Internet marketing or online marketing. Undoubtedly a topic that is very fashionable, but what is it and what does it really consist of? How has its evolution been and what are the advantages it offers for both large, small, old or new businesses, how profitable is it, and the type of investment required?
Let’s take a look at this topic of online marketing and see how effective it is to use the Internet to promote a business. The interesting thing about this activity is that it entails a whole gear where blogs or websites, social networks, paid ads and the search engines themselves can be involved (so it can include both SEO and SEM). Later we will see what these terms imply as their advantages.
Internet marketing consists of applying traditional marketing strategies to the online world but adapting to the Internet environment. Strategies are modified and combined with others that are directly the result of the evolution of ways of doing business on the Internet.
One of its advantages is that it allows for establishing new forms of contact with current customers or potential customers or even target markets. We can mention advantages such as Company presence, Knowledge, Interaction, Attracting and retention through SEO and SEM, Evaluation, Constant analysis, Creating image (branding), Omnipresence, Savings in capital investment, and measurement of results in real-time.
According to a Wikipedia post: Internet marketing is the study of the techniques of using the Internet to promote and sell products and services. These strategies and tactics are embodied within an online marketing plan that includes pay-per-click advertising, web page advertising, mass mailing, search engine marketing (including search engine optimization), the use of Social Media Marketing or social networks and the marketing of blogs.
Internet marketing originated in the early 1990s in the form of simple, text-only web pages offering product information. In the late 1990s, so-called “webmercials” (from the combination of the terms “commercial” and “web”) emerged in the United States.
The new way of advertising arose from the need for large newspapers to compete effectively with the growing all-digital media. The most recent step in this evolution was the creation of entire businesses operating from the Internet to promote and sell their products and services.
It is also known as “digital marketing”, it evolved (as it is logical to think) from traditional marketing, from those ways in which an x product was promoted, offered and motivated people to get to know it and be interested in making the purchase. On the Internet, the forms of advertising had to adapt to this new environment.
In short, thanks to the fact that the Internet scenario is totally different, the strategies are in accordance with its demands that are far from the physical world. For example; on the Internet makes customers increasingly interested in learning about and establishing communications with brands.
The evolution of the Internet produced the evolution of marketing, and it was at that precise moment that companies realized the need to adapt and change, if they really wanted to be successful, otherwise they would be left behind. If society and its forms of interaction change, the way of marketing products and services have to change as well.
All of this prepared the scenario for the existence of what we call today a digital marketing agency, a business model that would come to help companies create and develop a successful marketing campaign.
We must also highlight the great importance of social networks, which got great popularity. When the first social networks appeared, the world was amazed to see how we could share experiences, images, and videos with friends and family or strangers anywhere in the world that had an Internet connection.
In short, the emergence and success of social networks had a lot to do with the evolution of online marketing. The companies saw its advantages: the opportunity to sell, get information, establish communicative relationships, interact directly and study trends, tastes and needs of the public that makes use of these means of social interaction.
The evolution of the Internet, accompanied by the rise of social networks and their users, and the knowledge by companies of the competitive advantages of these changes, all of this is what gave rise to online marketing as we know it today. but which is also accompanied by other terms such as: digital, electronic and even virtual.
By making use of the Internet to promote products and services or to make a brand known, we have great advantages. This implies a very different way for companies and entrepreneurs to do marketing that reduces limitations and that constitutes the following advantages:
Without a doubt, this is one of the great advantages and which is very interesting. The truth is that through online marketing strategies we can save investment costs when, for example, we have little budget or when we do not have it. There will always be free blogging, website and social media platform options to promote a business, brand, product, or service.
The use of the Internet for marketing activities is of fundamental importance since it allows us to: reach all audiences, in other words, different people and markets. It is a whole world of possibilities in which you can create your own strategies to reach the different niches that you have at your disposal.
In online marketing, we have this possibility through SEO and SEM strategies. The first refers to the optimization of a website to achieve good positioning in search results and the second to paid advertising such as the one we pay on Google through AdWords. Both strategies allow a good online presence and therefore the information to our clients or target audience.
Digital marketing allows us as a company to interact with customers. No matter where they are, or what time of the day, we can always let them know that we are there. This is why the creation of content and regular updates are so important. It depends on that for a client to know that as a company we are always there, we are always changing, improving, everything for them.
The creation of the image and the brand as such is achieved when we can offer a message and recognition by customers. To create a brand on the web it is necessary not only to make use of a name and a logo, it is important to be able to connect with the public, and with the clients. As they recognize us and take an interest in us, we can then consider that our strategies are gaining strength and having the expected results.
We are talking about the type of knowledge that all the information available on the Internet offers us. For example; Social networks offer us knowledge about our audiences, and their changes in habits, and tastes, among many other things that are necessary for us and our business. In addition, through interaction with customers and the general public, information is obtained that is vital for any online marketing strategy.
Many people do not believe it, but it is possible to monitor and evaluate all the strategies that we carry out. In this way, we can know for sure when something we plan and execute does not work, and we can also define the way in which it is possible to correct it to make it functional.
We can do this analysis with respect to the strategies as they offer us a precise and exact measurement of what we have done or planned. We can find many tools on the web that offer us this type of analysis actions and ideal statistical measurement to quantify our strategies and determine their impact.
With all that has been said about Internet marketing, we all have the opportunity to create a successful business on the network if we know how to take advantage of the online world.
