So what is internet marketing?
Internet marketing is utilizing the internet as a tool to research a product or products, researching that product or products competition or competitors. Then based upon that research utilizing the internet as an advertising, and or marketing avenue to promote and sale a specific product or products, or generate a list of potential customers or sales leads for the sale of a future product, products, and or service.
Internet marketers are individuals or teams that focus on and specialize in utilizing the internet with their combined talents and knowledge to research and locate a product or products to promote that have the potential for the highest level of conversions to promote, then create the maximum amount of exposure that will create the maximum amount of sales revenue with the least amount of resources.
Product Selection:
In the world of internet marketing, choosing the right product to promote, market, and sale is key. Especially as a beginning internet marketer, you will have almost immediate failure if you target a niche that is flooded such as mortgage, insurance, credit card, or real estate lead generation. You will also fail if you target a product or service that has very little interest for example if you were trying to promote and sale an E-Book on how to catch flies.
There are many software products on the market that help internet marketers find, sift through, research, and choose hot selling niche products that they can move into, and make decent money off of. Since many products at some point have a tendency to die off, or become flooded with marketing guys, true internet marketers are very skilled at the process of finding new products, and are continually on the hunt for hot niche products to get out to promote and sale.
If you are following the path of an internet marketer that will be researching, and selecting multiple products and niches to promote, consider this when doing your research. Even in the old days before the internet, large marketing firms would spend thousands and thousands of dollars in intense detailed research just to determine if a product was worth putting the time, effort, and financial resources into promoting it. Many times large marketing firms would spend all this time and money in research only to decide not to pursue the promotion of a particular product. Yes product selection should be seen as a huge factor in the internet marketer's process, and not be taken lightly.
Advertising
A great example of just pure advertising would be a television commercial that just taunts the great things about say a big bank. The intent of that commercial is purely brand building or name recognition, and not necessarily to grab a customer on the spot. In other words, when the big bank runs that television commercial, they won't have someone sitting by the phone waiting on a huge rush of immediate phone calls to come in right after the commercial airs.
Most companies utilize many different forms of advertising such as television, newspaper and magazine articles, radio, classified ads in newspapers, direct and co-op coupon mail outs, and phone book advertising. Successful internet marketers realize that it is really no different for them, and over time have developed, and have in place and ready to go many different avenues for getting massive amounts of online exposure at their fingertips most of which costs very little if anything at all.
Marketing
An example of just pure marketing was in the old days with the telemarketers. The telemarketers for the most part were really a lead generator, some did make sales, but with many companies such as insurance mortgage, or service oriented companies, they were lead generators. In these cases, the telemarketer was true marketing because they essentially were not really making calls to just build a brand name. The telemarketer's role was mostly to grab a lead that they considered through some level of interest to be a strong potential buying customer, and turn it over to a sales department to make a sale, or close a deal.
Pure marketing from an internet marketer's point of view for example would be a simple form that is utilized to grab a potential buyer's contact information. For example, if you saw a small ad on a website that says "Make $100.00 per day online", with a simple form asking for your name and email address, that would be a form of pure marketing. The marketer is simply looking for future customers to add to their list of people that have an interest in making money online.
Now keep this in mind when you're putting together campaigns. In the old days, thousands of dollars were paid to professional writers to create the perfect telemarketing sales pitch, and if you were ever unlucky enough to have worked for any of these telemarketing firms, you know that most of them required that you followed this script to the T. Many of these scripts were considered corporate knowledge that most telemarketing firms protected almost as being secret formulas. So yes, spend sufficient time and effort in developing your initial pitch you plan to use for that initial ad or email blast or what ever method you use for your initial exposure.
Advertising / Marketing:
Both advertising and marketing tend to share the same space in many situations, and typically sales will stand alone. For example, in most large corporations, you will have an advertising and marketing division that is separate from the sales division. The marketing and advertising division essentially develops advertising and marketing campaigns together to create incoming leads for the sales division.
Now let's look at an example of where the line turns grey differentiating between marketing and advertising is with campaigns such as say a postcard mail out. If the post card that the company mailed out just had the company's name on it, and what they did but with no phone numbers, address, or contact information on it, that would be just pure advertising, and not necessarily a specific form of marketing or lead generation piece. In most cases, advertising and marketing roll hand in hand. For example, if you see a form on a web site that says "Make $100.00 per day online" along with the brand name Big Bobs Internet Marketing School, and a place to submit your name and email address that would be an example of advertising (brand name building) and marketing (Lead generation or list building) both together.
Sales
After introducing the product, and creating a lead, you want someone that is a strong salesman or closer that can wrap up the deal actually get the customer to pull the checkbook or credit card out, and close the deal. In many cases with internet marketers, the sale is made online with the typical buy now button. Often times for large product launches, thousands of dollars are put into creating the perfect sales page to insure maximum sales every time that page is viewed. Consider this when creating your own sales page or pages. This is where you would have to be wearing your sales hat. Quite often this is the last chance you will have at making this sale. Many times once the potential buyer closes that page, their gone for good.
Conclusion
Essentially the internet can be utilized as a marketing tool or lead generation tool, an advertising tool just for name brand promotion, a virtual salesman or all together. Think about it this way, If you have a web site that introduces your company, and on the same page has a form to fill out or a phone number to call for a interested customer to contact you, then you are using that web site as both a advertising piece for brand name building and recognition, and also as a marketing or lead generation piece. And if you add a buy now button on that same page where the visitor can purchase the product right then in real time, that one page has become an advertising piece, a marketing piece, and a sales page all in one.
Successful internet marketers over time have acquired, developed, and honed the skills needed to inexpensively reach thousands of targeted potential prospects, present advertising, marketing, and sales landing pages to those prospects in such a way as to get the highest levels of response that closes deals, or gets a desired response from a visitor. These are the skills that have positioned true internet marketers in today's world to work when and wherever they want to work, and make the kind of money they do.
These skills have not been developed overnight, but built on by a relentless collection of knowledge, and acquired marketing software tools that have catapulted them into the absolute best positions any entrepreneur could ask to be in. The journey is truly an investment of time that can be started on a shoe string budget, and pay for itself along the way.
One of the greatest bits of advice I ever received was to start reviewing all the internet money making systems available, set a budget which for me at the time was three hundred dollars, start purchasing the systems, fully implement and learn everything I could. Once I had purchased and implemented three hundred dollars worth of various systems, I stopped spending until the systems I had implemented had made three hundred dollars. This was excellent advice, all of the systems paid for them selves over time supplying me with a huge amount of knowledge and resources, and looking back I wish I would have set my budget higher, and jumped up the ladder a little faster.
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