We hear the term Internet marketing tossed around all over the Net and often it's used incorrectly. By definition Internet marketing is promoting something online. This includes promoting products, services, brands or even yourself as a blogger.

Sounds simple enough right?

Well truth be told it's not as simple as it might sound. Internet marketing merges two of the most important aspects of marketing together - the technical and the creative. That means advertising, development, design, and sales are all one.

Not so simple any more right?

The internet really became popular back in the early 90's. Since then as you know, its popularity has grown immensely. Back in 1998 the average number of searches per day was just under 10,000. Fast forward almost 20 years and that number has skyrocketed to well over 1 trillion per year. That alone should tell you how popular internet marketing is. It should also tell you how profitable it can be. In fact, as compared with traditional offline forms of advertising, such as television, newspapers and magazines, the Internet offers significant advantages, such as: Global reach Instantaneous mode of conveying marketing messages Cost effectiveness and a high ROI (return on investment) In 2011 Internet marketing revenues surpassed cable television and came close to beating those seen in broadcast television commercials. 2014 saw historic increases in online marketing revenue with an 18% rise from 2013 and almost double that from 2012. But who really cares about numbers, the proof is in the fact that today people head straight to the search engines when looking for information about a product or service, so it is important that any business, both online and offline have an online presence.

Methods Of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing works by using several different strategies that all work together to help you drive traffic, increase conversions, and make sales. There are various methods that fall under the umbrella of Internet marketing, all with their own specific designs, end goals and strategies. Smart marketers implement more than one method, and the successful marketers use pretty much all of them in order to appropriately diversify their marketing plans to achieve the desired results and engage the highest amount of leads that can be converted into customers. Each of these strategies works to help boost the online visibility of your business. Email Marketing Social Media Marketing Video Marketing Display Advertising Mobile Marketing Affiliate Marketing Search Engine Marketing (Pay Per Click) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Top Rankings (SEO)

When you consider just how much new business is being conducted online every year you will understand how much competition there is out there for that coveted #1 spot in the search engine page results (SERPS) and especially Google since they are the most widely used search engine in the world. It is crucial that every business, be it local or national, have a strong online presence in search engines. When you have a spot on the first page of the major search engines it not only facilitates the highest possible level of organic traffic, but it can create a significant level of trust with consumers. They believe you are a reputable and a credible company all because you have the top spot. When you are able to build trust you will be able to make a lot of money through Internet marketing.

End Goals

The end goal of all Internet marketing strategies is to increase a brand or business's online visibility and to increase conversions of calls to actions. A call to action (CTA) is simply what you want your site visitors to do when they come to your website. This could be signing up for your mailing list, making a donation, making a purchase, filling out a form or buying a service. It is whatever you want the visitor to do. The key is to figure out which Internet marketing strategy will work best for your business. But I have a word of caution for you - Don't try to implement all the strategies at one time.This will never work. Start with one and add in others as you see success, otherwise you will overwhelm yourself which often leads to inaction.