Internet Marketing means a lot of different things depending on who you’re speaking to… it’s a term we use a lot but I thought I’d take the time to see if I could define it.

The narrow definition of Internet Marketing (which is still rather vast) is it’s any form of promotion done online (including email marketing) to raise the awareness of products or services.

Sometimes Internet Marketing is used to describe a type of business that has developed from mail order and direct mail marketing - that is, businesses that attempt to harness the amazing efficiencies the internet has given to find and speak directly to the consumer. These businesses use many of the tricks from their pre-internet heritage like long sales letters and psychological triggers. They can also be incredibly innovative and have developed a whole lot of new techniques like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to compete in what can be a very competitive field. When used to describe this sort of business, Internet Marketing has been known to include all this type of business’s activities including the market research required to discover products and services to develop, the development of the product, the online selling processes and even the business structure. The entrepreneurs running these businesses are often called Internet Marketers - even though, obviously, running any sort of business, even an online one, will involve a lot more than just marketing. Criticisms of this type of business is that they too often peddle dodgy products, get rich schemes or just sell how to do more internet marketing.

At the core of it, Internet Marketing is both about harnessing the opportunities of the internet and overcoming its challenges to find and speak to the right audience in the most persuasive way.

The internet has given ordinary people without the huge advertising budgets of major corporations the opportunity to sell to large audiences. It has also made the marketplace so much more efficient because a worldwide audience can be tapped into - an audience that is now up to at least 1 billion people (1).

At the same time, the main challenge of the internet is that it is a very very big place. In 2000, there were a reported 7 million unique websites in the world, in 2007 the estimates were at 15 - 30 BILLION websites!

So the role of Internet Marketing is to find out who the best audience is for whatever it is you’re promoting or selling, attract their attention and then (hopefully) persuade enough of them to do what you want them to do. There are many techniques used in Internet Marketing and they are constantly evolving because the internet is constantly evolving.

It’s important to note that Internet Marketing isn’t all about short term sales for products and services. It can be also be used to build a person or a company’s social standing or reputation in the long term. While building long term reputation is good for business, it can also be used for other more lofty goals like promoting a charity or a worthwhile cause. It can help you meet new people who are interested in the same things as you, or it can help you find business partners. If you’re an academic, some savvy internet marketing used appropriately can help raise your research profile.

Internet Marketing is often shortened to IM (not to be confused with Instant Messaging which is also commonly shortened to IM).

References

1. Pandia: The Size of the World Wide Web.