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Marketing and Selling
on the
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Marketing and Selling on the
Internet
Marketing on the Internet involves online
advertising to reach out to potential customers. It requires
creativity like designing, development and technical aspects
like marketing and advertising. Affiliate marketing, email
marketing, search engine marketing and interactive advertising
are all different facets of Internet marketing. It also
includes sales, public relations, information management and
customer service. Ever since the advent of Internet, it is
widely used for all kind of purposes. Among the advantages of
Internet, some helps in doing business, shopping, etc, from
the comfort of the house. According to a research, a quarter
of the Internet users shop online. It has also helped grow
electronic commerce and Internet marketing is a part of
electronic commerce.
Direct marketing techniques like radio
and television commercials, mails, and newsletters are the
inspirations for Internet marketing, which involves direct
response marketing strategies and is rapidly growing.
Business-to-business, also known as B2B, and
business-to-consumer, also known as B2C, are the two business
models to which Internet marketing can be linked. B2C
companies were the first to start when Internet marketing
originated. They are companies that sell directly to the
customers. B2B companies are meant to do business with each
other.
Websites built for Internet marketing are
slightly different than others. There are peer-to-peer modeled
websites which are used to exchange products and services
between each other. Other is name-your-price, where the
customers have to specify their price range that they can
spend and select products that fall in that price range.
Priceline.com is an example of such a website. Amazon.com is a
website which is based on find-the-best-price model, where
customers can find the lowest prices. Last are online auctions
sites, where items are bid. Ebay.com is an example.
The companies who use Internet marketing
are at an advantage. They don’t need to put in huge amounts of
energy and time in Internet Marketing like other traditional
methods. With the help of only few resources national and
international markets can be reached. Because of very low
investment, even small businesses are turning to online
marketing. Websites and blogs have been developed for this
purpose. Internet marketing is advantageous in the sense that
the data is easily available on the Internet. Newsletters can
be directly sent to customers and if it doesn’t contain the
information they are looking for, they can search for
information about the product online, make a decision and
purchase it online itself.
One of the factors that hinder the growth
of online marketing is delayed loading of the page. The web
pages that take a lot of time to download test the patience of
the consumer. To add to that, if the businesses design complex
web pages with lots of graphics and animations, it will slow
down the speed even more. Another minus point of online
marketing is that the customers cannot feel, taste, smell or
try products in order to make a good decision. To over come
this, some of the online stores have created liberal return
policies with the help of which the customer satisfaction is
guaranteed.
Another biggest threat of online shopping
is identity theft. Paying online using credit cards, e-checks
are susceptible to hackers and information can be stolen and
used. Many hackers and websites have been caught who were
involved in buying and selling of personal information. Most
of the websites have taken measures and incorporated good
security on their websites. One of the best methods is
encryption. When the data is being transferred between two
computers; there is a possibility of a hacker intercepting it.
So the data is changed by applying some encryption algorithm
and is sent through the network and upon receiving, the
decryption algorithm is applied to bring back the data to its
original form.
Online selling is influencing all kinds
of businesses like banking, advertising, music, etc. Instead
of going to a store for buying cassettes and CDs, music can be
bought online. Bank transactions like depositing, withdrawing,
transferring funds, and paying bills are all performed online.
Billions of dollars are invested every year in online
advertising alone.
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