Internet Marketing

As the society becomes more and more dependent on the Internet, e-commerce is also rapidly developing, and has grown into a huge industry. One of the components of e-commerce is Internet marketing, or online marketing. Internet marketing strategies include using all aspects of the Internet, and Internet related subculture, to advertise and encourage response from a targeted audience. Internet marketing employs ingenious approaches that is very much tied to the contemporary youth culture, and often involves creative use of technology.

Some aspects of Internet marketing include information technology, customer service, public relations, advertisement, and generation of sales. Since Internet access has become widely available, one important advantage of Internet marketing is that potential customers can access the information and make purchases from anywhere, at any time. The convenience of making purchases from the comfort of their own homes is a definite attraction from the users' perspective, since they have complete control. The availability of information, and how rapidly information can be transferred around the world, is a great feature of Internet marketing.

Another reason to favor Internet marketing is the cost-effectiveness. It is a much cheaper way to expand a local business into the national or international markets online, since the Internet has no boundaries. As well, many Internet marketing techniques rely on the spontaneous transfer of information by the users; viral marketing is a good example, and it is a much, much cheaper way to increase brand awareness compared to traditional approaches.

While Internet marketing is not without its limitation, this particular medium remains relatively unsaturated and new, innovative approaches are being developed all the time. Most notably, since all the statistics on a website including total number of visitors, visitors who performed certain searches, visitors who favored a certain product, etc. can all be tracked, it is much easier to quantify the success rate of Internet marketing strategies than traditional marketing methods. All in all, the rapid growth of online marketing has the potential of transforming the industries, helping them to better serve their customers, and also help the customers to make better choices about their purchases.