Today, Internet marketing, or online marketing, is
evolving into a broader mix of components a company can use as a means of
increasing sales - even if your business is done completely online, partly
online, or completely offline. The decision to use Internet marketing as part
of a company's overall marketing strategy is strictly up to the company of
course, but as a rule, Internet marketing is becoming an increasingly important
part of nearly every company's marketing mix. For some online businesses, it is
the only form of marketing being practiced.
Internet
marketing can also be broken down into more specialized areas such as Web
marketing, email marketing and social
media marketing:
- Social media marketing involves both advertising and marketing efforts via social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Digg
- Web marketing includes e-commerce Web sites, affiliate marketing Web sites, promotional or informative Web sites, online advertising on search engines, and organic search engine results via search engine optimization.
Internet
marketing uses two primary avenues, search engine optimization and search engine marketing, with other avenues of
internet marketing being developed every day.
- SEM is also a form of internet marketing. With SEM paid measures such as pay-per-click, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion are used to promote site visibility in search engine results. SEM means the marketing of a site so that advertisements are more relevant in searches and rankings.
- Affiliate marketing is another branch of internet marketing that is the practice in which a business offers affiliates rewards for each visitor brought to their site by the affiliates marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is often overlooked but is a useful internet marketing strategy that, if implemented correctly, can prove to produce a rewarding return.
