Internet Marketing information

Internet marketing is also known as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, and is the marketing of products or services using the Internet.

The Internet has added many unique sales benefits to marketing, one of which is lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a truly worldwide audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, offering instant response and encouraging rapid responses, is unique to the medium.

Internet marketing is often considered to have a wider scope than traditional marketing because it includes digital media such as the Internet, email, web banner advertising etc. However, Internet marketing also includes gathering digital customer data and developing customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Internet marketing brings together many of the creative and technical elements of the Internet, including design, development, visual creativity, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing does not simply cover building or promoting a website, nor does it simply mean placing a banner advertisement on a website.

Effective Internet marketing requires a comprehensive integrated marketing strategy that emphasises a company's business targets and sales goals with its website usage and appearance, focusing on its chosen target markets through the considered choice of advertising options, media, and design.

Internet marketing also means the carefully considered placement of media during the different stages of the customer engagement cycle, using methods such as search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimisation (SEO), banner advertising, email marketing, and web strategies. 

Customer focus

Very many companies today have a customer focus, otherwise known as market orientation. These phrases imply that the company focuses ll of its activities and products on consumer demand. There is the customer-driven approach, the market-change approach and the product innovation approach.

With the consumer-driven approach, the consumer wants brcome the strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is developed until it undergoes consumer research. Each aspect of a product, including the nature of the product itself, is affected by the needs of consumers. The starting point is the consumer. The reason for this approach is that it's pointless spending R&D budget developing products that people will never buy. Looking at the past, many products were commercial failures despite being technology breakthroughs.

The formal approach to customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA (Solution, Information, Value, Access). The SIVA system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded with a customer focus.

Using the SIVA Model generates a demand or customer-centric alternative to the traditional 4Ps model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing.

Product → Solution
Promotion → Information
Price → Value
Place → Access

The revised four elements of the SIVA model are:

Solution: is the solution appropriate to the customer's need?

Information: is the customer aware of the solution? and do they know enough to make a buying decision?

Value: does the customer know what it will cost, the benefits and their reward?

Access: Where can the customer purchase the solution? and how easily can they buy it and get delivery?

The SIVA model was originally proposed by Chekitan Dev and Don Schultz in the press, the Marketing Management Journal of the American Marketing Association. It was then presented in Market Leader, the journal of the Marketing Society published in the UK. In essence, the model focuses on the customer and how they, the prospect view the potential transaction.