Introduction
Welcome to the world of Internet Marketing!
This guide is designed especially for those new to internet marketing. Or IM, as some may call it. This guide will introduce you to the industry's basic policies and the much higher-end and more complex internet marketing systems.
However, before reading this guide, open your mind to the enormous possibilities of the marketing world. At some point, you may find some things that will be discussed too complicated for you initially. However, these topics and pieces of knowledge will all fall into place and further help you understand this systematic way of marketing. In the long run, this will guarantee your overall success in this journey.
Just think of this mini-guide as a bunch of puzzle pieces that will eventually connect to give you a complete picture. Sounds exciting? Great! Let's begin
What Is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing is now called so many other names — e-marketing, web marketing, i-marketing, digital marketing, online marketing and the like. However, in plain and straightforward language, it can be defined as marketing one's products or services that a business or person offers through the internet.
This type of marketing encompasses an extensive subject area, including many marketing strategies like email and wireless media marketing. Under this general scope of internet marketing also falls the aspects of ECRM or electronic customer relationship management and digital customer data.
Why is internet marketing a significant advantage to many businesses?
The world wide web has given us many unique and essential benefits. This technology enabled the entire world to be connected in seconds. In terms of online businesses, the internet has provided a global portal in which goods and services can be sold and bought by almost anyone in any part of the world.
With internet marketing, all businesses have enjoyed lower information dissemination and advertisement costs. The internet's interactive nature has benefited business marketing through instant responses and its ability to elicit them the
fastest way possible. Furthermore, internet marketing has tied together all the aspects of creativity, technicality, advertisement, sales and product development.
With its inexpensive cost, internet marketing has also enabled businesses to save on reaching their target market or audience. Through a small fraction of the cost of traditional advertisements, companies can further allow their customers to conduct research and eventually purchase their products most conveniently. This also makes them more appealing to their clients because they can provide results in a brief period.
Internet marketing has also allowed these businesses to measure their statistics much easier and inexpensively. Since almost all the aspects of this marketing type can be measured, tested and traced through ad servers, advertisers can easily use and observe their data regarding which ads reap the most customer views or purchases. This way, online businesses can determine which advertising messages appeal to their target customers. The results of all their campaigns can be tracked immediately since this marketing initiative requires a customer to click the ads, visit a specific website or perform a desired action like filling out a form or purchasing a product or service.
As a beginner in internet marketing, you will be responsible for bringing in potential clients by providing them with the services or the company that suits their needs or preferences in various internet venues. You will help these customers find
the product that they are looking for. The targets are the people who have computers with internet access. Entrepreneurs like you can visit your online store anytime. Consumers can also do the same whenever they want. The future of the world wide web is so bright, with its projected online consumer traffic reaching almost 60% and over 80% of these customers shopping online. So if you are determined to make it successful, you may enjoy the benefits of having an online business that will give you more profit in the long run.
With that said, internet marketing brings you many advantages of incurring minimal costs in starting up your business, including cheaper advertising options, a global marketplace, becoming your boss, promoting stuff that you are passionate about and profiting from these passions along the way. Sounds impressive, doesn't it?
Though internet marketing has many benefits, it comes with its share of risks and investments. You must understand that this process will not let you quickly rake in a lot of cash. Your time, diligence, persistence and passion for learning more are significant in your success in internet marketing.
Those who think this is a get-rich-quick scheme are bound to be disappointed. Though many businesses have become highly successful, you will find that those who have failed in this venture have simply wished to become overnight millionaires. The realities of a physical business are still applicable to your online store, including tax payments, customer services, and even hiring employees.
Furthermore, you must know that starting an online business is not free. Some costs may be less than what will be used in building a physical business, but you will still have to shell out for web design, software, hosting, domains and advertising costs. Another reality of having an online business is site downtime. Yes, your site may go down due to technical difficulties or glitches, which will probably bring a lot of frustration not just on your part but also on the customers' end. Every minute or second, your site is unavailable to visitors and potential customers; you will be losing money. You need to be prepared for this.
Furthermore, you cannot just rely on a specific system and have it run on autopilot to generate profit. Technology changes, and the industry evolves rapidly, making any "autopilot system" that is supposed to generate cash a complete lie. A marketing tactic that worked for someone in the past may not work for you in the future. Therefore, keeping yourself updated with new technologies and marketing trends is imperative.
The competition will always be around, so if you do not keep yourself informed and you do not work hard, you will not stand out in the crowd. You have to make an impact! Work hard because if not, you can be sure that one of your competitors is doing so. Besides, if you want your business to be a long-term investment, your first profits should go back to your site's services and advertising efforts. Maximize your profits, and do not just cash out your first earnings. It will also be helpful to learn about taxation and other related laws that affect this industry. This way, you know your tax and legal
advantages once you set up your business. This will also help protect your assets. Thus, it should never be overlooked.
With all these realities in mind, you will need to be determined to stand out in this industry. Internet marketing is not for the person who likes simple routines. You should be flexible in learning new strategies and trends to keep up with your competition.
Now that you know what internet marketing is and all the good and bad that comes with it, you will learn the marketing methods online businesses have used to promote their services and products to the global marketplace.
The following methods that will be discussed further in the next few passages are:
Affiliate marketing
Article marketing
Email marketing
Blog marketing
Pay-per-click ads or PPC
Search engine optimization or SEO
Pop-up ads
Banner ads
Social media marketing
Mobile Marketing
These internet marketing methods are not equal at all. Each has strategies to reach a target market and will produce varying results based on your goal, marketing pitch and relationship with your customer. Whether you market your website or engage in affiliate marketing, you will most likely use a couple of these methods at various times. Remember, what you earn in this industry is always proportionate to all your effort and time in developing your website.
Now let's proceed to the juicy part of this subject. In the following few pages, you will learn each of the internet marketing methods mentioned above. You will get to know what they are, what they do, how they work and why they are effective.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an online practice wherein a business rewards an affiliate for the visitors or customers brought in by his marketing efforts. The tips are either cash or gifts and are given for an offer completion or site referral. In this process, there are four players — the merchant, network, publisher and customer. Recently, this market has grown complex with secondary players like affiliate management agencies, third-party vendors (specialized) and super-affiliates. It works by simply using the affiliate's website to drive traffic to the merchant's site or to allow visitors to be forwarded to the merchant's main web page.
It is also what we can call revenue sharing between online merchants and online affiliates. The compensation to the affiliates depends on how many users click, sales or registrations were made on the merchant's website on their own. Affiliate marketing enables the automation of the advertising processes and the payment for desired actions. Merchants have preferred this internet marketing strategy because it is a "pay per performance" model, where they do not incur any expenses for marketing their products unless the affiliate produces the desired results.
Affiliate marketing can also be translated as a type of business relationship where you, as an affiliate, promote a merchant's services different from yours. This means that you do not need to have your product venture into affiliate marketing. You only need to promote your business provider's services and products.
This is how it works — you need a web page with a link that directs your users or visitors to the merchant's main page or online store. When one of your site visitors clicks on that link and purchases something from the merchant's website, you will get a commission or a referral fee. This way, you are the one driving traffic to your merchant's website through your web page. The merchant will pay you whenever a visitor buys something or signs up for something on their site. A unique affiliate link is assigned to your web page, making it easy for the merchant to track customers coming from your site. One merchant is allowed different affiliate links, and all of them will direct the users to its website.
Another strategy that works in affiliate marketing is the use of web page codes or web cookies. It is an exciting way to still profit even if your visitor clicks on the affiliate link and does not purchase from the merchant's site at once. How does this work? The moment a user clicks on the link, a cookie is stored in his computer, indicating that they visited the merchant's site and recording his page as the one that referred him to that website. If, let's say, a couple of weeks later, the user finally decides to buy something from the merchant's online store and types the web address of the merchant directly into his browser, the cookies stored in his computer will still recognize the purchase as a referral from your affiliate link, allowing you to receive a compensation from the merchant. Note that cookies have an expiration, so you must read the affiliate program's terms carefully to check the life span of these cookies.
The success of affiliate marketing also has paved the way for the rise of many online companies, such as Amazon.com, which now has thousands of affiliates.
Get a free Affiliate marketing book
- Article Marketing
Article marketing is an online advertising strategy many businesses use to market their websites, products or services by writing short articles related to their industry. It is the practice of posting these keyword-focused writings on article syndication sites that have a good readership following. These articles will then be distributed and published in the marketplace. Many opine that article marketing is essential to any internet marketing strategy. These articles have the intention of
providing information and entertainment to online users. Typically these articles have a resource box or bio box that indicates the references and contact information of the writer's business. The resource box may also contain a link to the website the author is promoting to attract readers to visit that website.
Articles that are well-researched and written are usually released and distributed for free for the business to gain more credibility within the market. A website or online business can attract more new clients through these articles. Internet marketers usually submit articles to several article directories to maximize the results of their online campaigns. To avoid the filtering process of the internet for duplicate content, internet marketers attempt what we call article spinning or article rewriting and rewording to give certain variations to the original article. Through this, the article can acquire site visitors from several websites for article directories. Getting your article featured in niche blogs or focused content websites managed by others is a good and popular strategy in terms of article marketing. If you are a guest blogger on these websites, you will be able to introduce your business to an interested audience that may have been otherwise unreachable.
The common practice in internet publishing is to have your articles use relevant keywords and catchy titles with around 250 to 500 words in the body. If you incorporate the keywords or phrases in your articles, it is possible to get more search engine traffic.
Which, among the hundreds of article directories, should you submit your articles? This is one of the most tedious tasks in this marketing method. Today, businesses and experts usually outsource their article marketing methods, including the submission process. The most popular article directories recommended include EzineArticles, IdeaMarketers and GoArticles.
Article marketing can also help you generate leads that you can include in your email list. In writing your articles, you must give the readers an irresistible offer that will prompt them to visit your website and sign up for your services. Once you have their information, you can create a sales-winning partnership with them. Failing to do this will not give you another chance to sell to your leads.
Among the best offers you can give your readers may include quizzes, special reports on a particular topic, free consultation sessions or free book chapters. This way, your readers will be enticed to provide you with their email addresses that you can use further to send marketing news and information about your website.
Overall, the most critical factor in article marketing is to get people to visit your website and sign up or purchase one of your services. Writing accurate, specific, helpful articles will attract more potential leads or clients.
- Email Marketing
This is one of the most cost-efficient internet marketing methods that promote your business. To execute an effective and successful email campaign, you need the correct information to achieve your desired results.
Email marketing is a direct marketing method that uses emails to communicate a commercial message to your target market. It sends messages to your previous or current customers to encourage them to do business with you again and, in turn, enhance your business relationship with them. Email marketing is also used to acquire new clients and convince your current customers to buy something at once.
There are several advantages to using this type of internet marketing. For one, almost all internet users have email accounts that they check regularly. With this form of communication, advertisers can easily reach those who have signed up to receive regular communications regarding subjects that interest them. It is cost-effective and has a short impact time.
Email marketing can be categorized into direct, intermediary, and retention.
The direct email usually is an email message with commercial sales content. They are generally sent to customers who have previously used a particular product or service or to potential clients in your target audience who might enjoy and benefit from the service you offer. Direct mail marketing may use a company's email list, a purchased or shared email list or a list acquired from a third-party service. These third-party services may already know which audience can be targeted through email marketing or analyze to find out which email addresses will bring your business the highest conversion or responses.
Retention email or newsletter mail, on the other hand, are designed and written for promotional use. They aim to provide a long-term impact on the customer's mind. Thus, their content is more than a sales message. The retention mail specifies the benefits of a company's products or services in a more informative format.
Intermediary email is a message sent by a company delegated by the leading provider to send out advertising and marketing emails to a list of subscribers that the intermediary company usually owns.
To succeed in email marketing, you must always use all relevant information for your business. You may send messages to your customers if you find that they will benefit from what you are about to offer them. In sending these emails, you must also write an informative, straightforward headline
to grab your customer's attention. Before sending your email, check the message and use both text and HTML formats to ensure that your message will be received and read, or you may include options to view your mail in these formats.
- Blog Marketing
Blogs have become valuable platforms for internet marketing. Subscribers of a blog usually sign up to receive content regularly. Since most subscribers remain loyal when they receive relevant and helpful information, a strong following and readership will be an excellent way to reach these potential customers and get them to either sign up or purchase a service from your business. Blogs have consistently reached their targets, making them a very effective way to market one's services or products.
As the name suggests, blog marketing is done via a web blog through a series of weekly or daily posts about a specific topic. Many businesses have used blogs to communicate and interact with their customers while featuring their services. Organizations have also used blogs to share and review a product's features and benefits before its official launch. They also pave the way for companies to gather or receive consumer feedback to confirm if their services and products meet the expectations of their clients.
Since blog marketing focuses on interaction with online users, you may also start blogging to market your product line to get more exposure to the cyber market.
However, you will have to write and design a blog that will stand out from your competitors. This way, your blog will also gain more popularity, making more websites want to link to it. The more websites link to your blog, the more traffic and profit you will get. It would help if you always remembered to give your audience or target subscribers a reason to visit your blog. If your subscriber leaves any comments, send them a thank you email. Hold small contests now and then where you can give away discounts and coupons to your subscribers. You may also ask your followers to post your blog link to their websites in exchange for free product samples.
“digital marketing services”
- Pay-per-click or PPC
PPC or Pay-per-click advertisements, also known as Cost Per Click, are used to bring traffic to websites where advertisers compensate the hosting site whenever their ad is clicked. There are two models for determining how much is to be paid per click — flat-rate and bid-based rate. In both models, advertisers consider the value of a click from a particular source, depending on the customer the company is targeting and what can be gained from their visit (usually revenue).
If you currently have a running website or a blog and want to earn extra profit, you can try this internet marketing method. Put in pay-per-click ads on your blog or web page, and merchants will pay you a percentage every time your visitors click on them.
One of the most popular PPC is Google Adsense. It is effortless to add this to your blog, primarily if you use Blogger, which Google manages. Adsense displays several advertisements that target a specific audience on your blog. To sign up for pay-per-click ads like Google Adsense, you must complete an online form as your official application.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Whenever you search for a topic on Google, Yahoo or MSN, you usually get pages and websites with the keywords you typed in the search bar. Have you ever wondered why a particular website is listed first on your search results? The primary reason for this is Search Engine Optimization.
Search engine optimization allows a website to become search engine friendly, ranking it higher on search results than other websites with the same keyword. Usually, these search engines read and archive sites regularly so that they can be found easily whenever a user performs a search. For example, if a user types in "parenting" in the search bar and your website is about the same topic and is appropriately optimized, your website will appear on the first page of the search results.
SEO makes your website easier for these search engines to understand. Its goal is to increase your website's rank in the search results, bringing in more traffic to your site. Remember, the more traffic you get, the more potential for profit you will have.
On-site and off-site factors are the ones that can determine your search engine rankings. On-site factors include your page content and your title heading. Off-site factors like pages that link to your site, words used to link to your page and how long such link has existed also come into play. You must focus on your site's SEO continuously because if you consistently get good search engine rankings, you will always have free traffic.
- Pop-up Ads
You probably have seen many pop-up ads during your internet surfing time. These are advertisement windows that appear once you visit a website. They aim to generate traffic or simple capture your email address.
Many people have found this internet marketing method quite annoying since it disrupts them from getting information from the website they are viewing. However, these ads, intrusive as they have been tagged, also have certain advantages. For one, they are much more effective than banner ads. They pull up a 15% click-through rate, while the banners only yield a mere 3%. Pop-up ads also are practical and give a click-through
percentage of 6.5. Since they are more effective than banner ads, they cost you a lot more. However, the return on investment with these ads is much higher. Furthermore, when this ad is the only window on the page, there will be no other images that will conflict with the brand that you are selling.
In recent years, these advertising methods have become less popular due to the development of pop-up blockers.
- Banner Ads
A banner ad is a graphic, text or image displayed on websites that promote a company's product or service. They are small HTML codes, but their importance in internet marketing and business is significant. Banner ads vary in size and orientation but often come in rectangular shapes and are 486 x 60 pixels high (full banner).
There is no universal rule regarding banner ad file sizes, but the size will still depend on the website where it will be displayed. These sites impose certain limits on banner sizes since it adds up to the total length of the web page they are displayed on, resulting in more waiting times while the page loads on a browser.
Due to the banner ads' graphic elements, you may find these ads somehow similar to those you see in printed media such as magazines and newspapers. However, these banner ads can direct the user to the advertiser's main web page. Suppose you are interested in displaying or posting a banner on a specific website. In that case, you can arrange with the
publisher to have your banner posted or pay a banner network to post the ad on several websites. You may also negotiate with the publisher to display their ads on your site in exchange for them displaying your banner ads.
- Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is marketing your business through social media portals such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This allows companies to have a more personal and dynamic interaction and connection with their clients and potential customers.
Strategies in social media marketing can be as simple as maintaining a blog, a Facebook or Twitter account or attaching "tweet this" icons to the end of your articles or ads. It can also be as complex as having an entire campaign that includes blogging, social networking, tweeting and spreading viral videos.
As marketing is the process of informing consumers about your business, who you are and what your products are, social media further helps introduce your business to a global network of possible customers. Using social media to prove a business' identity and create business relationships with people who do not have the chance to be aware of your products and services is a highly recommended option in internet marketing. Moreover, it is an avenue that can be accessed by anyone who has an internet
connection and is inexpensive to implement your marketing strategies and business campaigns.
- Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing has been a concept that has attained various definitions. It is primarily described as the marketing strategy that uses mobile media to communicate with a target market. Recently a more updated description was given by the Mobile Marketing Association, saying that mobile marketing is a combination of practices that provides organizations with the ability to engage, communicate and interact with their audience through a mobile device or network.
The most popular mobile device used for this is a cell phone. To use this medium, you will need to set up a short code and have your customers register to receive your SMS or text messages. Mobile optimization will also ensure that your website is displayed correctly on a mobile phone. Search engine optimization has undergone many changes that made internet marketers more interested in the mobile version of their optimized websites than traditional website optimization. Most mobile phones today have internet access or wireless capabilities. These devices have provided more flexibility on both the business and consumer's ends in receiving and sending data related to the company's products or services.
The most typical types of mobile marketing include MMS or Multimedia Messaging Service, Bluetooth technology, Infrared and Mobile Internet. Marketing through a mobile device is now a trend in many developed countries where almost everyone has a mobile phone. This is also a more cost-effective method of promoting your
business and is much easier for most age groups to understand. More time is now spent online with these devices, making your business available to consumers who are always on the go and would still want to receive updates from your end.
In MMS mobile marketing, a slideshow of text and images that may include a video or audio is a perfect way to effectively capture a potential customer's attention. The ad is delivered via MMS. The use of Bluetooth technology in marketing makes use of radio-based frequencies to transfer data at higher speeds. Infrared, however, is a bit limited, as its frequency range only reaches as far as 1 meter.
Mobile marketing is a new way to ensure customer awareness and boost your sales. With all the latest smartphones, tablets and modern mobile devices, mobile marketing is destined to progress in the years to come.
This guide has discussed all the primary internet marketing methods in detail. It is now up to you to choose which one you prefer. However, remember the things you need to have to succeed — good research, a positive mindset and attitude, diligence, patience and focus. All the best.
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