Glossary > Internet Marketing

Internet marketing can be defined as the process of promoting a product or service, online on the Internet. It’s also referred as web-marketing, online marketing and sometimes eMarketing.

Over the last 2 decades, Internet has evolved as a great medium of distributing and sharing information online to the global audience. It has the distinctive feature of being economical, fast and very efficient at the same time. The scope of Internet marketing is not limited to just emails, paid-advertising and website design, Internet marketing also constitutes search engine optimization, search engine marketing, web 2.0 strategies and customer relation management (CRM) systems.

Various business models, Internet marketing is associated with are listed below:

Production model - This kind of model, a business generates capital by transforming one good or service into something other more useable for the online market.

E-commerce - This is a company which organizes online delivery of products and services for the online market. Products and services are directly sold to the consumers. Online book stores, retail stores, gift stores and all kind of online catalogs can be example of this model.

Advertising - In this type of model, a company provides its promotional services to other companies and generates sales leads via online marketing. A sales lead can be defined as a prospective customer who is potentially willing to pay for a product or service. In marketing terminology it’s called the first stage of a sales process.

Affiliate model - This is much similar to advertising model, but it differs by employing relatively large number of individual lead generating sources, which could be individuals as well as other small companies.

Information model - Online businesses based on this model, mainly provide information about some specific field or niche market. They could be governed by some government/educational body, non-profit organizations or sometimes individuals as well. They primarily help other businesses in their area of specialization.

Based on the customized needs on an individual or business there can be Internet marketing models such as brokerage model, subscription model and Utility model etc. With the advent of new online marketing models, Internet marketing is becoming a booming industry.