What is Internet Marketing?

If you’ve been reading our blog, we recently posted a piece about internet marketing not being about SEO. Of course, the important move to make is to follow that up with what internet marketing actually is. Instead of leaving everyone wondering, what internet marketing is if not all about SEO we wanted to lead you to a better understanding of internet marketing.

The bottom line is that internet marketing is about growing your business and taking whatever approach that works for you to do so. You are telling people about your brand or make them interested in your business. It could be using attraction marketing to drive traffic for your blog or increase sales for your company. Whatever the desired final result is, you are trying to bring people in, just as you would try to entice potential customers into your shop if you had a physical location storefront.

So how is Internet Marketing not About SEO?

Don’t misunderstand; SEO is still important to this type of marketing. However, it is not the ‘be-all end-all’. When it comes to your internet marketing toolbox, SEO is just one of many tools available to help you get the job done. After attracting potential customers, the next crucial thing is conversion. Conversion is what converts an interested party into a paying customer. For some leads, this is an immediate result and for others, it is a longer process.

So what else is in that online marketing toolbox? There are things like email marketing, pay-per-click, landing page optimization and content marketing, just to name a few. Social media marketing and networking for instance are extremely important and useful right now and only continue to grow in popularity. So, while SEO remains a constant thing to include, focusing on this can mean missing out on the new tools available.

Seeing the Finish Line

Want to know one of the most important tricks to have success with your internet marketing efforts? It is to see ahead to the end and have in mind what you want to happen. Too many people make the mistake of investing effort into marketing campaigns without clearly having an idea of what they want the end result to be. Sales sure, but without seeing the end how can one know their efforts can lead to that point?

• First, see the goals you want to set for your internet marketing campaign. It should be more specific than “increase traffic”, or “increase sales”.
• Set it with specifics like percentages and dollar amounts. This gives you something to shoot for and helps you see if your efforts are paying off. This should also help you work with conversions.
• Have goals for what to use to nurture and follow up with your leads and have greater success converting them instead of neglecting or driving them away.
• Once you can see past the importance of just SEO for your internet marketing campaign efforts, you are bound to see even better results.