Internet marketing 70
Internet marketing
Internet marketing, also known as web marketing, online marketing, webvertising, or e-marketing, is referred
to as the marketing (generally promotion) of products or services over the Internet. iMarketing is used as an
abbreviated form for Internet Marketing.
Internet marketing is considered to be broad in scope because it not only refers to marketing on the Internet, but also
includes marketing done via e-mail and wireless media. Digital customer data and electronic customer relationship
management (ECRM) systems are also often grouped together under internet marketing.[1]
Internet marketing ties together the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development,
advertising and sales.[2] Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along many different stages of the
customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads
on specific websites, email marketing, mobile advertising, and Web 2.0 strategies.
In 2008, The New York Times, working with comScore, published an initial estimate to quantify the user data
collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition
to the hits from advertisements served from advertising networks, the authors found that the potential for collecting
data was up to 2,500 times per user per month.[3]Types of Internet marketing
Internet marketing is broadly divided in to the following[4] types:
- Display Advertising: the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website to drive traffic to a
company's own website and increase product awareness.[4] - Search Engine Marketing (SEM): a form of marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility
in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of either paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid
inclusion, or through the use of free search engine optimization techniques.[5] - Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search
engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.[6] - Social Media Marketing: the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media websites such as
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.[7] - Email Marketing: involves directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using electronic mail.[8]
- Referral Marketing: a method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word
of mouth.[9] - Affiliate Marketing: a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or
customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.[10] - Content Marketing: involves creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects
into customers and customers into repeat buyers.[11]
Business models
Internet marketing is associated with several business models:
- E-commerce: a model whereby goods and services are sold directly to consumers (B2C), businesses (B2B), or
from consumer to consumer (C2C) using computers connected to a network.[12] - Lead-based websites: a strategy whereby an organization generates value by acquiring sales leads from its
website. Similar to walk-in customers in retail world. These prospects are often referred to as organic leads. - Affiliate Marketing: a process wherein a product or service developed by one entity is sold by other active sellers
for a share of profits. The entity that owns the product may provide some marketing material (e.g., sales letters,
affiliate links, tracking facilities, etc.); however, the vast majority of affiliate marketing relationships come from