Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is also known as online marketing, which uses the Internet to inform customers about a product, advertisements, promotions, selling and distribution of products or services. In simple words, it is the use of the Internet as an electronic medium to advertise and sell goods and services. It is a vital element of electronic commerce.
Internet marketing revolution has begun in the early 1990’s with only product information available in the website. Eventually, it evolved as an online marketing platform to sell, buy and bid product with a host of eye- catching advertisements and promotions to bring more traffic to the site i.e., to reach the largest audience globally.
The pioneers of Internet marketing are:
- Yahoo
- MSN
Internet Marketing Methods:
There are different Internet marketing methods including:
- Search engine marketing
- Banner advertising
- E-mail marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Interactive advertising
- Email advertising
Search engine marketing (SEM)
It is an effective method of bringing large number of targeted visitors to the web site and also to increase the visibility of the websites in the search engine result pages. In simple words, the complete marketing effort to achieve high visibility of a website. SEM methods including
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- “Pay per click” (PPC) marketing
- Keywords related advertising
Banner advertising
It is the one of the most popular methods of Internet marketing, which appears in different sizes and shapes in the web pages with animated graphics in it. It is a major source of making revenues for advertising companies
E-mail marketing
- It uses electronic mail format as a means of communication of marketing and advertising related information to the target audience. It is a form of direct marketing.
- It’s been rated as the second most effective online marketing tactics next to search engine marketing.
- Researchers conformed that US firms alone spent $400 million on e-mail marketing in the year 2006
Advantages
- Inexpensive
- Effective in increasing sales, driving traffic and building loyalty
- Immediate
- arget oriented
- Easy to track return on investment (ROI)
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting a website in which affiliate will bring new customers, visitors, subscribers through his efforts to the advertiser’s site. The affiliate will receive a fee based on the following
- Pay-per-click
- Pay-per-lead
- Pay-per-sale
In simple terms, using one site to drive traffic to another website based on a system of revenue sharing agreement between those website
Affiliate marketing is the stepchild of online marketing.
Interactive advertising
It means that Internet users can customize their needs and wants based on their own interest to view the information i.e., users have the option to communicate with others via email, posting questions and answers on bulletin boards, creating a dialogue among other users using chat facilities etc.,
Benefits :
Marketer
- Customer loyalty
- Targeted messages and information
- Customer dialogue
- Easy to measure
Customer
- Availability
- Quick response
- Convenience and comfort
- New information sources
- Product/service satisfaction
Email advertising
It is defined as sending marketing and advertising messages through electronic mail with the focus on enhancing the customer relationship, building loyalty, referral and repeat business.
Impact of Internet marketing
In today’s business world, Internet acts as a primary source of knowledge to all the customers seeking a variety of product or service information. It has changed the business model of many industry verticals due to its wide range of benefits.
Few examples are as follows
Music industry
Many customers have started buying music over the Internet and also availing the facility of downloading rather than buying simply CDs. They have the chances to choose and listen to the songs of their preferences.
Banking industry
It has also created an impact on the banking industry. Many banks are offering the facility of internet/online banking to their customers that have a great appeal to customers because it is more convenient to do transactions rather than personally visiting the bank’s branches. The survey statistics reveals that more than 50 million US adults are using the online banking activity and those who use Internet, out of which 44% perform online banking activities over the Internet. Online banking is one of the fastest growing segment in internet marketing
Benefits:
Customers
- More information available about product/service offerings before making a planned purchase decision
- Quick delivery
- Few products are less expensive online
- Allow customers to track their orders
Companies
- Saves lot of money
- Less sales force involvement
- Creating worldwide presence
- Increase productivity
- Improving customer service level
- Better cost gain and highly efficient medium
- Reduce procurement cycle time
- Easy to customize product and service offerings
Limitations
- Low connecting speed ie., bandwidth connection
- Lack of touch and feel options
- Lack of trust in using electronic payments
- Security and privacy issues
- Customer’s resistance to change to click and mortar options
- Technological issues
- Requirement of higher employee training
Security issues
- Most of the customers are hesitant to buy or sell products /services due to lack of trust factor and privacy of their personal information. Some companies have started selling the customers information to the third parties which is unaware to them.
- Now-a-days, it is one of the issues to be handled properly and online marketing companies are trying ways and means to find out the right solution to provide security to the customers information. Encryption is one of the most commonly used methods that deals with privacy and security issues on the internet.
Case Study – Marriott International
Marriott International is one of the world’s largest and most successful hospitality brands, founded by J. Willard and Alice Marriott in Washington DC. It has 2600 more properties scattered around 64 countries globally.
The solution
Started optimizing their sites in the local languages for a leading search engines by means of
- Using search engine optimization techniques
- In expensive pay-per-click search engine marketing and
- Copy writers were sues to create ads and title tags to drive more traffic to the regional websites
The result
With in the first 6 months of the SEO campaign,
- The traffic to the UK site got tripled
- The traffic to the Japanese, Latin American and German sites got doubled
- Overall visibility had increased to 347%
- Bookings had grown to 40%
- Revenues rose by 32%
- Perceived as a global brand and internet users in these countries found a host of information in their local languages and felt easy to navigate the Marriott site.
Conclusion
Thus, the rapid growth of the Internet has created a lot of opportunities for companies and consumers to share information in a global market place. With the recent developments of Internet computing technology, Internet is viewed as an alternative distribution channel for all businesses to retain its competitive advantages in the competitive market environment.
Internet acting as a supporting platform for sales and marketing activities in a more cost effective manner compared to traditional advertising and marketing medium. This phenomenal growth of the internet community is changing the business landscape in the way the buyers and sellers exchange information and providing an opportunity for companies to create an innovative business model to tap the potential sources of its customer bases.
In simple words, Internet has become a virtual storefront where the customers have the direct access to the products.
