Overview

Seeing examples of internet marketing may help better understand how to maximize options.  To an internet marketing newcomer, it’s good to try more popular methods that others have tested and proven successful.

Among the topics we shall consider are:

≈     Advertising

≈     Promotions and Incentives

≈     Ping

≈     Lead Conversion

≈     Sources For Outbound Marketing

≈     Sources for Inbound Marketing

≈     Example of Optimal Online Marketing

Definition

As defined in Wikipedia, “Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet”.  In general, Internet marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing such as print, television, radio, and billboard advertising when considering cost per intended market reach.

Advertising

Online advertising uses the internet to communicate with and persuade potential customers to purchase or use a product or service.  Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

Using Adwords is a good place to start with online advertising.  Google offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.  The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution.  Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines.  Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Promotions and Incentives

Promotions are activities, materials, devices, and techniques used to supplement the advertising and marketing efforts and help coordinate the advertising with the personal selling effort. Sweepstakes are among the most well-known sales promotion tools, but other examples include special displays, coupons, promotional discounts, contests, and gift offers.

An incentive is a program used to promote or encourage actions or behavior by a specific group of people during a defined period of time.  Frequent flyer or buyer programs are commonly used incentive programs that encourage loyalty by recurring purchases from one business in order to obtain gifts or discounts as rewards.

Ping

A ping is a method of notifying search engines and news aggregators of updates to a blog.  A ping will motivate others to view new content to a blog.  Many blogging systems will automatically ping blog updates.

Lead Conversion

Lead Conversion is the process of converting a lead into an account, contact, and/or opportunity. Leads can be generated from marketing events, such as trade shows or mailing campaigns, as well as affiliate marketing and lead generation businesses like www.lendingtree.com.

Once enough information is gathered about a lead to qualify that lead as a potential opportunity, the lead can be automatically converted to an account and/or contact by using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application.  Salesforce.com is one of the most popular CRMs that is web-based with reasonable fees.

Sources for Outbound Marketing

Constant Contact – www.constantcontact.com

·        Provides email marketing and survey products.  Provides templates which allow small businesses and organizations to create professional-looking an email newsletter, a high-impact email promotion, an email event invitation, an online survey, or  build an email list.

Facebook – www.facebook.com

·        Businesses can advertise through social ads on Facebook as well as create and host events.  Instead of printing out flyers and mailers to advertise an event, use the free Facebook calendar function to promote it. 

·        Tips for marketing on Facebook include: enhance a profile page to include information about a business or product, network with a target market through a Group, sponsor a group by purchasing a link that hosts ad content and message boards.

Twitter – www.twitter.com

·          Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates.  A Twitter post is called a tweet.  After setting up a Twitter account, tweet your company’s news, blog updates, special announcements, incentives, etc.

·        Twitter can be used as a means to promote an event or gathering by way of a tweetup.  A tweetup is an in-person meeting between two or more people who communicate through Twitter.  People twitter logistical information about a get-together so others will come and join.

Yahoogroups – http://groups.yahoo.com/

·        A person can join a group or create a group on Yahoo.  Join or start a group with a common interest that may be indirectly connected to a product or service.  For example, if your product is baby clothing, a group for moms would be a good social network to share information about your product with.  However caution should be taken so that your group e-mails are not reported frequently as spam in the group.  Consider your e-mails’ content and frequency.

Sources for Inbound Marketing

Delicious – www.delicious.com

·        Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source.

Digg – www.digg.com

·        Digg is a website in which anyone can share content from anywhere on the web.  Content could be posted from popular website or obscure blogs.  The community votes on submissions.  Those with the highest number of votes are moved to the front page of the website.

ShareThis – www.sharethis.com

·        ShareThis allows sharing profiles, blogs, friends and contacts. A company can place a ShareThis button on its website to allow visitors to share the website’s information with others.

StumbleUpon - www.stumbleupon.com

·        StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles.

Example of Optimal Online Marketing

President Barack Obama’s internet campaign changed politics.  His campaign continued to gain and connect with supporters through the internet and used its database as a source of marketing, fundraising, and volunteers.  Consider how your business can use similar internet marketing sources to grow and stay in front of your competitors.

Read more about “How Obama Won It With The Web”.

Conclusion

Internet marketing is essential to company sales and growth.  There are multiple sources of inbound and outbound marketing on the internet.  A good start for online advertising is to use Adwords by Google to reach a target market searching for information about a subject or product.