Internet marketing is the practice of using all facets of internet advertising to generate a response from your audience. It ties together both the creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and marketing. Internet Marketing methods include search engine marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, and interactive advertising.
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.Other sources, including the New York Times define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings, different from SEO which seeks to obtain better free search listings.
E-mail marketing
E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
* Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
* Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old customers to buy something immediately.
* Adding advertisements in e-mails sent by other companies to their customers.
* E-mails that are being sent on the Internet (E-mail did and does exist outside the Internet, Network E-mail, FIDO etc.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.
Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors and various types of affiliates/publishers who utilize a number of different methods to advertise the products and services of their merchant/advertiser partners.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates are using the same methods as most of the merchants themselves do. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and to some degree display advertising.
Affiliate marketing – using one site to drive traffic to another – is the stepchild of online marketing. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing, despite lineage that goes back almost to the beginning of online retailing, carries a much lower profile. Yet affiliates continue to play a fundamental role in e-retailers’ marketing strategies.
Interactive advertising
Interactive advertising the use of interactive media to promote and/or influence the buying decisions of the consumer in an online and offline environment. Interactive advertising can utilise media such as the Internet, interactive television, mobile devices (WAP and SMS), as well as kiosk-based terminals.
