Introduction to Internet Marketing

What is Marketing? According to the AMA (American Marketing Association), Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and exchanging offerings that have value to customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Traditional marketing can be interpreted as copywriting, advertising, direct mail, branding, etc. Internet marketing has to deal with all the tradtional marketing techniques, as well as some new ones including SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and social networking.

The terms “Internet Marketing” and “Online Marketing” can be used interchangeably, as they refer to the multiple techniques used within internet marketing spectrum. To make things less confusing, we will refer to it as internet marketing moving forward.

What do internet marketing experts do for their clients?

• Create user friendly web sites for their target audience
• Optimize a web site for search engine marketing
• Create interesting content targeting a specific niche
• Improve their search engine rankings to drive brand awareness/sales

I’m currently reading a book called Online Marketing Heroes which is giving me a lot of insight about internet marketing. The author interviews 25 successful online marketing gurus in different areas in this space including social network marketing, search engine marketing, online PR, and many more. Here are some highlights from Joan Holman’s holistic approach to internet marketing:

• Use the internet to go directly to customers, bypassing the traditional gatekeeping media
• Develop a web site that’s information-rich and that responds to the customer’s needs
• Before you take your web site live, do usability testing to get feedback from your target audience
• Avoid technology for technology’s sake; take your customers’ technology level into account before you add all sorts of tech-heavy features to your site
• Be mindful of the photos you use on your site; friendly and attractive photos of company principals help build a relationship with customers
• Get creative and use humor to engage site visitors and create a buzz about your site