Simple Way To Understand Internet Marketing

Internet marketing overview

I don't want to spend too long introducing all the different terms and concepts
involved in the field of Internet marketing. I am a firm believer in jumping in and
learning to swim—which is why this post is short, sweet, and packed with useful
stuff that you can use in the real world.

With that said, it is important that you are at least familiar with the major terms,
concepts, and processes I am going to use; and it won't hurt to give you a
bird's-eye view of the how, why, what, where, and when of marketing online.
You don't need to be a marketing pro to benefit from the straight forward
process contained in this book.
The following steps are the overall process we are going to follow:
1. Define business objectives
2. Identify target audience
3. Create content
4. Drive traffic
5. Convert traffic (monetize)
6. Analyze
7. Refine
8. Repeat

This post is going to define and explain all the terms used in this list and place
them within the context of the Internet and Internet marketing. We will also cover
the first two steps here as these are really pre-marketing preparatory steps; in other
words, things you need to know before you start marketing at all.

Understanding Internet marketing

The following diagram represents a blog or website within the context of the Internet
from a marketing perspective:

The top layer of this diagram represents the market or audience—all the people out

there surfing the web. Note that this mass of people can be broken up into niches,

represented by the boxes contained within the overall Market/Audience. A niche

can be defined as a specific interest group. For example, some people want to learn

about pottery, some enjoy astrophysics.

The diagram has been simplified to show how niche interest groups use search

engines and social networks to find the content they are after. Of course, they might

well go directly to their favorite forum or niche website without using a search

engine, but a large proportion of all traffic goes through search engines and social

networks, so this serves as a good model.

Note that different parts of this diagram are related by arrows. In this instance, an

arrow represents traffic. Traffic is the term used to describe a flow of visitors. Some

arrows are one way, indicating that traffic flows from one segment to the other. For

example, the arrow between the search engines and your blog is denoted as one way,

indicating that traffic comes from the search engines to your site, but not the other

way. Two-way arrows mean that traffic, in general, passes either way.

By looking at the web of different arrows, you can see that your site or blog needs
to integrate itself into the fabric of the Internet. In order to effectively market a blog,
you need to make connections, share content, offer opinions, comment on other
people's content, and so on. All of this helps to add links to and from other blogs,
forums, social networks, and so on. This growing network of links is what starts
traffic flowing through your site.

Like any system, there has to be a driving force that keeps the traffic flowing. Our
cars need petrol to keep moving, plants need energy from the sun to keep growing,
and so on. The fuel that drives traffic on the Internet is content. When I talk about
"content", I mean anything and everything from the written word to a YouTube
video, PPC ad, audio file, podcast, and just about anything and everything that
humans can interact with in someway.

That is important! Content is what drives traffic.