Internet Marketing Services

Internet Marketing Services

Internet marketing services is a pretty broad term which can mean just about anything. Many companies seek out internet marketing to improve sales, to generate new leads, and to build their brand. The problem is that it is very easy to spend a lot of money on internet marketing services that do not bring the desired results. So below we list the four broad areas of internet marketing, as we define them, how they differ from each other, and their benefits and challenges.

NUMBER ONE – DIGITAL ADVERTISING

Just like when people walk into a retail store the merchandise is arranged in a promotional way, so too on the internet you need to promote your product. Just like there are sale signs displayed in the store and mailed out to the customers, so too there are digital advertisements displayed to online customers. The fundamentals of digital advertising are no different than any other form of advertising. The only difference is that it’s digital.

Location – Your website (which we can help you build!)

Benefits – By far the greatest benefit of digital advertising is that you can reach far more people than any other advertising modality. Additionally, it is easier to produce and distribute the ads, and it is easier to measure their reach and success. Once upon a time you needed to hire an advertising agency to develop, print and mail advertisements. That could take weeks to months. You wouldn’t always even know if the ads got lost in the mail or actually made it to their intended recipients. Digital ads are created and deployed effectively within days. They are tracked and quantified. When a person visits your website, their activity, whether they realize it or not, is being tracked. You can find out which products they looked at, and even how long they looked at each one. If you have a new sale being advertised on your site, you can measure who clicks on the ad. There are many benefits to digital advertising.

Challenges – The greatest challenge is that since digital ads reach such a wide audience, companies often fail to narrow that audience to their target audience that really matters. This is where search marketing and social media marketing come in (see below!).

NUMBER TWO – CREATIVE AND BRANDING

Think Superbowl ads. Sometimes a creative video or image can boost a product or brand in a way that a billboard or newspaper advertisement just can’t do. Digital advertising is a robust field with all sorts of new technologies to reach consumers in new ways. Digital advertising can appeal to all the senses when print ads can feel flat and ordinary. A well placed digital ad can make a product seem trendy or can make a brand go viral. Once upon a time salesmen would go door to door selling their wares (that didn’t work out so well for Willy Loman). It was the charismatic personality of the salesman that would sell the product, not the merits of the product alone. Digital marketing is almost a return to that era. When a Youtube star or Football player promotes a product on TV or online, it is their selling power that seals the deal. Not the product.

Location – The video or image you produce.

Benefits – The price of entry is relatively low given the amount of creative service providers. And the cost of sharing your creation with the world is sometimes even 100% percent free. When something successfully goes viral, your advertising work and cost is minimal.

Challenges – Standing out and being unique can be a challenge because there are just so many people with great ideas. Since the cost of entry is so low, there is far more competition.

NUMBER THREE – SEARCH MARKETING

This is what separates the pros from the novices. Most information on the internet comes from internet searches like Google. Some people may know your domain name and visit you online directly. However many of you visitors come from search engines. But your website will not place high in search engine results without a lot of SEO work on your part. It’s an art and a science. And it is a big deal in the world of internet marketing services.

Location – Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines.

Benefits – When a person finds you through a search engine it generally means that he or she is interested in something that you are selling. If someone types the words, “I need a new car” into google and your site pops up, then you now have a visitor looking for the product that you sell. That’s great. People who arrive at your site from search engines are not “window shoppers.” More often than not they mean business. But that does not mean that they will necessarily buy from you. Whether you can close the deal is another discussion entirely!

Challenges – Good SEO is a lot of work. You can’t build a website today and expect it to rank number one on Google tomorrow. If an internet marketing service promises you this, run the other way.

NUMBER FOUR – SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

People spend way too much time on social media. They’re probably better off reading a book or hanging out at the beach than looking at pictures of their second cousin’s new cat. But that’s the world we live in so we might as well take advertising advantage. The trick to social media marketing is that rather than just hoping that someone sees your beautiful ad, you bring the ad to them. Social media makes it easy to find groups of people.

Location – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and other platforms.

Benefits – In the real world you can not walk up to a group of people eating dinner in a restaurant and pitch them your product. But on the internet you can! That’s social media marketing. It is so easy to find people who all identify with a certain demographic, background or interest so that you can share your digital materials with them.

Challenges – Unlike search marketing, these people are not coming to you. You are going to them. Therefore they have not been self selected as interested at all in what you are selling. So you need to work much harder at finding a message that is of interest to them.


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