The philosophy of Internet Marketing is to make money online. No duh! Right?

The philosophy of internet marketing is to make money online. I bet you didn’t see that one coming! But wanting to make money online doesn’t pay the rent. You have to understand the logic and theory behind internet marketing first.

As the world has moves more and more towards a lifestyle dominated by a web presence, the need for internet marketing has become increasingly more important.  Hence, it is increasingly more important to understand the philosophy of internet marketing.

The reasoning is simple. As more and more business look towards the internet for business solutions, a strong web presence is needed to compete for customers. If your business depends on web-based shoppers or referrals, your website must be found. Without a strong intenet marketing philosophy, your presence on the web will be inconsequential, and your business will suffer as a result.

So what is the philosophy of internet marketing? In a nutshell, the driving theory is likened to the location factor of traditional brick and mortar businesses. A traditional business with a good location is more likely to succeed as opposed to one that is hidden and out of consumer’s view. In other words, out of sight means out of mind. Strong web marketing strategies keep your website in front of your competitors, and hence in front of the consumers.

Before we move on, I’d like to point out that many of you have been made to think that all you have to do is put up a web site and the world with beat a path to your door. This couldn’t be any further from the truth. Web marketing is no less work that marketing in any other arena. It is hard work, make no mistake about it!

Two key components drive internet marketing philosophy.

Increased visibility and increased conversion rates.  Basically these two concepts are the key focus of web marketing.  By increasing your visibility, better known as ‘traffic’, you increase your sales through the sheer volume of consumers that are exposed to your product.  This is more of a shot-gun approach to marketing.  Theoretically, out of ‘X’ number of people, ‘X’ amount of people will want what you are selling.  So if you increase the amount of people that see your product, you will sell more.

Increasing your conversion rate is simply increasing the number of sales derived from a set number of visitors.  For example, increasing your conversion rate from 1% to  2% means instead of one in a hundred people buying your product, two will.  A one percent increase in your conversion rate will significantly impact your business.

Scenario A:  To help present the idea, let’s assume you own a clothing store and you’ve just received a shipment of twenty black designer sweaters for women. You know, from past performance and research that you typically sell one sweater to every 100 women that come into your store (1% conversion rate). So, if you want to sell all twenty sweaters this month, you will need to attract 2000 women to your store in order to accomplish this.  In order to do this, let’s assume you decide to start a marketing campaign.  You take out an ad in the local paper, and send out fliers to your customer list.   This increased visibility succeeds, and 2000 women make their way into your store.  You sell your stock of 20 sweaters and turn a profit.

Scenario B:  What if you can’t get 2000 women into your store?  As any business owner knows, getting people to visit your business can prove to be very difficult.  Another avenue that you could pursue, is increasing your conversion rate.  If you could increase your conversion rate to 2%, you would only need 1000 women to sell the twenty sweaters.  So, considering this, you move the sweater rack to the front of the store so they are visible as soon as customers walk in.  You also place one sweater on a manequin in the store front window with a sign announcing your new shipment.  With these small changes, you effectively increase your conversion rate.  You sell your stock of 20 sweaters and turn a profit.

Imagine what would happen if you combine both strategies?  You’d need to stock more sweaters! Now that’s a situation I’d like to be in!

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Having a basic understanding of the philosophy of internet marketing, one needs to understand that there are different types of internet marketers, and many different internet marketing methods. In my next post, I am going to describe the different types of internet marketers.