Internet Marketing Strategies
Internet marketing can mean different things to different people...
What does Internet marketing mean to you?
When you think of "Internet marketing" what are you referring to?
- A Website?
- A Web Site?
- Email Marketing?
- Search Engine Marketing?
- SEM?
- Search Engine Optimization?
- SEO?
- Pay Per Click Marketing?
- PPC Marketing?
- E-Commerce, eCommerce, e Commerce, or e-Commerce?
- Viral Marketing? (Yuuch!)
For our consultants, none of the above Internet marketing words mean anything unless they involve the most important acronym: ROI-which means Return on Investment.
A website, a web site, SEM, SEO, PPC or any of those Internet marketing terms above are only valuable and relevant if they help your business reach its, profit, short-term and long-term goals.
A "Brief" history of Internet marketing:
Remember Dennis Hopper saying: "The 90s were going to make the 80s look like the 60s!"?
Dennis was right, but even he could not have predicted that the ".com" world would snowball out of control only to come spiraling down in 2001. Companies were throwing millions of dollars at Internet marketing on web sites, banner ads, pop-up ads and anything they could do to catch the "wave". Unfortunately, the wave was more of a trickle when it came to "Internet marketing ROI". When the ".com" world came back to earth companies realized that throwing millions of dollars at Internet marketing was not going to translate into success.
In fact, most of the so called "Internet marketing strategies" cost more than a company could ever hope to gain in return back in those days. (Unfortunately, many of the current Internet Marketing programs are a waste of time and money, because they are poorly implemented or completely bogus to begin with)
Overall Internet marketing spending decreased from 2000-2002, then it started to rise again. It wasn't until the 3rd quarter of 2003 that Internet marketing spending rose to levels higher than they were during the ".com" heyday. However, this time businesses were going to be "strategic" and focused on "ROI".
Since then there have good, bad and ugly Internet marketing strategies implemented by every type of business from fortune 500 companies to home based businesses. Businesses have been struggling to figure out how to successfully implement an Internet marketing strategy-many still wasting money on programs that do not work. The ones that DO find Internet marketing strategies that work generally do not share the strategy with their competitors because they do not want the competition.
For every honest Internet marketing consultant in the world there are literally tens if not hundreds of dishonest ones. To be fair, most do not realize how bad their "Internet marketing" programs are, but some "Internet marketing experts" seem to be modern day snake oil salesman.
Biggest Internet marketing related changes in the last few years:
- "Local search" has grown 40% year over year in the US-even though Internet usage has increased by only around 20%.
Examples:
- People search for attorneys, Thai restaurants and even transmission shops online.
- The result: Internet marketing also means "Google Local", "Yahoo! Local", YellowPages.com and "Reachlocal" just to name a few of the local Internet marketing companies.
- Google has become a verb; in fact, Google is a multi-billion dollar verb.
- Online content has become more than words & meta-tags: it has "come alive" in the form of "Podcasts", "Video" and "Viral" Internet marketing.
- "Spam" is no longer a meat most Americans have always hated-it has also become a verb!
In this vast, fast, and ever-changing internet world, it is nearly impossible for business owners to keep up with all of the changes to Internet marketing strategies while simultaneously trying to run a successful business.
As a result, the vast majority of businesses are either implementing inefficient Internet marketing programs, losing money on Internet marketing, or avoiding Internet marketing all together.
Call us today for a free 15 minute consultation, and we will help you get on the right track so you can experience the ROI you deserve from Internet marketing.
303-997-3424
