If every age in history could be called by the greatest invention of that time, this would definitely be called as the Age of the Internet.
The Internet has proliferated each and every aspect of our being, and indeed, it has given a whole new dimension to the way we live on the planet. Today, for each and every thing, whether it is just about buying a toothbrush to spreading global awareness about the growing hole in the ozone layer, people are using the Internet as their medium. And, the Internet has proved to be an unrelenting medium, unfalteringly providing people what they are looking for.
Continent People Using the Internet
1. Asia 578.6 millions
2. Europe 384.6 millions
3. North America 248.2 millions
4. Latin America 139 millions
5. Africa 51 millions
6. Middle East 41.9 millions
7. Australia 20.2 millions
InternetWorldStats.com says that 20% of the world are already on the Internet. They are using the online world in different ways, such as for communication or entertainment or networking or business. But the figures are definitely heartening. It means that 1 in 5 people in the world are using the Internet in some form or the other
What Internet Marketing Really Means
Internet marketing is the umbrella term used for a collection of ways in which products and services are sold over the Internet. It is also known variably as online marketing and web marketing, and sometimes as digital marketing.
To put it as a definition…
“Internet marketing is the art of advertising and marketing goods and services through the Internet.”
This is normally done through the use of placing advertisements on websites that are on the Internet. These websites will vary according to the goods and services that they are offering. Therefore, adverts are placed according to the sites that have similar content.
Internet marketing started off when people realized that there was a lot of marketing potential on the Internet. This being the case, people had to advertise their goods and services on the Internet to get a larger amount of clientele.
Most of the individuals and companies that started Internet marketing were those that were targeting international clientele. Advertising using print and electronic media in every country had proved to be cumbersome. It also proved to be a difficult task. Nevertheless, with the introduction of the Internet, a solution was seen to be possible.
The following are some of the common ways in which Internet marketing is carried out in today’s times.
Via Ecommerce
Ecommerce is a method in which products and services are sold to the consumer directly, without employing any intermediary agency. Hence, if you are buying something through an online website directly, then you are using an ecommerce website. Generally, ecommerce websites have a typical layout. They will most definitely have a catalogue of the products on their website, with detailed descriptions of all these products.
Next, they will have a shopping cart. You can select the products and they enter the shopping cart. The shopping cart feature is generally used when there is more than one product on the website. When you are checking out, you are prompted to pay for your purchases through a variety of methods
Right now, ecommerce websites are quite cautious about their security requirements, especially for their customers. This is because monetary transactions are done directly through the website. Hence, they need to provide methods such as SSL encryption, which keeps the online identity of their customers safe.
There are some other variations of ecommerce websites. If a website sells products to another business, which will likely sell it forward, then too it is called as an ecommerce website. Similarly, some ecommerce websites will allow their customers to sell products for a marginally higher amount to other customers, thus making a profit in the commissions they can earn.
Via Affiliate Marketing
Strictly speaking, affiliate marketing is not directly selling of any goods or services. All an affiliate marketer does is to promote a particular link on their website, blog or another similar place that they own on the Internet, and earn through the clicks that they are able to get from visitors.
The people whom they are promoting are called as the advertisers, while the affiliate marketers themselves are called as the hosts. The advertisers will usually pay the hosts a proportion of the sales that they get from them (known as the Pay Per Sale model) or a direct commission based on the number of clicks that they obtain (known as the Pay Per Click model). The latter is the more popular method of the two.
Affiliate marketing programs cannot be standalone businesses, though there is a lot of money involved—most times without any instalment—for the marketers themselves. However, the advertisers are usually entities who have ecommerce websites of their own where they are selling a product or service.
Though there are other prevalent models too, when we talk about Internet marketing in the current scenario, we usually speak of one of the above methods. If you want to make money through the Internet as well, you will need to choose between one of these methods, which is certainly where the real money lies
The Advantages of Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is a popular concept because it gives marketers many benefits. Let us briefly take a look at them.
1. This is a form of global marketing. When you are promoting something on the Internet, you are not restricted by geography. You can reach out to people in another part of the world quite easily. In fact, a lot of the big multinational companies have their websites in different languages, and they actually internationalize their content (convert $ into £ for example) so that their businesses can be received well in other areas as well. If you are looking for a truly global business, then the Internet is the best way for you to do that.
2. Considering the reach it has, Internet marketing is the cheapest form of advertising. In fact, several of the preliminary things that you do will not want you to spend any money at all. For instance, it won’t take you anything to write an article and post it in a popular article directory with your business link below it. It will not take you anything to join a social networking website like Twitter or Facebook and promote your product through it. Even if you want to build a website, it will cost you abysmally, at least in comparison to the other methods of advertising that are prevalent out there.
3. Internet marketing is one way in which you can establish your credibility. While with television and print ads, you have to be inventive and creative in order to grab people’s attention, with Internet marketing you can be all that but the most important thing is that you have to promote using good content. This content should be informative. When you do that—write an article, a blog post, submit a video, etc.—you are getting exposure yourself. People understand that you know your stuff. Naturally, that adds to your credibility. Whether your product sells or not, there is a chance that you can become some kind of an Internet celebrity.
4. The other thing about Internet marketing is that it has residual value. Any other kind of advertising—most of the offline methods—have a particular timeframe for which they are exposed to the public. A billboard will remain for a particular period of time. A television ad will be on for a minute. A print ad will have as much life as the magazine or newspaper it is printed in has. However, an Internet ad can stay on forever. Some forms of Internet advertising, like articles, blogs and videos will never be deleted. The networks that people build will never be deleted.
5. Online marketers are also enticed by the fact that they can directly reach out to their niche audience. Most offline forms of advertising promote themselves to the world at large, and that is the reason why there is such a lot of wastefulness with them. Exposing the product to a billion people makes no sense if the major part of the population doesn’t form the market. For instance, it is useless to promote pregnancy clothing to everyone. With Internet marketing, such niche advertising is possible. You can
promote directly to your target group and get a favourable response. Marketers like the fact that they can concentrate their promotional efforts and get a better response in the process.
6 . There are methods to popularize your product in very intelligent ways when you are using the Internet. We are living in a very highly interactive web world right now. It is possible for you to link your promotional methods to reviews on the Internet that are about your product. You could share links with other websites where your product is featured, i.e. your affiliate sites. You could even make videos and post the videos onto your website or provide links. All these are ways in which people get to know your product better, much better in fact than they can know any product that is only promoted in an offline manner
Limitations of Internet Marketing
In any case, these shortcomings of Internet marketing universally apply to all marketers, so it is a uniform game that we are playing here
1. Your customers will not be able to see, touch or smell the products that you are trying to sell them. They will not have the first-experience factor that they can get at, say, a supermarket. They will have to buy on blind value. For most conventional shoppers, this can be a disadvantage.
2. Most Internet marketing businesses today do not have a ‘face’. They have a generic ecommerce site with a product featured on them that is calling to be bought, but they do not have a personality. This turns off some online customers who like to get to know a business better before they can buy their product. This is actually not a failing of the system, but it is the erroneous way in which Internet marketing is done by some marketers. With a little understanding of your market and the way this world works, you will be able to overcome this shortcoming and give your online business a personality.
3. A third problem is that of security. Most people still feel insecure about buying products over the Internet. They feel that their online identity may be compromised when they buy something over the Internet using their credit card. The various spammers and malware senders of the Internet haven’t made matters any easier. However, the ecommerce websites are making all efforts in order to add to the security of their business. With the help of encryption and other such methods, they have made sure that their customers have a safe buying experience .
How Internet Marketing Began
Internet marketing had its early roots at about the late twentieth century. In fact, by early nineties of this century, there was a slow growth in Internet marketing. In this time, websites were mainly text based and they were used to give information regarding a certain product or service. The websites started having an impact as they could be accessed from any part of the world.
The first company that launched an Internet marketing campaign was Bristol-Myers Squibb. They launched the use of online marketing officially during 1990’s. It was a United States of America based company which initially had plans to us the online platform to create international awareness of a drug called “Excedrin”. When it was marketing the drug, the company gave some free sample to anyone who wanted to get it through the use of the Internet.
The use of Internet to do marketing started picking up after the company recorded an increase of about thirty thousand people in a few days. These were people who had joined their online customer list. After this time, there were other companies who started using the Internet to market their goods. For example, technology industries that were standardized like IBM and Microsoft started incorporation of their Internet providers and programs in the Bristol-Myers marketing campaigns.
There are some companies that were able to make a huge profit from online marketing campaigns. Yahoo! is the first company to make a lot of money from online marketing campaigns. The Yahoo website quickly became a generator of traffic. They started monitoring hits that every advertisement was getting from online users. This started at about 1997 and by 2000, a lot had changed
Changing Trends of internet marketing
The online marketing world has come so far, and still it is changing every minute. There are so many new things that are being implemented every minute. Today’s Internet marketing world is mostly a world of trial and error, especially for the people who have just started out. They are open to doing new things and analyzing which of them work for their needs.
These changing trends are mainly because the general consumer base on the Internet has undergone a radical shift. People want things to be easier for them and they want to know everything they can about a product before they bring out their plastic.
Internet marketers of present times know that it is very important to keep track of changing consumer demands and they are making sure they are able to give these things to them.
They know that competition is very high right now, with the whole world having converted into practically a single market, and that is the reason they are going all they can in order to give the best that they can. Since the intention is to get you started off with an Internet marketing business that gives you great profits, it would be a great way to start if you knew what customers of today are looking for. Whatever business you plan, make sure that you can give these benefits to your consumers, because that is what can ensure a wonderful business environment for you.
1. A Great Product
You cannot have a good Internet marketing business going on if you do not have a great product. Your product (or service) is the backbone of everything. If you do a little research on some of the products that are being sold online right now, you will find that almost all of these products have something innovative to offer to their customers. They are either a totally new concept or they enhance their usefulness in some other way that is lacking in other products. Some of them are simply different in their design. Whatever the case may be, there is something different.
If it is a service you are trying to promote, again make sure of the same things. The service should be new in some way or the other—probably make up for a shortcoming that exists in the prevailing industry—and should be well thought of. Make sure you will be able to deliver the service exactly as you promise.
2. A Great Reputation
Even the most casual visitor of the Internet will look for reputable websites and places to visit. There are so many options available on the Internet that this is quite understandable. People today are looking for quality, and the general assumption is that great reputation means great quality.
You should make every effort to keep your name high. Notch up a good reputation for yourself. One way to do this would be to market yourself through credible places like through articles, blogs and videos that can convert your business and your own name into a brand name. This stamps your credibility. People begin to understand that you know your stuff.
Since people can freely post reviews and comments about businesses right now, this is another thing that you should look into. Ensure that you get garner good reviews all over the Internet. Nothing indicates a better reputation than good reviews on the Internet
3. Good Value for Money
For the average Internet customer, money matters. In fact, a lot of people shop online because they can save money. This is possible for the sellers themselves because they have fewer overheads. They do not have to spend on staffing and warehousing; they may even not have to spend as much on maintaining accounts and records because their internal software does it for them. Thus, Internet marketers are able to sell products at a cheaper rate. It is this price incentive that most online buyers are looking for.
At the same time, remember that for every inexpensive product on the Internet, there will be someone else who will be selling at a cheaper price. That is the norm on the Internet. But, discerning Internet customers—and there are a lot of them—always look for the value of the product. If your product has an established value and has good feedback from previous buyers, then people won’t mind spending a few dollars extra for it.
4. Clear-Cut Descriptions
Internet buyers will always want to know everything they can about the product. The Internet buying world suffers from the limitation that people cannot get up, close and personal with the product before they buy it. It is for this reason that the descriptions of the products have to be precise. It is the duty—and sometimes legal requirement—of the Internet marketers to lay out proper descriptions of their products, in form of bulleted lists or some other objective form on their websites.
This requirement becomes all the more important when the product is a food product or a medicinal product. Customers will want to know the complete list of ingredients that make up the product
5. Precise Instructions
This is another way to make your product popular on the Internet. Give people all the instructions that they would need. This is especially important if you are selling something that is a mechanical tool of some kind. People should know not only how to use the product, but they should also be able to see how they can do some repairs on the product themselves in case of an anomaly.
This has become much easier today with the availability of video sharing websites such as YouTube. Now, you can put demonstrations of the product as well as DIY repairs as videos on these websites from where people can access them. When people see that it is easy to use your product, or even if they just see the product in action, they will be more confident about buying it.
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