Internet Marketing and its Tools

Definitions of Marketing and Internet Marketing
Definition of Marketing

Before defining internet marketing, let us say what actually is marketing. There are many definitions of marketing in the business world but most of them can be summarized as the following one: marketing is defined as a social and managerial process through which individuals and groups satisfy their needs and wishes in the process of production and trade of products and other values (Marketing; Kotler, Armstrong). Marketing consists of nonstop process of analyzing, planning, implementing and controlling and its significance is in creating and maintaining the long-term relations with the target customers. It plays important role in achieving set strategic goals and fulfilling the company’s mission (Marketing; Kotler, Armstrong 2004). Marketing as a whole has many aspects that can be studied but this work is going to concentrate especially on the internet marketing and its tools.

Internet Marketing
Internet marketing today is an inevitable part of the overall marketing strategy in companies from every industry – if it is a manufacturer, retail or a distributor – all of them need to communicate with customers or suppliers quickly, effectively and with minimal costs. These issues are fully solved by the internet marketing. It almost completely replaces some old ways of communication and significantly helps out other.

Formally, the internet marketing creates strategies and techniques applied on the Internet to support the organization's overall online marketing objectives. Goals may include driving targeted traffic to a website and features on the website to create a desired response from the customers. Internet marketing may include keyword strategies in different search engines, newsletters, banner advertising, reciprocal links, online promotions, content positioning, online image development, email strategies and other interactive features. Internet marketing uses many different tools to achieve goals set by marketing strategies. They will be described in detail later in this text. At first let us take a look at the internet marketing as a part of the e-business and its advantages in the business processes.

Marketing in the era of Internet
Doing business in the internet era requires a new model of a marketing strategy and the real life application. Some analysts says: “Internet causes radical change in thinking when creating relations between suppliers and customers, in creating values for them, in being able to achieve profits; in other words, it causes a radical change in marketing”, (Allan Mitchell, Marketing Week). The other predicts that once all the purchases and sales will include a direct electronic connection between companies and their customers. The new model will fundamentally change the way how customers think of convenience, speed, price, information about a product or service. This new thinking will influence every type of business. But the truth is that the internet marketing was doing just the first baby steps in past years, but with no doubt will have a huge influence on future marketing strategies.