The Most Important Part of Internet Marketing

When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers – as we do – and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

While there are many more aspects to internet marketing than just permission-based email marketing, email has definitely been the cornerstone on which our business is built.

Related Reading:

The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers DirectlyDavid Meerman Scotts marketing bible has become a modern day business classic.

This is the book every ambitious, forward-thinking, progressive marketer or publicist has at the front of their shelf. Business communication has changed over the recent years. Creative ad copy is no longer enough. The New Rules of Marketing and PR has brought thousands of marketers up to speed on the changing requirements of promoting products or services in the new digital age. This is a one-of-a-kind, pioneering guide, offering a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the Internet to communicate with buyers directly, raise online visibility, and increase sales. Its about getting the right message to the right people at the right time - for a fraction of the cost of a big-budget advertising campaign. This new, updated edition includes:

A new introduction discussing recent changes to the world of marketing and PR
A brand new chapter on mobile marketing
An additional chapter on real-time marketing and PR
Updated information on how to measure the success of your campaigns
A range of new tools
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The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd EditionA completely revised and updated edition of the BusinessWeek bestseller on effective, modern marketing and PR best practices, The New Rules of Marketing and PR shows you how to leverage the potential that Web-based communication offers your business. Finally, you can speak directly to customers and buyers, establishing a personal link with the people who make your business work.

This new second edition paperback keeps you up-to-date on the latest trends.

New case studies and current examples are included to illustrate the very latest in marketing and PR trends.
Completely updated to reflect the latest marketing and PR techniques using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube
Includes a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the Internet to communicate directly with buyers, increase sales, and raise online visibility
David Meerman Scott is a renowned online marketing strategist, keynote speaker and the author of World Wide Rave, from Wiley

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Second Edition gives you all the information you need to craft powerful and effective marketing messages and get them to the right people at the right moment-at a fraction of the price of a traditional marketing campaign.

A Lean Marketing Revolution: The Timeless-Know How PrinciplesFor decades, someone breaking into business had a tough time learning the secrets to marketing. The only solution was a study of numerous books containing hundreds of mind-numbing pages.

Say "goodbye" to those days!

Now available is a short, easy to read, condensed version of the key principles of marketing, writen as, "A Lean Marketing Revolution."

A Lean Marketing Revolution, condense hundreds of pages of current text on marketing into a more easily understood format.

The result is a dynamic and exciting 46 page booklet which gets to the point rather quickly to drive immediate results, which is quite revolutionary.

A Lean Marketing Revolution was released on July 19, 2011. The booklet topped the bestsellers lists in Amazon’s Kindle division for eBooks in the first two weeks of release, quickly reaching the following ratings: number one (#1) as a bestseller in multilevel Marketing; number twenty-four (#24) as a bestseller in Advertising, number thirty-six (#36) in Marketing; number seven (#7) as a bestseller in Business Development; and, finally, number one (#1) as the hot new bestseller in Advertising, Marketing, and Business.

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