Internet Marketing and Sales

Marketing on the Internet requires online advertising to reach out to probable customers.
It involves ingenuity like designing, development and technical aspects like marketing and
advertising. Affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing and interactive
advertising are all different aspects of Internet marketing. It also includes sales, public
relations, information management and customer service. Ever since the emergence of the
Internet, it is has evolved to be widely used for all kind of purposes. Among the advantages
of Internet, that it helps in doing business, shopping and so much more from the comfort of
home. According to a research, a quarter of the Internet users shop online. It has also helped
to grow electronic commerce and Internet marketing is a part of electronic commerce. 

Direct marketing techniques like radio and television commercials, mails, and newsletters are
the inspirations for Internet marketing, which involves direct response marketing strategies and
is rapidly growing. Business-to-business, also known as B2B, and business-to-consumer, also
known as B2C, are the two business models to which Internet marketing can be linked. B2C
companies were the first to develop and devise Internet marketing strategies. They are
companies that sell directly to the customers. B2B companies are meant to do business
with each other.

Websites built for Internet marketing are slightly dissimilar than others. There are peer-to-peer
modeled websites which are used to interchange products and services between each other.
Another is name-your-price, where the customers have to specify their price range that they can
spend and select products that fall in that price range. Priceline.com is an example of such a
website. Amazon.com is a website which is based on find-the-best-price model, where customers
can find the lowest prices. Last are online auctions sites, where items are bid upon, for which
Ebay.com is an example. 

The companies who use Internet marketing are at an advantage. They do not need to put in huge
amounts of energy and time in Internet Marketing like other traditional methods. With the help of only
few resources national and international markets can be reached. Because of very low investment,
even small businesses are turning to online marketing. Websites and blogs have been developed
for this purpose. Internet marketing is advantageous in the sense that the data is easily available on
the Internet. Newsletters can be directly sent to customers and if it doesn�t contain the information
they are looking for, they can search for information about the product online, make a decision and
purchase it online itself.  

One of the factors that hinder the growth of online marketing is delayed loading of the page. The
web pages that take a lot of time to download test the patience of the consumer. To add to that, if the
businesses design complex web pages with lots of graphics and animations, it will slow down the
speed even more. Another minus point of online marketing is that the customers cannot feel, taste,
smell or try products in order to make a good decision. To help resolve this, some of the online stores
have created liberal return policies with the help of which the customer satisfaction is guaranteed.

Another hazard of online shopping is identity theft. Paying online using credit cards, e-checks are
susceptible to hackers and information can be stolen and used. Many hackers and websites have
been caught who were involved in buying and selling of personal information. Most of the websites
have taken measures and incorporated good security on their websites. One of the best methods is
encryption. When the data is being transferred between two computers; there is a possibility of a
hacker intercepting it. So the data is changed by applying some encryption algorithm and is sent
through the network and upon receiving, the decryption algorithm is applied and then �Bingo�,
it brings back the data in its original form.

Online selling is influencing all kinds of businesses such as banking, advertising, music, shopping
and includes more than I have space to list them all. Instead of going to a store for buying cassettes
and CDs, music can be bought online. Bank transactions like depositing, withdrawing, transferring
funds, and paying bills are all performed online. Billions of dollars are invested every year in online
advertising alone.  

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