What is Internet Marketing?

To answer this as succinctly as possible it’s marketing on the Internet . Seriously, it is that simple of an answer. Where this question gets a little confusing for some beginners is how Internet marketing is different than traditional marketing and what to do to effectively market on the Internet.

Marketing Basics

Marketing at its core is about exposure. Not just any kind of exposure, but rather focused exposure to get your potential customers and your products/services together. The process of marketing is a stepped approach that requires research, promotion, sales (hopefully ), and distribution of your products and/or services.

Traditional Marketing vs. Internet Marketing

Prior to the Internet, a company’s marketing options might include mediums such as TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, or billboards. Each advertising medium has its pros and cons and it is up to the marketer to decide on which mediums would work best for their situation or marketing goals.

Now, with the Internet, the marketing principles are the same, but the advertising mediums are different. Instead of using TV, radio or newspapers you’d promote using search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) or mediums such as social media.

Advantages of Internet Marketing

Although the principles of these two forms of marketing are the same, Internet marketing has some definite advantages over traditional marketing (especially if you are new to this):

1. Research
2. Cost
3. Scalability
4. Feedback

Research – The Internet has been growing exponentially since it’s inception and with that growth we have a ton of information at our disposal. Yes, there’s a lot of crap out there, but there is also a immense amount of useful information that can be gathered in hours or days to create a successful marketing campaign.

Cost – Don’t have a lot of money to advertise? No problem you don’t need it! Yes, you can purchase banner ads or opt to run a PPC campaign and you could spend a relatively small amount, but you don’t have to if you don’t want. Instead of spending money you can “spend” time promoting using SEO techniques or on social media services like Twitter.

Scalability -  You are able to promote to a local area or the rest of the world with relative ease.

Feedback – You can track just about everything on the Internet and see how effective your promotional efforts are. This feedback is relatively instantaneous and invaluable in making decisions to increase ROI.

Now that you know what Internet marketing is and its benefits over traditional marketing it is time for you to learn the various ways to market your products or services on the Internet.

Good luck!