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What is Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing is defined as the art, skill & science of getting visitors to your website and having them take that action - or - traffic and conversions.

Traffic and Conversions are the impetus of Internet Marketing. Each is a vast study in itself, which we will go into briefly here.

TRAFFIC

All traffic is not created equal. Traffic can be split into groups, targeted and non-targeted as well as free and paid.

Obviously, targeted traffic is of a better quality than non-targeted and will yield a much higher interest in taking that action or conversion. That's because targeted traffic already has a pre-disposition for learning about or buying your product or service.

We will get into how we know this and how to find targeted traffic shortly. Also, free traffic is always more desirable than paid because it's… free!

FREE Traffic

One of the best ways to get Free, Targeted traffic is through a Search Engine (SE). The following four "players" are worthy of your attention in this regard: Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.

The field of study called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the area of internet marketing which deals with getting free, targeted traffic from these online entry portals which many of us use to find information every day through the Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs.

Now that we understand the overall goal - FREE TARGETED TRAFFIC - we can breakdown SEO into the following activities:

  1. Find the right keywords for your web site.
  2. Optimize your web pages for these keywords.
  3. Submit your web pages to all important search engines and directories.
  4. Get links from other web sites and make sure that these links contain your keywords.

Producing good, credible content around a tight niche that you have done the keyword research for is the first step to targeted traffic generation!

It follows that since most of us usually only look at the first page of search results (SERPs) on a SE, getting free, targeted traffic requires that our website is on that first page, or in the top 10.

While SEO or Natural Search Optimization is an in-depth topic and involves both on-page factors (the way you design a web page) and off-page factors (which sites - and how many sites - link to your web page), with a thorough understanding of how the SEs work and the proper tools and due diligence it still is possible to get good rankings for competitive keyword phrases.

But SEO as important as it is, is hardly the whole story and only one internet marketing strategy for the well-rounded internet marketer.

The big picture for Effective Online Marketing is all about targeted traffic and using MULTIPLE strategies. Multiple IM strategies typically work FAR better than search engine positioning alone.

These strategies include:

FREE & Paid Traffic

  • Viral marketing campaigns
  • Email marketing campaigns
  • PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaigns
  • Affiliate Marketing Campaigns
  • Banner Advertising Campaigns
  • Article Submissions
  • Posting in Forums
  • Search Engines
  • Paid Adverts
  • Link Exchange
  • Joint Ventures

Knowing which strategies to implement to create an effective online presence as part of a companies global marketing plan is the pursuit of every good web designer and internet marketer.

CONVERSION

Let's assume now that you have - not just a website, but an SE optimized website that ranks well on the SE's for 2, 3 or 1,000 keyword phrases and you have a steady flow of free, targeted traffic (well done!).

Have you made a sale or had a visitor take the desired action you wanted? If not, you still have nothing.

If so, how many who visited took that action? Remember, even with thousands of visitors a month, you have only addressed half of the equation.

In this next section we will look at the other half or the equation - the art and science of conversion. Conversion is one of my favorite subjects and although it may seem impersonal to view it this way, it all comes down to numbers.

Conversion is typically viewed as how many people acted as you wanted. Remember that "call to action" we talked about earlier?

If 10 people called you, or gave you their email or clicked on a link, or bought your product, the action can be easily measured and you could say, "Wow, I got 10 conversions today!". But what if you had 1000 visitors to your website today as well? Would 10 conversions be considered good?

To tackle this question we need to determine the Conversion Rate of your site. That is, to express how many conversions your site had out of how many visitors came to your site for a given period of time (day/month etc.).

Using the example above, if 10 out of 1000 visitors (or 1 out of 100) click on a link that would be a 1% Conversion Rate (CR). Likewise a 2% CR translates into 2 out of every 100 visitors clicking on a link, or calling you or buying your product. (Notice that each time you increase your Conversion Rate (CR) by 1% you double your sales!)

So to answer the question, good and bad being relative, maximizing your Conversion Rate (CR) will always be in your best interest and it is also the goal of every good web designer and internet marketer.

Are you leaving money on the table? How do you know if you've maximized the conversion rate of your site? Keep reading and you'll find out...

Now, the multitude of factors which determine the Conversion Rate of your website can be distilled down to something which resembles the 3P's of offline marketing. Namely: Product, Price and Positioning.

Here they are in broad terms:

  • Desirability of the Product
  • Site Layout (positioning)
  • Sales Copy (positioning)
  • Price

The Product, Price & Positioning aspects of internet marketing include things like placement, color, graphics, your headline, the words you use, creating value, building credibility & trust, social proof, creating urgency, privacy policies, name recognition, logos, and other conversion "best practices." These all have an affect on your Conversion Rate.

How do you know you've got it right? Test, Test, Test! Improving conversions may be counter-intuitive (not behave the way you would expect.) You must conduct Conversion Testing.

Tools, SW & Websites associated with this discipline are:

  • A/B Split Testing SW
  • Link Tracking SW
  • Website Analyzers
  • Website Traffic Stats

Summary

In summary, while offline marketing success (where traffic is assumed) hinges on the 3 P's, Product, Price and Positioning, the overall success of your website relies on 4P's: Product, Price, Positioning and Promotion.

Thus the main factors for online/internet marketing success as a whole are:

  • Desirability of the Product
  • Quantity of traffic (promotion)
  • Quality of traffic (promotion)
  • Site Layout (positioning)
  • Sales Copy (positioning)
  • Price

Notice that the action or conversion of your website is a function of both Traffic (promotional aspects) and Conversion Rate (positioning).

And here we'll add one more thing which was alluded to earlier…

  • Continual Testing, Updates & Maintenance

It takes years to delve deeply enough into each one of these areas to develop a robust enough understanding of how all the elements and technology come together to impact the marketability and overall success of a website.

This is Internet marketing's endeavor. All activities of Internet Marketing can be somehow traced back to having their motivation in traffic and conversion.

Good internet marketers are well-sought after and respected for the in-depth (and constantly changing) knowledge that must be part of their skill set in order to positively impact the websites - and consequently the bottom line - of their clients.

The good news is that the internet provides us a very simple and reliable means of doing market research, testing & tracking of what works, and finding reliable tools, resources and mentors to accomplish whatever you want online.

Also read: Pay Per Click (PPC) more...


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