Internet Marketing UK

The global nature of the internet and it’s interactive nature have ensured that internet marketing has become the fastest growing mechanism to connect products and services to customers wishing to purchase or simply find out more before they purchase physically anything from grub screws to second hand jet aircraft.

The interactive and instant ability to provide information and elicit response or action  on a worldwide basis is a unique quality of the medium. This,combined with the ability to integrate online activity with customer data and relationship management (CRM) systems offers advantages way beyond traditional marketing, sales and customer service models with interactions and transactions managed and tracked in real time.

Today, it’s commonplace to have an online, interactive video ad for a new car launch, with free online competition linked through to a registration page collecting competition entries. This in turn feeds the company’s CRM system and generates sales leads for the local telesales staff to follow up and convert leads to sales. All interactions, including site visitors who do not interact with the ad, are measured by action, by time, by geography – very powerful indeed if used properly.

In turn, this has called for a deeper understanding, by marketing professionals, of the nature of both the internet AND company systems, to ensure that strategic and indeed tactical advice is up to date and effective. Equally, a detailed understanding of the online paid advertising, placement and affiliate models is required as well as search engine and social media expertise to complete the internet marketing portfolio of required skills.

One of the key advantages of internet marketing is that it is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost versus reach for the target audience. Reaching a wide yet targeted audience for a fraction of a traditional marketing budget, with online sales and automated CRM and fullfillment systems, the return on investment(ROI) for and internet marketing campaign can be very high indeed, if it is well executed.

Equally, given the relatively low cost, customer interest can be provoked via a campaign simply to collect information to inform sales, marketing or customer service strategies for the future.

Given the fact that all aspects of an internet marketing campaign can be measured and tracked, A-B testing (very expensive or impossible  for traditional media methods) becomes quite a simple process.

Building a social media component into an online presence can further develop a ‘personal’ relationship between brand and consumer to such an extent that potential customers can even become an integral part of the product design process.(Warning: getting this wrong can be disastrous for business if not managed properly!)

Whilst a wider range of knowledge beyond traditional marketing is required to navigate the internet marketing ocean, the rewards can be substantial with an ability to implement, monitor and adjust a campaign which simply cannot be replicated in other mediums.