Internet marketing worth it? What entrepreneurs need to understand
Since the dot com era many companies have managed to use the internet as a means of reaching global audiences at the click of a button. Whether it is tech companies, translation agencies or video production companies, the phenomenon of the internet has enable companies both small and multi-national to boost sales of their products and services by reaching global audiences.
Many of today’s international companies such as eBay were founded by entrepreneurs from their bedrooms. Some successful entrepreneurs like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore started writing blogs as a hobby and did not foresee the success Mashable has translated to date within the social media industry from its humble beginnings, however one thing that stands out and that is common by all such companies or entrepreneurs is their ability to use internet marketing in order to generate sales.
Online marketing has been a growing industry for many years now with expertise earning substantial amounts of money for services such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which involves activities such as link building, directory submission, article writing and social media to name a few. SEO can now also be studied at higher education level in some countries. Over the years this field has grown extensively and pretty much anyone can do this type of marketing by simply learning the basics through published books and online forums. With that has come numerous bad practices in online marketing most notably in the form of spammers. Many are spamming blogs and forums with unnecessary links in the hope to generate traffic. The question is does this pay off?
In the short term maybe! You may boost your companies’ visibility in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, but for companies with a long term focus, such practices must be avoided. Investing in a good online marketing strategy is what will give companies longevity in search engines and allows the company to be seen as a credible source by its users which will enable the company website to rank even higher on major search engines and provide a competitive edge. This is also where good budgeting comes into effect. As a fundamental rule of marketing strategy it is better to be both effective as well as efficient. Being effective means you have a good strong product or core service to offer whereas being efficient means you have the right team to sell and market your product. Both need to be present in order to achieve optimum success.
With over one billion search queries per day for products and services on Google alone, it is vital that in this day businesses appear in such search engine results. This is a must as this is a major source of traffic to your website. As any online marketing manager will tell you, doing so will ultimately lead to higher revenues.
Internet Marketing VS Traditional marketing
One thing to understand is that internet marketing does not and should not work in isolation. The traditional styles of marketing such as face-to-face or business to business marketing are still valuable in this day in age as they allow companies to have a personalised touch to their service. Having these key principles of marketing work alongside online/internet marketing will lead to positive financial results for your company which proves the value of internet or online marketing as a valuable contribution to business.
Translation agencies around the world have clearly taken advantage of this. By simply typing a keyword such as Slovak translation services or German translation services through Google you will find millions of results to choose from. From this it is usually the top 5 companies appearing in the search results of these particular keywords that will gain the most business from this; another clear example of the value and influence of online marketing and SEO.
Undeniably internet marketing is a competitive industry but is not something that should be vaguely overlooked by companies. Today over 95% of the most successful companies in the world poses a website; however it is only the businesses that effectively uses internet marketing that pull the most traffic to their sites and so make the most revenues.
