What is online marketing?

Online/Digital/Internet Marketing is marketing/advertising a product, concept or kind on  different platforms available in the exorbitant world of internet. Yes, that’s what online marketing is in simple lay man language. It is also referred as ‘e-marketing’. Sending E-Mails, Advertising, using social mediaplatforms like Facebook and Twitter come under e-marketing.

Why is online marketing done?

Online Marketing is done to increase sales and business and making one’s presence felt on the internet. It helps the organization which maybe a website or a company to increase viewability, traffic and most importantly fetching more business opportunities and conversions in terms of remunerations.

What are it’s sub-categories?

Online Marketing is itself a BIG arena wherein the marketer gets to promote his/her product through various platforms available. Online Marketing consists of:
Affiliate Marketing(AM)
Pay Per Click Marketing(PPC)
Social Media Marketing(SMM)
Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

The Roots of Online Marketing

Yahoo started marketing through their website first followed by Google in the year 2000 and today google earns 95% of it’s revenue from the latter.
The World Wide Web was the topic on which the first website was dedicated to information about and that went live on August 6, 1991.
The first banner ad ever was ran by Joe McCambley on October 1994 on HotWired.com and it promoted 7 art museums, sponsored by AT&T.
The first movie marketed online was ‘Blair Witch’, released in 1999 and grossed $250 Million. BlairWitch.com has more than 10 Million Page Views.

Some more facts:

Symbolics.com was the first domain name ever registered on March 15, 1985.

 The traffic on the internet whooped from 16 million to 2 billion between 1995 and 2010.

Ray Tomlinson was the man who sent an email to himself in 1971. “Most likely the first message was QWERTYIOP or something similar,” he said.

Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the WWW)uploaded the first picture on the web posted on behalf of a comedy band called Les Horrible Cernettes.

Jack Dorsey the co-founder of Twitter wrote the first tweet on March 21, 2006.

‘Tere, kas sa kuuled mind?’ or “Hello, can you hear me?” in English, was the first sentence spoken on Skype.

Youtube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the first YouTube video of the San Diego Zoo on April 23, 2005 and it has been watched nearly 10 million times.

Yahoo and Amazon were launched in mid 1990s, Google in 1998 and in 2004 Social Mediaboomed!

How to Give it a start?

Social Media: One can make use of Social Media platforms, namely Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Myspace and even Flickr. These websites have billions of users in total and may make you reach some of them.

Viral Marketing: Come up with something worth sharing. Something that may force someone to share. It can be a viral video(Like the Harlem Shake), or a viral tagline, competition etc. We call this ‘The word of mouse(mouth)  ‘

Ads: If you have a good budget, using Google Adsense is one of the best methods to generate traffic on your Website.

Old is Gold: Marketing through Bulk-mails still remains the most used and effective method of internet marketing, provided the necessary precautions are taken.

Past V/S Future

Now, I’ll use ‘>’ to denote ‘Easier’

Having A Website >> Physical Office
Online Adversiting >> Traditional Advertising
Web Analytics >>>> Surveys, Polls and Market Research.
Sending E-Mails >>> Postal Mails

The biggest De-Merit of Online Marketing?

Rumours and Customer Dissatisfaction spreads quickly. The internet might help you marketing your website or your product, but it might also take things in the negative direction if given a negative push. So, think of marketing your product online if and only if you feel confident about your product or content.

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