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With total global internet users estimated at 1320 million by 2007 year end with growth rate in
excess of 265% between 2000 and 2007, internet has become a powerful medium for communications. India boasts of 42 million users with the growth pegged at 28%. Increasing e-commerce has opened up new gates for the companies to target their potential customers through internet marketing. Currently standing at $36 billion, internet marketing is expected to grow at 69% over the next three years. Touted as fastest growing media, internet will overtake magazine marketing by 2010 and is expected to acquire 11.5% of total ad spends by the same year. In 2006, e-commerce turnover hit $12.8 trillion, taking up 18% in global trade of commodities. With such robust growth rates in e-commerce, internet marketing is bound to take off in a big way. The figure for India stands at 9000 crore with annual growth rate of 30%.According to TNS media Intelligence Reports, Internet display advertising posted a 16.7 percent increase to $2.70 billion, as marketers continued to expand their online programs in US. The table has been reproduced below. 

As clearly visible from the table, internet marketing has seen a robust growth rate in the past and is set to take a sizeable share in the whole pie. Talking about global scenario, according to ZenithOptimedia report, internet advertising is worth $36 billion in 2007 and is expected to grow by 28% in 2008 and 69% over the next three years. For India, the figure currently stands 500 crores and set to explode.

Conclusion

With growing penetration rate across continents coupled with ever increasing per capita time spent on the internet, it becomes a perfect medium for informing potential customers about products and services. Rapid growth in internet marketing is a testimony to this fact. The companies would have to integrate internet marketing in their marketing ecosystem if they want to keep afloat in this ever changing dynamic market. In future, as more and more businesses would go online, internet marketing would take over conventional marketing and would have a major chunk of the whole pie and hence presents an opportunity which needs to be tapped timely.

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When everybody talks so much about Internet Marketing, it often leads to one thing : a confused state of mind! This is a first hand experience of mine. Try explaining to somebody who hasn’t heard of it before, and doesn’t have any clue about it. Chances are he would end up thinking of you as ‘people who sell products on web’. NO. Internet marketers do not sell products or do not perform any e-commerce activities. They also do not build websites for physical businesses to sell stuff on web.

They help business to sell on internet. Internet marketing is both an art and science. There is really no difference between marketing in general in the real world and marketing on internet, just the medium changes. Internet marketing is all about developing strategies for businesses on internet (though not only for businesses) to increase their visibility, bring customers to their websites and help them increase sales.

To help them do this, internet marketers have an arsenal of tools and techniques at their disposal (this is where you hear all the jargon like Link Building, SEO, and Directory Submissions etc.). But frankly, if you are a business owner you should not be concerned about the technology part and focus on your core product or service and leave this to the internet marketing guys (until and unless you have time on your hands and you are really interested in it).

So next time somebody who sells products on internet and claims to be doing internet marketing, you know what to tell him!

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Internet marketing is nothing but your normal marketing, just the medium happens to be internet. People don’t understand the concept clearly but when explained in business terms, they find it really simple. So basically what is internet marketing?

Every business needs to do some sort of marketing to generate revenues. With the changing times, when more and more businesses are going for having web presence, it becomes important for firms not to consider it a one time standalone activity. They fail to realize the benefits which online presence could provide to their businesses. And doing marketing over internet( which happens to be just another medium) can certainly makes their task very easy.

One parallel which could be drawn from real world marketing and taken over to internet marketing is “word of mouth” which in internet jargon is known as “Viral Marketing”.

There are many more such parallels which could be drawn between both the worlds. Basically whatever be the medium( internet or no internet), the marketing fundamentals don’t change

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