Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is all about the strategies and techniques applied on the Internet to support a company's overall online marketing objectives that consists of ads, banners, emails etc. The main purpose of the internet marketing is the use of the Internet to advertise and sell products or services. This involves use of websites and e-mail to inform customers about a product, solicit their questions, and accept their orders directly through the electronic medium. Internet is therefore used as a mean of communicating a company's messages, attracting prospects and customers, and conducting market research.

Methods of using the Internet to promote products and services, includes emails, website optimisation, banner ads and Pay Per Click and also to disseminate information, communicate with the marketplace, advertise, promote, sell and/or distribute products or services. Internet marketing is also considered or is basically the use of the Internet to advertise and sell goods and services. Comparatively a new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called "Internet Marketing" or more generally "e-marketing". It typically tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalised marketing or one-to-one marketing.

Internet marketing generally consists of the group of strategies that are used to market a product or service online; these marketing strategies include search engine optimisation and search engine submission, design strategies, online promotions, reciprocal linking, and email marketing. Online marketers are constantly devising new Internet marketing strategies in the hopes of driving more traffic to their websites and making more sales. For starting purpose when starting "e-marketing" one should focus on web design and search engine optimisation; for most sites, the most traffic still comes from search engines and directories. The other terms used for the internet marketing are web marketing, website marketing and online marketing.

Customer-centric e-marketing is applying digital technologies which form online channels to contribute to marketing activities aimed at achieving profitable acquisition and retention of customers through improving customer knowledge then delivering integrated targeted communications and online services that match individual needs. E-marketing tools used to drive visitors to a website for customer acquisition or retention include e-mail, web banner, search engine, viral marketing.

In the boom phase of the Internet there is a need of revival in investment in e-marketing. This revival has been driven by a combination of changes in consumer behaviour and online services that have been refined to meet these consumer needs. For households with Internet access, the web is now the first port-of-call for finding information to select or buy the best deal.

There is a dramatic growth in popularity of the Internet as a source for selection and purchase of products. Initially, music and books were the most popular online purchases. These purchases have become more common place, but have been overtaken by travel and the other industries. A common pattern seems to be that as consumers become familiar with purchase of relatively low cost, low involvement, standardised products such as music and books, their confidence grows and they then diversify their range of online purchases. There is still large potential for growth in online browsing and purchases for products such as electrical goods and financial services.