Internet Marketing Principles

The Internet is an crucial new way of interacting with existing and potential customers. You must be aware of today's top internet marketing principles to successfully operate an effective website and online marketing campaign.

Back in the emerging youth of the Internet, advertising your website online and in the search engines was as easy as editing one simple line of code. Today, you not only need to have a good looking internet site, but the site has to do well with the search engines and, first and foremost, with your visitors and existing clients. You need to consider such aspects as website usability, site copy (copywriting), accessibility, search engine optimization, customer support, and most of all, you need to change the focus to your customers from your website.

Today's fresh approach to internet marketing is chiefly established on concentrating on the customers, even when working on the website and promotion. This involves customer research, which, successively, requires keyword research and the focus on the benefits to the customers and website promotion.

Top 7 Marketing Considerations

1. The appropriateness of the Internet for a particular customer interaction will change according to the features of the market section.

   It can be used to advantage wherever its features match the needs of the customer interaction. Ask yourself, what are your customers needs and how are you fullfilling them?

2. As long as the Internet is only available by a proportion of the population, it is necessary to establish what proportion of the target segment of the market will have access.

   The segment of visitors landing on your website are ultimately directed to your website from keywords. What keywords are you targeting? Are they keywords that are attracting visitors who will convert?

3. The accessibility provided by the Internet means that those communicating do not need to do so at the same time.

   Information can be accessed across time zones without the restrictions of contact in respective national business hours only. Someone can signup for your service, or you can sell a product any time during the day or in the middle of the night - all without you sitting by your computer or phone for hours. It is therefore particularly relevant to geographically dispersed markets and those where the cost of sales visits is prohibitive.

4. The Internet offers the benefits of being more interactive than direct mail or broadcast media.

   Since interaction is with a computer rather than a person, the interactivity is different from that of a telephone or sales visit, making it appropriate for pre-programmed, high-volume, repetitive tasks. How is your website interacting with your potential customers?

5. The Web is mainly a medium of two-dimensional static words and graphics, although use of sound and video is rapidly expanding (example: YouTube).

   This has enabled, for example, hotels and conferences to make use of virtual reality technology to demonstrate their services and facilities to Internet browsers. Internet restrictions still make certain products, such as clothes, less appropriate for sale over the Web since, as part of the purchase, the customer may wish to feel the fabric or try an item on.

6. The marginal cost of the Internet as a communication tool can be low.

   However, it is generally false that the cost of advertising is saved, since the size of the Internet still poses the problem of how to get people to the website in the first place. This can be done using PPC services from online search engines such as Google or Yahoo, or even service providers such as AOL.

7. User concerns about security and privacy can impede the placement of orders over the Internet.

   This is likely to bias Internet sales in the direction of relatively low-value items such as books or CDs, and in favor of suppliers with strong, trusted brands (example: Amazon, Yahoo!). Market research suggests that the dominant factors affecting Internet use remain the traditional concerns: price, convenience, service levels, product availability, and so on. Internet speed and the quality of websites will therefore be just as important as addressing security issues for the growth of the Internet over the coming years.

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