In simple words, internet marketing is basically the process of promoting anything, such as products, services or your own brand, over the internet. Advertisements, development, design, sales, etc., all come under the category of internet marketing, also known as online marketing.

Internet marketing is very important and highly important due to the fact that millions of people around the world use the World Wide Web to interact with each other from across the oceans, which makes it the most ideal market for the promotion of anything since it provides a huge platform with millions of people to serve as an audience.

Categories of Internet Marketing

• Search Engine Optimization: Keyword research, link building, social media marketing and keyword placement all come under SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO uses the free method of promoting content on search engine results page.
• Search Engine Marketing: Contrary to SEOs, Search Engine Marketing is the process of marketing and promoting businesses and brands by paying for advertisements to appear on SERPs. Contextual advertising, paid placement and inclusion all come under this form of marketing.
• Social Media Marketing: Using social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc., to promote a website or brand.
• Affiliate marketing: Businesses pay blogs, online retailers or e-commerce site for the number of traffic that the website generate which increases the visitors for the brand, or the amount of sales that websites have made for their brand.
• Email Marketing: In this type, emails are sent out to customers to spread the news of your brand, product or the services.
• Display Advertisement: Product awareness is the name of the game with display advertisement. Ad banners are displayed on blogs and numerous websites to attract more traffic for the content.
• Inbound Marketing: Marketers share worthy content on business blogs or websites, for free, in order to convince the target market to become loyal customers.

The best part about using internet marketing for the promotion of your brand, product or service, is that not only does it give you a huge platform full of an audience of millions, but it is also very easy to keep track of and measure the efficiency of your campaign using cost-volume-profit analysis tools and web analytics.

It is also a much cheaper form of promotion as compared to other means of promotions, such as billboards, banners, distributing free samples etc., due to the fact that it does not require you to spend a lot of money.

However, marketing of any type, if not done correctly, can backfire. The best way to go about this would be to understand that you need to promote your product in a way that it doesn’t become an annoyance to the audience, and doesn’t get the stamp of being a spam.

Most promoters make the mistake of trying to shove their product or service, down people’s throats with annoying pop-ups and unnecessary multiple emails a day. To avoid making any mistakes while promoting and selling your brand efficiently, it is required that you learn and understand the many aspects of internet marketing.