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What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing includes all strategies that are used to increase visitors to your website or as is the norm these days, your multiple websites, with the ULTIMATE goal being to convert these website visitors into LIFETIME Customers, Clients, Donors, Members or Associates.
Objectives of Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing is essentially used to achieve the following objectives:
- Convey your company's message about you, your products and your services
- Build your corporate identity
- Disseminate your marketing information
- Conduct research as to your demographics of existing as well as prospective customers
- Offer a 24/7, live source of your information
- Publicize latest innovations, exciting events and up-to-date news
- Sell your products, services or programs over the Internet
One of the biggest benefits that internet marketing offers businesses is the potential to reach out to prospective customers across the globe for a fraction of what it would cost using traditional marketing strategies.
Cost of Internet Marketing Strategies v/s Traditional Marketing Strategies
Traditional marketing strategies involved spending huge amounts of time and advertising dollars to hire agencies and production crews to create marketing campaigns for different media including magazines, newspapers, television and radio.
To engage in internet marketing, all you need is a website that communicates your message and keeps existing as well as potential clients informed about the products or services offered by your company. Blogs, Podcasts,Videos, e-mail marketing and online promotions form the components of internet marketing, all of which require a negligible amount of set-up time and capital investment if you start out simply.
Effectiveness of Internet Marketing Strategies v/s Traditional Marketing Strategies
Statistics reveal that when you advertise in magazines, only a small percentage of readers actually care about your message and an even smaller percentage will be prospective buyers. The statistics for television and radio are just as dismal; viewers cared even less for the messages conveyed during repeat ads and tended to switch channels or change stations during ad breaks.
Using traditional marketing techniques, you paid a fortune to attract maximum eyeballs. Unfortunately, only a miniscule percentage of those were converted into actual sales. There was no way to target only pertinent readers or viewers.
Implementing correct techniques in internet marketing allows you to attract target traffic to your website, most of who could be converted into revenue and will end up being loyal customers. Some of the internet marketing strategies that can boost target traffic to your website include search engine optimization, article marketing, reciprocal linking, social networking and blogging.
Gauging effectiveness of Internet Marketing v/s Traditional Marketing Strategies
With traditional marketing methods there was no way of measuring the actual effectiveness of your efforts; there was no way of determining how many viewers and readers were actually influenced by your ad bought your product as a direct result.
With internet marketing, the very nature of the internet makes it possible for marketers to receive quantitative feedback on the efficacy of the marketing campaign. You can put systems in place that tell you whether or not your marketing campaign is achieving the target objective.
Internet marketing is rapidly becoming an increasingly strategic part of every company's marketing mix. Every business, whether it is a traditional brick and stone business, an online business or a 'bricks and clicks' combination of both can benefit tremendously from internet marketing.
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