Every offline activity that involves marketing, involves a marketing strategy to set and meet business orientated goals and objectives, to reach new markets, generate sales and increase brand awareness. The web is no different.

To succeed in the future, forward thinking organisations will require marketers and practitioners with cutting edge knowledge of the skills in the application of digital media. This includes the web, mobile and social networking to name just a few that are rapidly growing.

If you want your business to stay competitive in your market you have to stay in line with the demands of your customer. With so many consumers adopting the Internet not only for direct purchases but as an integral part of their research in the buying process, the question is not whether you should implement Internet marketing, but how you should implement it. If you’re not using the Internet to its full potential, you could be losing out on potential business.

During a 6 week series I will outline a framework that can be used to create your Internet marketing strategy. You can then change, chop and amend the process to suit your specific commercial requirements. So let’s start at the beginning …

What is Internet marketing?

Internet marketing has been defined as:

“Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies”

Importantly, the definition above helps remind us that it is the results delivered by technology that determines your investment in Internet marketing – not the technology itself!

This is very important, for example, just because everyone you know is ‘doing social marketing’ it doesn’t mean that you should be investing in it to. Speak to someone who knows what they’re talking about. We can help you move your web presence forward with search marketing.

Internet marketing channels

Generally, Internet marketing channels can be divided into 6 categories:

1. Search marketing (Pay per click and Search Engine Optimisation)
2. Online PR (Brand management, social marketing)
3. Partnerships (Affiliate marketing, link building, sponsorship)
4. Interactivity (Ad networks, interactive advertisements)
5. Email marketing (List purchases, 3^rd party adverts, opt-in email)
6. Viral marketing (Pass along emails, online word of mouth, media mentions)

All of the above channels are available to anyone, none of them are exclusive and all have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on how you intend to apply them and the market you are deploying them into.

Next week we’ll begin outlining the framework of an Internet marketing strategy. The following weeks we’ll go into more depth about each part of that framework.