Internet marketing has several synonyms including e-marketing, digital marketing and web marketing. It is the use of networked technology in order to market products and services. It is composed of several elements, which I will explain in this post. As it takes many elements from marketing itself it is composed of passive and active blocks. Among passive blocks you can get strategy, marketing research and crowdsourcing. The active blocks include several promotional channels such as web design, writing for online channels and mobile development. When combined with Internet these elements get new life since Internet is a clearly distinct medium compared to traditional marketing.
The discipline can be subdivided into categories depending on which stage the project is at. For the passive phase where information is collected you can find strategy, market research and crowdsourcing. This phase is essential to succeed since keyword research, a content creation plan, branding guidelines and service or product offerings set the way for how much and in what form the other blocks will be required.
Depending on this research, marketing material has to be made, therefore the need for specific skills, individuals or companies providing specialized knowledge are required in fields like web design and development, writing for online channels, mobile development, email marketing, online advertising, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, PPC advertising, social media and online public relations.
As marketing, in this case the internet marketing subdivision, has to care for continual improvement and of their most important asset - the customers. Automation helps in fulfilling customer's requirements and this is called customer relationship management (CRM). Monitoring customer's previous transactions set the way to integrate each one into a funnel where each customer is at a different level. The internet marketing professionals use this term to describe the process of cross sells, up sells and managing relationships with the customers.
It's very important in order to guarantee continuous improvement; therefore continuous measurement of progress is a very important part of this process. This is done in several ways and one of them is tracking what is working and what isn't. Key Indicators show quantitatively the results obtained and they can be gathered through analytics software.
It is important to note all these elements mix together based on the individual requirements of a project or venture. The ultimate goal of all these processes and techniques is to increase the conversions. A conversion is when a website visitor makes a predefined action for example making a click, writing their primary email, filling out a form, send a request or purchase a service or product. This is done by tuning the website in a way to facilitate these conversions to happen and to bring qualified traffic in sufficient quantities to achieve the desired goals in terms of reach, qualified prospects or sales. Obviously, web marketing is here to stay.
