Online Marketing Defined

The definition of online marketing is: Placing your business or product on the Internet for millions of users to access so that you can turn your website into a strong tool to maximize your sales and business potential.

But online marketing is much more than putting your advertising online. Marketing online includes such areas as communicating with your customers, promoting your business or product online, and making sure that your website content is useful and up to date. The great thing about online marketing is that you don’t need to have a huge budget to put together a marketing campaign that is effective. There are tools that you can use to make your marketing techniques easy and profitable such website templates, shopping cart templates, and online marketing templates.

What You Need for Online Marketing to be Successful

There are some important points to consider before you get into the strategies and intricacies of online marketing:

Communication. An important part of online marketing is how you respond to your customer’s e-mail. You don’t want to lose potential customers after you’ve made the effort to have them visit your website and then contact you for more information. E-mail is a very effective and cost efficient way for you to generate more sales. The key to this effectiveness is “consistency”. You need to be consistent in your response to your customers. You’ll also want to make sure that the tone of your e-mail corresponds with the tone you’ve set in your website content.
Human resources. If you’re going to succeed online you need to have enough people working with you. Efficient websites incorporate a personal touch with a fast response time to customers. Your goal is to turn the visitors to your website into customers. The standard time for a return e-mail is from 48 to 72 hours. If you wait any longer to e-mail back you risk losing the customer. This means that if you don’t have the man power to return e-mail in two to three days you need to take another look at your marketing strategy.
Products people want to buy online. Before you start marketing online you need to be sure that you have a product or service that people want to buy. Customers need to find a value in what you’re selling. There are two motivating factors when it comes to selling online: cost and convenience. Ask yourself if customers will find it easier to buy online than finding a local store. Is it cheaper for them to buy this from you online?

Ethical Marketing

To sell a product well, it is very important to use powerful selling words to really convey each and every little benefit that your product has to convince the customer. It is not uncommon to see words like “unbelievable” and “phenomenal” and something along those lines in really great salesletters.

However, there are some marketers who intentionally use hyped-up descriptions to sell off their products. These marketers mislead customers into thinking that their products offer benefits that do not really exist in reality. At this point, it would be appropriate to quote a story that really happened:

One evening, a fellow marketer in my MSN Messenger list messaged me to check out his newest salesletter for his product, an ebook on earning revenue with contextual advertisement. I logged on to his website and was drawn right into his sales copy! The reason was the salesletter dived right into my desires and promised that “everything I have ever wanted” can be obtained just by purchasing the said ebook and executing whatever is inside. The salesletter also made it seem that the author owns fleets of Mercedez Benz cars, luxurious mansions and private yachts.

The problem was I know this particular marketer personally. He is actually a 17 year old high school graduate looking for a few quick bucks by selling a little ebook he compiled with information collected from various sources from the Internet. My emergency alarm immediately kicked in and I can just imagine how many na?ve newbies can be fooled with the deceptive sales copy.

The sad but very real fact is that there are many scam artists online, waiting to rip you off your hard-earned money. Hence, remember that the usual advice for consumers still apply online: use your common sense. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

Remember, when you intend to purchase something from the Internet, do a basic check-up on the merchant website. First and foremost, if you have even the slightest question on any of the features of the product mentioned, email the merchant regarding it and observe the attitude with which he/she replies. Customer support reveals a lot about the integrity of a business.

Finally, if you can't even find support email on their website, click the “Back” button and run away from the site at once!