What is Marketing Online?

What is Marketing Online?
The internet and related web technologies such as social networking are becoming more and more pervasive. While the basics of marketing remain unchanged (i.e. identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably) businesses can now take advantage of better, more flexible and cheaper ways to market their goods and services to their target audiences.

The term Online (or Internet) Marketing can be interpreted in different ways, but in simple terms it is defined as the use of the internet and related technologies to achieve marketing goals. In practice, Online Marketing tends to revolve around a company's website and combines other online marketing tools and techniques (such as direct email, search engines, Affiliate Marketing, online advertising and social networks) to acquire new customers and retain existing ones through the provision of on-line services.

Key Benefits
Online Marketing does not stand alone and to be truly effective it should be integrated with traditional marketing strategy and techniques. It does however bring a clear set of benefits, many of which are highly attractive to small and medium sized businesses;
Costs can be considerably lower than for traditional marketing activity. This is partly because there is a greater ability for do-it-yourself activity and partly because content can be reused very easily across different marketing channels (e.g. as website copy, an article or a blog). Onlne Marketing isn't free, however, and prospective marketers need to recognise that paid-for, professional help may be a pre-requisite to achieve their objectives.
It is possble to reach a much wider audience (for a given budget) than for offline marketing) as geographic boundaries are removed. Passive tools such as websites or Blogs can be found and accessed from most locations, while emails can be proactively sent to anybody whose address you have or purchase.
Campaigns can be highly targeted and interactive. Pay-per-click advertising, for example, can be set-up so that only specific keywords or phrases trigger an advert to be displayed in search results or on websites focusing on subjects related to your product or service. The upshot is an increase in response rates and an improvement in conversion ratios.

Measurable Success
Many SMEs find it difficult to justify traditional marketing spend, but Online Marketing activity is trackable and measurable using tools such as Google Analytics, so success can be easily monitored and the return on investment readily calculated. When measures such as this are in place, demonstrating the value of effective internet marketing becomes a straight forward process.