Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or e-marketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

Internet marketing is sometimes considered to be broad in scope[citation needed] because it not only refers to marketing on the Internet, but also includes marketing done via e-mail and wireless media.[citation needed] Management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems are also often grouped together under internet marketing.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along many different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, email marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies.

Internet marketing is associated with several business models:

• E-commerce: In this model, goods are sold directly to consumers (B2C), businesses (B2B), or from consumer to consumer.
• Lead-based Websites: A strategy whereby an organization generates value by acquiring sales leads from its website.
• Affiliate Marketing: The process in which a product or service developed by one entity (e-commerce business, single person, or a combination) is sold by other active sellers for a share of profits. The entity of the product may provide some marketing material (sales letter, affiliate link, tracking facility); however, the vast majority of affiliate marketing relationships come from e-commerce businesses that offer affiliate programs.
• Local Internet Marketing: Strategy through which a small company utilizes the Internet to find and nurture relationships that are to be used for real-world advantage. Local Internet marketing uses tools such as social media marketing, local directory listing, and targeted online sales promotions.
• White hat Marketing: This form of Internet marketing follows all of the acceptable practices for the search engines.
• Gray hat Marketing: This is when the practices are not specifically deceptive or abusive but lie in an area not specifically defined blackhat but still not entirely white hat.
• Black at Marketing: This is a form of Internet marketing that employs deceptive, abusive, or less than truthful methods

Read more: http://www.googleplacesoptimization.org/search-engine-optimization-education/what-is-internet-marketing/

Selling is all about design.

The idea of “design” is a popular point of conversation as of late. But selling has really always been about design. If you visit a supermarket and you pay attention to the aisle displays, you’ll notice that the best,  most effective ones are those that showcase some design creativity. There may be something woefully boring about yellow-labelled cans of creamed corn, but there’s something eye-catching about them stacked in the form of an over-sized pyramid. That’s design, in a nutshell. It’s also selling.

On the Web, everything is a design. From webpages to business proposals, closing a sale online is an exercise in balancing color, form, and function, just as it is in the supermarket. But selling on the Web adds an additional dimension to the design prospect: information. So, in order for a design to be able to sell on the Web, it has to not only be aesthetically pleasing, but also informative.

1. Minimalist design is better than sensory overload

Having said all that about  thinking bigger than “black and white,” it doesn’t mean that your business proposal designs should be too busy. Another idea we can borrow from the world of web design, when creating proposals, is the notion of minimalism. Minimalist designs are everywhere. The key concepts in minimalist designs are:

• Less is more
• Leave out what you don’t need
• If it’s there, it has to be good
• Stick to a limited palette of colors
• Above all else, keep it simple stupid

2. Narrow the field

The organization of information presented in your business proposals can affect your sales, too. As can the number of offers you present within a single proposal.

If you have no choice but to present several price packages in your business proposals, make sure you lay out the prices in a table that is very clear and easy-to-read. And definitely try to avoid creating total confusion with hard-to-understand pricing. The notion of narrowing the field also extends to your overall offer, too. 

3. Show some results

No one likes to buy anything sight unseen. That means your business proposals will benefit from including a picture of your goods/services in action, or the results of using them. If you create apps, some screenshots of your apps in action are in order and perhaps a video demo walk-through. If you provide lead generation services, as another example, you might show some incoming lead analysis screen captures. You can always support such images with testimonials and customer success stories.

4. A remedial lesson in how attention leads to action

Anyone who’s ever worked in sales in a small-box retail establishment, like Radio Shack, can tell you about a basic, newbie-level sales concept that some seasoned salespersons tend to forget. It’s called “AIDA,” which stands for:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

When designing your business proposals, AIDA can assist you in choosing the order in which you present the content of your proposals. You’ll find plenty of info on the sales funnel, the sales process, and sales strategy, but they’re all just different names for the same old thing, and AIDA underpins it all. The introductory page of your proposal is meant to earn the prospect’s Attention. The next section should hold their attention and begin to cultivate it into Interest. The next section transforms interest into Desire, which is used to call the customer to Action – the part where they bite on the sale, or in this case, accept your proposal.

Read more:  http://blog.quoteroller.com/2013/11/21/how-to-design-business-proposals/

Online business owners speculate what they can do to increase their sales in order to generate more revenues for their business. If this is what you are looking for, then you may get advantage from a marketing technique known as e-mail marketing. You want to obtain actual results from your email marketing endeavor, so bound yourself to deliver emails only to customers who gave you permission to stay in touch with them. Those who get unwanted e-mails from you are probable to obstruct them anyway. Your email marketing company, which is generally your own e-mail host, can remove you from their servers if they get repeated complaints about your spam.

The main reason to create your email marketing plan is to induce your customers to purchase your product or services. Each email should be a method to get customers to make a purchase. You can do this by creating an email that emphasizes details about a new product, markets an older product or gives a unique deal.By the help of a well-organized email campaign, it is practically possible to give positive results for the business, which adds value to its whole advertising campaign. The major thing is that when you start ensuring to perform the entire process in the best feasible manner. It does not matter what type of business you have because through using email marketing you can augment your intended client-base in an economical manner.

Email marketing promotions will permit your business to move on to the subsequent level, no issue what the current size at this point of time your business has. The major idea is to make a list of trustworthy customers along with intended prospects for the upcoming campaign. When you begin an e-mail marketing campaign ensure that emails have well-planned content and use the best email marketing services as well. Thus, information to customers are presented in the best way.

Here are 3 imperative reasons why best email marketing services is a valid alternative for growing your business;

1. If somebody signs up to your email list, they are obviously interested in what you are providing. For that particular reason, when you create your database you can be definite that you have direct contact to a list of people who are keen to hear what you have to put forward and better so far, are all set to purchase whatever you are promoting. A simple e-mail could aggressively improve your sales with a click of the mouse.

2. Marketing through e-mail can charge you very less per month to set up an account with an email marketing company that permits you to deliver bulk emails to opt in customers. If you are a new business owner and do not know much about email marketing, then you can go for free email marketing services as well. By doing this, you can check the reliability of e-mail service provider.

3. Through email marketing you can save the future of your business. Chances are that you would like to increase your business down the line and present more products or services to your customers. By using an email list of present customers on hand, you can right away promote your new offerings to a concerned group of people. This saves you both time and money and counteracts the requirement to practically begin from scratch all the time you have something new to provide.

In summary, email marketing is an extraordinary method to make sure that your business increases over time and reduce the amount of time and money you need to spend to attain that growth.

http://bestemailsolutions.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/why-best-email-marketing-services-can-help-in-growing-your-business/

There are a bunch of good reasons to create a marketing plan, work against it and maintain it.  Here are three:

1. Documenting assumptions/expectations– There are a set of inputs to any marketing plan: known information about the segment/buyers, how the buyers see the value of your offering versus alternatives, and the steps in the buying process. There are assumptions around each of those inputs based on things that are very likely to change over time such as the competitive landscape, the current capabilities of the product, and buyer behavior. You, and the other members of the team may not be in agreement on those (or even conscious of them). Getting those documented will both reduce the risk of incorrect or mis-aligned assumptions and will allow the team to recognize and react to changes that impact the assumption.
2. Keeping folks focused – Some people are naturally organized and very good at working through a plan kept only in their heads. The rest of us however, are easily distracted by the daily crises that form the regular pattern of how most startups operate.  Responding quickly to opportunities and threats is strength of smaller companies but some things in marketing take time to produce results and if you aren’t working against a schedule they won’t get done. Inbound and Content Marketing programs are often the first things to go out the window. It’s easy to skip a blog post, delay an article, not get around to responding to folks on Twitter, etc. when there are events to run and sales folks to respond to and a folks pounding the table asking why are there fewer leads this week than there were last week and FIXTHATRIGHTNOOOOWWWWW! This is the reason you see so many company blogs with only a handful of posts. Working against a schedule with regular checkpoints not only lets you assign tasks and hold people (including yourself) to deadlines, it also helps keep everyone focused on the longer-term (meaning this month rather than this minute) goals.
3. Visibility into what you aren’t doing – One of the most important inputs to a marketing plan is documenting the customer buying process. Getting your arms around that helps you understand where prospects are getting stuck and what you can do to take the friction out of the funnel. It’s easy to be working on a set of tactics that are all focused on getting buyers from one particular point to another in the path when the sticky point in the process could be up or down stream and requires a different set of tactics to move folks along.

http://www.rocketwatcher.com/blog/2012/07/3-reasons-to-build-a-startup-marketing-plan.html

When you are establishing a marketing plan, you can have a plan that is up-to-date or you can have a plan that is guaranteed to fail. That may sound a little harsh, but stop and think about how much things change in the span of a few months or even a few weeks. You should periodically go through your marketing plan and make sure that you tweak your strategy. This will help you be sure that your marketing strategy will survive the next stages of your business.

There is no magic rule for updating your strategy. Many entrepreneurs suggest updating your plan every month. However, you should keep a few things in mind before deciding how often you should have a new go at your plan:

1. Your industry. This is a big deal, because some businesses are more subject to changes than others. If you are in a technology field where new changes are taking place on a regular basis, you may need to update your plan on a biweekly basis. On the other hand, if you are in an industry that has been fairly stagnant, you may not need to update your plans more than a couple of times a year.
2. Fundamental changes to your company. You are likely to have a number of changes in your business that will require a new marketing plan. If you lose a lot of capital, you will have to create a leaner marketing budget and change your plan accordingly. The same goes if any of your key employees leave, as your marketing plan should be based around the strengths of your employees.
3. Key trends in your customer base. If customers are changing their behaviors or losing interest in a particular type of promotional effort, it is essential that you adjust your marketing plan.
4. Effectiveness. Has your plan been effective recently? There is no point going forward with a plan that isn’t going to provide you the benefit you are looking for. If you are noticing a lag in your sales, it is probably a good time to take a second look at your plan.

A marketing plan that outdated quickly loses its effectiveness. Take the time to routinely go through your plan and make sure that your strategy is kept current.

Many businesses make the mistake of over-planning up front and never looking at their plan again. Instead, you should learn to frame your plan as an ongoing development that needs to be revised regularly.

http://grasshopper.com/blog/how-often-should-you-update-your-marketing-plan/