Not Internet Marketing
In order to understand what internet marketing is, it is important to first understand what it isn’t. Internet Marketing is not traditional marketing. This may seem like I am stating the obvious, however, there are an impressive amount of people who run internet marketing campaigns, who are out of touch with current technology and approach their internet marketing like a traditional campaign. How is internet marketing different from traditional marketing then? There are really only a few basic differences between traditional marketing and internet marketing, putting aside the obvious technological medium differences.
First, You are Going to Need One These?
1) Appealing to Specific Interests
Internet marketing combined with geo-marketing places an emphasis on marketing that appeals to a specific behavior or interest, rather than reaching out to a broad and/or overly general demographic. However, while “Off and On-line” marketers typically segment their markets according to age group, gender, geography, and other general factors. Online marketers have the luxury of targeting by activity and geographic location with the knowledge that whatever it is that they are attempting to market, will be sought out by internet users. For example, a snowboard company can post advertisements on snowbaording and wintersports websites with the full knowledge that the audience has a related interest.
Internet marketing differs from traditional marketing, specifically when considering the use of print advertisements, where the goal is to appeal to the projected demographic of the given publication. Because a given Internet Marketer or advertiser presumably has a knowledge of their target audience (people who engage in certain activities, such as, uploading pictures, contributing to blogs, etc.,) the advertiser or marketer does not have to solely rely on the expectation that a certain group of people will be interested in its new product or service; anyone on the web could stumble upon their website or users could be specifically looking for the content that is being peddled like in the example of the snowboard company above.
One on One?
2)One-on-one approach
The targeted user is typically browsing the Internet alone, so the marketing messages can reach them personally. This approach is used in search marketing, where the advertisements are based on search engine keywords entered by the user.
And now with the advent of Web 2.0 tools, many users can interconnect as “peers”
3) Geo targeting
Geo targeting (in internet marketing) and geo marketing are the methods of determining the geolocation (the physical location) of a website visitor with geolocation software, and delivering different content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, Internet Protocol (IP) address, ISP or other criteria.
4) Different Content Served up by User Choice
An example of different content being served up by choice is the geo-targeting of a website at www.whatever.com where the end users have the choice to select their geographic location first and are then presented with a different site or geographically pertinent content depending on the user’s selection.
5) Automated Content
With automatically served content in internet marketing and geomarketing or specifc geotargeting, the delivery of different content based on the geographical geolocation, as well as, the sharing of other personal information is automated.
While some would view or espouse that internet marketing is superior to traditional avenues of marketing, internet marketing is not without its disadvantages as well. In the next article of this series on internet marketing, we will delve into the advantages, disadvantages, typical business models and some typical forms of internet marketing’s applications.
