What Is Internet Marketing?

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Internet is a comparatively new environment in which advertising market and trade are currently being transferred. More and more customers are looking for the goods their need on the web, and more and more manufacturers and merchants are offering their products exactly on the Internet.

Both in real life and on the Internet, marketing usually goes hand in hand with trade. Market research, positioning the products, building a successful marketing strategy – you name it. However, on the Internet all of these marketing elements get a completely new character that is quite different from the ones of the “normal” trade. In addition, there intervene some new, and previously unknown marketing elements such as traffic development, search engine optimization, online promotions, etc.

It is extremely important for people who want to have a breakthrough in this enterprise, to know marketing methods and tools well in order to use them successfully. Otherwise a mechanical transfer of marketing methods from the depths of “ordinary” marketing on the Internet may lead to some unpredictable results.

Here is an example of that: we have got used to the flyers filling our mail boxes every morning. We usually look at them with annoyance or even instantly throw them away. However, using the same approach when it comes to Internet marketing, may turn out to be much more frustrating than a simple nuisance. Sending some promotional unwanted e-mails has a name – spam – and it is not a good thing. In the United States of America spam is cognizable and a company that sends it can be made to pay fines up to 500,000 dollars.

That is one of the main reasons why the Internet users have been recently trying to build an “immunity” against companies sending spam. This means that a company, which sends any unwanted advertisements via e-mail immediately enters the “black list” of the users and they not only don’t benefit from the proposals in the add, but also try to avoid the company in question in real life. So, have in mind that the implementation of such marketing techniques on the Internet can only make things worse.

Unfortunately, there are many companies calling themselves an “Internet agencies” that offer an e-mail marketing service, or if we have to put this in other words, sending marketing messages via e-mail. Many business owners were deceived by the large potential market and the low prices of such a service and managed to ruin their business. So, be careful when you choose such a web service.

So, what is web marketing?

The first thing we should start with is to clarify what web marketing is not. Web marketing, which is also known as Internet marketing is not a campaign, but it is not a single act either. It is not just sending promotional e-mails to whom you manage to reach on the web or putting some add banners wherever you find it appropriate.

Web marketing is a process of building and developing the position of your company/business on the Internet. This includes both building a subjective perception of your company in your users’ minds, the objective and merely technical development of your website, its positioning in the different search engines and improvement of its usability.

Here are some of the main stages in the process of web marketing:

1. Definition of the product

• An inquiry of competition in the Internet
• Choosing the product
• Development of the pricing on the Internet
• Development of the promotion policy on the Internet

2. Designing a website

• Defining the main goals
• Defining the target group of customers
• Defining keywords and preparing the texts that will be uploaded
• Defining the navigation of the website
• Development of a colour scheme and graphic original
• Construction, testing and installation of the website

3. Optimization of the website

• Establishing the ranking of the website in different search engines
• Defining the criteria of optimization evaluation
• Optimization of the keywords and texts
• Monitoring and analysis of your website’s ranking in Google
• Changing the keywords or the content as a result of the analysis

4. Promotion and maintenance of the website

• Creating a database of visitors, who are potential customers
• Implementing advertising and promotional campaigns on the Internet
• Monitoring and analysis of the campaign results
• Changing the content or the structure of the website as a result of the analysis
• Continuous monitoring and analysis of the website visit
• Changing the content or the structure of the website as a result of this analysis

You have perhaps noticed that this is only the preliminary design phase and the construction of the website, and that is the most important thing. Web, or also Internet marketing is the process of positioning your products on the web market. But in order to make this right, you need to make the whole website consistent with the objectives set by your marketing strategy.

That why people who first build their website and then think about the marketing are usually wrong. Internet marketing starts with the selection of the right products that will be sold online and continues throughout the entire process of planning, construction and maintenances of this website.

Morgan Johnes big love is business and education. He currently works for www.binarytribune.com and he is really happy with that because he has enough time to write.