
Email is used to send electronic text messages between users similar to mailing letters. Pictures, documents and other files can be sent as email attachments and cc-ed to multiple email addresses.
Internet telephony is another common communications service made possible by the creation of the Internet. VoIP stands for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, referring to the protocol that underlies all Internet communication. VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a traditional telephone call, especially over long distances. Voice quality can still vary from call to call, but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls.
Document Sharing: Folders, very similar to the folders in your computer My Documents section, are created and files can be uploaded and stored for access by all members. Permissions are set for each folder to allow only those authorized to gain access and view the documents. Company operations manuals, personnel documents, training materials and shareable marketing brochures are all examples of the type of documents that might be stored and shared.
Individual and Group Calendars: Most intranet services allow the synchronizing of a member’s Outlook or Palm device with the Calendar Function. Items and meetings marked Private will be visible only to the individual member under their login. Group items will be visible to all. You can also set up groups within the company, such as Admin or Agents, and set meetings and events that will be visible only to the assigned group. Members can RSVP to their meeting invitations.
Shared and Individual Tasks: As with the Calendar, members can share group tasks, maintain private task lists, and sync with their Outlook and Palm devices. Brokers can assign tasks to Agents, or Agents to Assistants. A Transaction Coordinator can enter and assign tasks for closings.
Announcements Section as Your Bulletin Board: Members can enter announcements that will display as you would tack an item up on a bulletin board. When a new office manning schedule is ready, it can be stored in a document folder and a link to it posted in the Announcements window. Members can access this and all other functions from their home computers.