Internet Marketing Basics.

Well in my earlier posts I dealt with how marketing has changed over the years. In this post I will be explaining about internet marketing and different types of internet marketing.

When we speak  of internet marketing the fist thing that comes to your mind is those annoying pop-up ads on Rediff or Yahoo! But Internet Marketing is not all about pop-up ads there much more to internet marketing.

The basic concept of internet marketing is selling your product over the internet, generating leads or might be just increasing brand awareness. The goal of the internet marketing has to be clearly defined before venturing into internet marketing.

So in order to increase over the internet you need to draw customers to your site and then engage your customers and convince them to buy your product. Your website is like your sales pitch. The website draw the attention of your customer and should clearly differentiate from your competitors and should highlight your Unique Selling Proposition.

Types of Internet Marketing

Search Engine Optimization: There are millions of sites on the web. How do you stay afloat in this ocean? Well the key to this is SEO.  In order to draw traffic to your site you need to optimize your website. So that your target audience finds you. SEO is of two types On- Page optimization and Off page optimization. On- Page optimization includes  metatags, site maps, keyword optimization etc. It basically includes making your site Search Engine Friendly so that search engines can easily crawl your website. Off-Page Optimization includes what you do off your website without making any changes to your website.It includes link building,forum marketing,blog comments, articles , directory submissions etc. I will be explaining each in detail in my successive posts.

Search Engine Marketing/ Pay Per Click Marketing: When searching on Google Im sure you’ll must have observed some advertisements appearing on the right hand side titled sponsored listing. These are nothing but ads that the advertiser pays search engines for every time a user clicks the ad. . These advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market and pay only when their ad is clicked. Bids for each keyword can go as high as even 30$!! Imagine Google getting paid 30$ for a single click on an advertisement. Well PPC (Pay Per Click) ads account for 85% of Google’s revenue.

Social Media Marketing:

Is a platform though which organizations can connect directly to their target audience through an informal means of communication. This platform includes all social networking sites like Facebook,Twitter,Orkut, My Space etc. This can also include blogs.

Social media marketing can help create brand awareness and even generate sales. For some organizations social media marketing can be a channel to receive feedback about their product or service. The main focus of social media marketers should be to create content which is interesting, attracts attention, and stimulate online conversations which encourage users to share it their friends. This content can then go viral and spread like wild fire thus benefiting the organization. Any offers or contests can be easily promoted with little or no advertising budget.

Well these are the major forms of internet marketing and others may include affiliate marketing,e-mail marketing etc. I will be dealing with them in my subsequent blogs.

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How marketing has changed?

Marketing has changed over the years and has changed dramatically ever since the advent of the Internet.

In today’s marketing it is the consumer that searches for the product/ company instead of the traditional marketing where in the companies used to search for customers.
Today’s consumes have a wide range of products to choose from and most consumers go online and search for products/ services. This is one of major changes in marketing. But many companies have still not adapted to this change.
Advertisers earlier focused on delivering one message to a mass audience through various mediums like television, radio, and print. Now companies are shifting money from traditional marketing to Internet marketing because Internet marketing is a more effective way to show proven results.
The key differences or advantages of internet marketing are:

Cost Effective: Which of these 2 options would you as a company prefer ?
Spending 3 lakh for 30 seconds of a Prime time TV slot for a commercial or spending 3 lakh over 1 year for a combined onsustained online marketing camapign.

Target only Potential Customer: Online marketing has higher response rates as compared to traditional marketing like print or television. The Internet is a direct, targeted marketing paradise targeting only potential customer’s  segmented based on demographic,geographic and even psychographic parameters . Internet marketing also does a great job of targeting your advertising spend so that you know all of your money is being spent in the most effective way. Thus internet marketing is better at reaching your target audience.

More Measurable: Internet marketing efforts and spending is more measurable in terms of conversion through website or through brand awareness measured by the number of visits to a website.With Internet marketing you can see real facts and every detail that leads to reaching your goals and determine your ROI.

These are just the key benefits of online marketing besides these there are many more benefits.

Well the question popping in my mind is Has marketing in India really changed? Well marketing in India has not changed dramatically but is slowly evolving as we see the ad spends among Indian advertisers increasing in the online space. The recent Panataloons Femina Miss India contest was excessively promoted through social networks. Also many sucessful movies like 3 Idiots, My Name is Khan all had excessive online marketing campaign. Many ad agencies too are grappling with this change in advertiser preferences to online advertising.

In Indian markets a successful online campaign has to be supported by an offline campaign too  but a time will come not very far away where all marketing efforts will go online.

Well in my successive posts I will be dealing with different forms of internet marketing and Search Engine Optmisation

Please feel free to comment below and your valuable feedback is appreciated since this is my first blog post.