Internet Marketing: What Does it Really Mean?

What is Internet marketing or online marketing? When we hear the word “Internet”, the usual words that suddenly pop up in our mind are email, website, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. And when we are asked about marketing, we begin thinking about business, brand, product, advertising, and customers.

So if we are to be asked what Internet marketing is, our basic answer could be the process of using the Internet which is composed of websites, search engines, and social media to promote a business, brand or product in order to attract more customers and increase revenue. And if you want to make its definition even shorter, Internet marketing could be the process of marketing a product or service over the Internet.

However, the Internet is not just all about emails and websites or about search engines and social media. The Internet is a huge online world that every business owner, entrepreneur or marketer should explore further in a consistent manner. Moreover, marketing is not all about advertising your products to attract more customers and increase your revenue. Marketing also includes ensuring your product, price, distribution, processes, and extra services to be satisfying and useful to customers.

The people on the Internet

The Internet cannot exist without people. The online world cannot exist without the people who are using it or even living on it. For example, search engines like Google are useless without the people who are using them to search information. Moreover, social media like Facebook and Twitter are dead without the people who are using them and interacting with each other every day.

Thus, when you are marketing your product or service on the Internet, you are not actually promoting it to the search engines or the social networking sites, but you are promoting it to the people who are the primary users of search engines and social media. Hence, if a person is destroying the usefulness of emails, search engines, and social media by spamming and annoying people… can we say that he is doing Internet marketing? And even if a person is using the Internet the right way through legitimate online advertising schemes but not providing the quality of the product he promised… can we call him a real Internet marketer?

The real Internet marketer

Being a real Internet marketer is not only measured by his technical expertise in website development, link building, content writing, making a web page rank higher in the search engines, and getting many likes on Facebook or retweets on Twitter. A real online marketer is not also measured by the instant profit he can generate out of his online marketing efforts. But a genuine Internet marketer is someone who can make people smile and thank him for the solution he brought to them, causing this to reward him long-lasting profits.

As you will realize, Internet marketing is for the people on the Internet. Whether it is online or offline marketing, marketing should be focused on people. And when we use Internet marketing, it only means we are targeting the people who are using the Internet. If we want to use online marketing to achieve business success, we have to focus not only on how we can use the Internet to promote our business, but we also have to concentrate on how people use the Internet to satisfy their needs.

The meaning of Internet marketing

Internet marketing is the process of using the Internet (website, search engines, social media, email, blogs, etc.,) and analyzing how people use the Internet to satisfy target customers by providing them the product or solution they need.

Internet + marketing = Internet marketing

Internet is everything on the Internet, including websites, emails, search engines, social media, online processes, web applications, and the people who are using it.

Marketing is your product, price, place (distribution), promotion (advertising), process, people (marketing team) + other elements that will satisfy customers and help you achieve your marketing goals.

Therefore, whatever type of Internet marketing you are using, whether it is social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing or anything else, make sure to satisfy and wow your target users or customers.