Internet Marketing, also known as Online Marketing, Online Advertising or Internet Advertising, is the promotion of products and services over the Internet. Internet Marketing, in fact, aims to create a better business opportunity for an organization by promoting its products or services using online media; hence, businesses – both online and off line – are increasingly making use of Internet Advertising as part of their marketing strategy.
Initially, Internet Marketing was all about building a website or putting up banner/display ads on other websites. A website with appropriate text-content, image-inclusions and audio/video features is indeed an excellent option of reaching out to global audience and informing them about a company’s products/services, their features, et al. The website remains the basic building block of Internet Marketing even today; however, it is now being blended with key web site promotion techniques in order to achieve the advertising goals.
Internet Marketing – Key Techniques
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the process of marketing or advertising a website via search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. Two totally different approaches are followed for Search Engine Marketing – Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-click Advertising.
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a web site promotion technique that improves the site’s organic ranking in searches based on select keywords/phrases and attracts more web traffic. If you have an Internet Business, SEO is something you cannot simply do without.
Pay-per-click or PPC Advertising which appear as links next to the organic results on search engine results’ pages involves listing a website by bidding on keywords. PPC calls for methodical keyword selection/optimization so that the keywords match with the search terms used by target segment of users and capably increase web site traffic.
Pay-for-inclusion (PFI) listing in website directories is another popular SEM technique.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is the method of conveying information about a product or service through email. After the initial glitch (on account of spamming), email marketing has been effectively used for web site promotion. These days, of course, it is permission-based email marketing that is being practiced and internet businesses are using the opt-in lists, giving the customers the right to refuse further communication.
Mass mailing and e-commerce newsletters are two popular e-mail marketing tools.
Banner Advertising
Banner Advertising is an Internet business marketing technique, which revolves round placing dynamic graphic ad links in others sites. Users require clicking these links to open your website.
Online Promotion Techniques
Different online promotion techniques or Social Media Marketing Methods, like posting blogs, comments and opinions as also press releases (related to the product or service) in a discussion forum are also effective Online Advertising processes. Article Marketing involves listing articles in article directories, article repositories and/or article banks.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a rather innovative and interesting form of Internet Marketing, wherein marketers promote and sell others’ products/services as part of a program planned by the product manufacturers and/or service providers. The affiliate is either awarded a flat fee or receives a good percentage of the sale-proceeds.
The Social bookmarking sites are a great help for people with affiliate marketing programs because such sites are a free and effective way to get back-links and drive traffic to websites and blogs.
These are some of the most effective Internet Marketing techniques that work on a personal level to promote a website, increase web site traffic and add to the profitability of the Internet Business. Of course, one does not need to follow all the techniques or strategies for a successful Internet Marketing campaign; instead, it is careful planning and meticulous execution that help achieve the goals of Internet Marketing or Online Advertising.
