Search Engine Marketing

Internet marketing is also known as the E-marketing or online marketing, it is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. Internet marketing brings in creative and technical aspects of the Internet (including design, development, advertising and sales).

Internet marketing methods include:

• Search engine marketing- search engine optimization
• Display advertising- graphic information (flash-web banners, logo, photographs)
• E-mail marketing- form of direct marketing
• Affiliate marketing- web-based marketing, business pays affiliates for their marketing efforts
• Online reputation management- news, participation in blogs and forums, personal web sites

Benefits:

• Inexpensive in distributing information
• Media to a global audience in a low cost
• Allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience
• It's good demographics targeting
• Measurability, online campaigns can be traced, measured and tested, where businesses can see whether the messages are appealing to the consumers
• Online campaigns allows immediate results and response, where customers can get information immediately and personally

Disadvantages/limitations:

• Requires a lot of planning and careful execution (determining strategy and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns)
• Not all people can get the message as it requires them to use new technologies
• Some large complicated web sites causes low speed internet connections, which is hard for consumers to download information
• Inability for customers to touch, smell, taste or try the product before they purchases it online (but they usually have return policies and in store pick up)
• Security concerns, where many consumers have doubts about buying products over the internet as they done trust their personal information will remain private, and also doubt that it might be a fraud website. Consumers also concerns about whether they will receive what they have purchased