Digital Marketing (or Internet Marketing), in my humble opinion, is a set of skills used to drive online traffic through methods like Social Media, SEO, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Pay-Per-View (PPV) and Email Marketing to a webpage. When I first started out, I was very confused by this whole concept of ‘Internet Marketing‘. The term seems to have a variation of meanings, and is often used loosely. Is Internet Marketing (IM) a niche, business model or a skill? People often link IM to MLM due to the way many marketers are practicing it, giving false promises of a fast way to get rich through spam-my and unscrupulous ways (e.g. email spams). We all have our own opinions, but here’s a way I like to see it to put things in perspective for myself: Skills: Digital / Internet Marketing (IM) Means of Generating Online Income: Affiliate Marketing Niche: Make Money Online (MMO) IM & MMO are often lumped together, and this can cause confusion to many. Digital Marketing (or Internet Marketing) is simply bringing Offline Marketing online (I’m trying hard here). E.g. Instead of buying ads in local newspapers, you buy online banner spaces on popular websites (high authority). It is not some unorthodox or underhand method used to siphon money from the innocents. My idea here is to clean the stains off your tainted lenses, and to help you put things in the correct perspective (not how people make it out to be). My understanding might be wrong though. Through Internet Marketing, I’ve learnt SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Content Marketing, Email Marketing and so on… These are all skills needed to drive traffic to a website. If you haven’t realized, most companies are already practicing Internet Marketing. Have you ever signed up for a newsletter? – Opt-In Have you ever clicked on a banner ad? – Banner Advertising Have you ever bought a product from a website after reading its review? – Affiliate Marketing Have you ever bought a personal product from someone? – Product Creation Have you ever clicked on the first search result after searching for something on Google? – SEO Have you ever ‘Liked’ a Facebook page or ‘Shared’ an article? – Social Media Marketing Greed and Desperation often drive people to act selfishly at the expense of others. Even in every religion, there is bound to be at least one black sheep who would do something negative to tarnish the image of the entire religion. However, in the “Internet Marketing niche” (following general perspective), I can boldly say that at least 50% of the internet marketers are black sheep. First thing first, I’m not trying to look all high and noble because let’s be honest, we all want to make money. The question is “How?“. You make Internet Marketing as legitimate as you want it to be. I’ve learnt how to: Create a Funnel Understand how a Digital Funnel works Create a Landing page Do Email Marketing Use an Autoresponder Use WordPress and so on… These may sound simple, but they are skills and knowledge sought after by many companies desperately trying to bring in more sales through digital marketing. These are Assets that you have. My personal goal? To learn and do Digital Marketing the legitimate way. my 2 cents. Original Post: http://marketingwithalvin.com/digital-internet-marketing/
This is a nice synopsis of various IM tactics. I think that Internet Marketing, from a strategic perspective, is not different from traditional or offline Marketing. In traditional Marketing, there are the four P's that form the basis of all efforts: Product, Position, Price, Promotion. In any business, the first thing you have to do is establish a Marketing Plan that picks your Product (or service, of course), Positions it correctly (is it a Hyundai or a Mercedes?), Prices it correctly and then Promotes it well. What changes between offline and Internet Marketing are the tactics to achieve your strategies. As an aside, having been in sales and marketing for 25+ years, I am often amused by IMer's who think that they or other IMer's have "invented" new promotional strategies like MLM (that scam has been around for at least as long as I have been in business) and many other such tactics. Traditional marketers have been there, done that, and gotten the tee-shirt long before the Internet was even a concept. For example, I was heavy into direct mail back in the late 1980's/early 1990's. I was responsible for about 1,000,000 mailings per year and we did things like 1:1 marketing back then that are now touted as being able to be done only now because of the ability of the Internet to "know its visitors." Silly.