This is the first post in my series titled “What the bleep” which stems from the motto of this site.

What the ‘bleep’ is Internet Marketing?

When you think of Internet Marketing what do you think of? I know when I first started out all I could say was, ‘What the BLEEP are you talking about?’ Most people think Internet Marketing is simply having a website and placing a banner or two on the site. The term ‘Internet marketing program’ has become so popular and overused it’s sick. How many times do you read or hear claims that you can make a fortune online with our ‘Internet Marketing Program’?

Basically, Internet marketing is made up of three very distinct pieces. The first form of Internet Marketing is communicating your message about your product and services via the Internet. Secondly, selling your product, ads, services, etc over the Web. And thirdly, conducting research about your market, customers and competitors via the Internet. With the constant growth of technology, Internet Marketing is turning into a necessary piece of any companies marketing plans. Using these Internet Marketing techniques properly can mean an increase in sales. And I’m not only talking to you ‘online websites’. Internet Marketing can be used by online companies AND offline companies.

By this time you should have a little better understanding of what Internet Marketing is. But now let’s dig a little deeper into what kinds of things make up an Internet Marketing portfolio.

• First and foremost is a website. Your website should have pertinent content, images and stay consistent with the company’s overall message. Images, video and audio are other things that may be used at times to enhance your website. Use your website to capture leads on future customers. User your site to sell products and services online. Often times a good website becomes the ‘face’ of a company and where people go to find information.
• The next huge piece is Email Marketing. Use email to send out information about your product/service. Solicit feedback from customers via email as well. Be careful in this arena as ‘email spam’ has become quite a problem these days. Make sure you have permission to email each and every person you do use Email Marketing on. You can start collecting emails via opt-in or you can purchase email lists as well. Email Marketing is a key part of the Internet Marketing package.
• Google - Yahoo - MSN… You will find that becoming ‘friends’ with these search engines will be a key to your success. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the term used to do marketing via the search engines. This can be done in two ways 1) Improving your site’s natural (organic) ranking through search engine optimization (SEO) OR 2) You can buy pay-per-click (PPC) ads with search engines. The quicker you learn how to work well with the major search engines - the quicker you can say you know what Internet Marketing is.
• Other things that are important are press release distribution, blogging, participating in forums, networking with others in the industry, and so on.

Some of you regulars in the industry will read this and say, ‘DUH’. But if you are a newbie to Internet Marketing you very well could be sitting there saying, ‘What the BLEEP is Internet Marketing.’ Well - now you should know!