Internet Marketing
What is Internet Marketing?
Or eCommerce Marketing, or Interactive Marketing or Web Marketing?
General Definition
I sometimes struggle when I have to explain to people what it is that I do. Recently I have started to give a definition that goes something like this, “I spend money on the internet in order to make more money on the internet.” Which may seem like an over simplified explaination – but most people seem satisified with that answer.
Different Types of Internet Marketing
Working with Quicken Loans I seem to have hit up almost every area of Internet Marketing except one. Which is probably because the team that handles it is on a serparate team. But here are the different types of Internet Marketing that I am familiar with.
Direct Response Offline Marketing
This is where a company may use some traditional marketing avenue such as a flier, postcard, billboard or commercial to drive traffic to their site. It can incredibly difficult to track and it may be hard to show how it ‘makes more money’ than you spend on the offline marketing. But you still have to make sure that where ever you are sending the traffic is performing tip top and ‘making the sale’ for you.
Online Advertisement
Everyone knows what these are. All of those banner ads that you run across, or text links that take you off of one website onto another in order to get your business. I spent about six months just supporting this channel and then another six months managing it. Easy as pie to track through website analytics programs, but the way people react to online advertisement is very different than anything I’ve experienced
Paid Search Marketing
Not everyone realizes what paid search advertising is. Have you ever noticed that the search results on the right side and at the very top are a bit different than the rest? Well that’s because companies are paying for those listings. Once upon a time I’m guessing that it was relatively easy to run paid search campaigns, but my recent move into paid search has me realizing that it is a beast. There are so many different things that go into paid search engine marketing that I’m guessing there’s still another 2 months of a learning curve for me.
Search Engine Optimization
Sounds fancy doesn’t it? But it probably sounds even better when I say that it is kind of like free marketing for your website. The better you set your site structure up, the more relevant you name things on your site and the more great content you have…well then the more the search engines will like your site. And when the search engines like your site they will serve them up higher in search results. Pretty neat, huh?
Email Marketing
This is the one that I know the least about because I have not worked directly on any email campaigns, but have used them to support what I do. All over the internet companies are grabbing up your email address and then turning around and sending you emails. Some of those emails you’ve asked for, other ones you haven’t. But you can opt out of them.
Affiliate Marketing
Another way to increase your website business is to get other people to ’sell’ for you, and you pay them for the sales. It is similar to paying a sales person piece of the pie. An affiliate marketer is essentially working for themselves because the more they sell, the more money they make. So as they grow your business, they are also putting more money into their pocket.
Ultimately each and everyone of these types of internet marketing listed above are meant to drive traffic to your website and to get people to do what it is they need to do in order for you to make money.
Future of Online Marketing
Over the past few years I’ve heard more and more people talking about internet marketing and how more advertising dollars are moving over to drive traffic to a companies website. The reason why is because it is easier to track those dollars and see a return on your marketing investments. What does that mean for you? Get used to companies trying to sell you things via the Internet.
