The term “Internet marketing” gets thrown around quite a bit today. But what does it really mean? Before you hire an Internet marketing consultant to assist you it is a good idea to gain a better understanding of the field and how it applies to your business.

Internet marketing is easily divided into the following broad categories.  Some insight into each will provide you a broad overview of each discipline and help you determine what might be most valuable for your business.

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Search Engine Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Inbound Marketing
  • Referral Marketing
  • Display Advertising
  • Email Marketing
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Video Marketing

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to using the acronym SEO, involves directly improving the content of your website to increase the visibility of your website in the organic search engine results.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing differs from SEO efforts in that this form of marketing typically seeks to promote your website and increase visibility through the use of paid advertising, paid inclusion, or contextual advertising.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing involves promotion of your brand or business through social media channels such as, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin just to mention a few.  It involves not only the creation of these channels but the ongoing management of them to maximize engagement with your consumer.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing crosses over into many of these other categories.  It is the act of creating engaging, useful content throughout all of your channels that attracts and creates a relationship with your prospects.  Instead of feeling “spammed” your prospects realize that real value has been exchanged and they are better off for it.

Referral Marketing

Referral Marketing focuses on what many times proves to be the most value of all marketing efforts – word of mouth.  It is important to provide the tools and channels that make it easy for this to take place, and then encourage and even reward their use.

Display Advertising

Display Advertising is the act of purchasing paid advertising banners on other websites and blogs to drive traffic to your website and create product or brand awareness.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing involves the use of email as a mass communications tool to connect with your customers or prospects.  Doing this well has rich rewards, doing this the wrong way can create a situation where your entire digital outreach effort suffers.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the use of a system of incentives to reward one that provides prospects, leads, or sales.  The vast majority of these relationships center around ecommerce.

Video Marketing

Video Marketing involves the use of video to engage your prospects.  The use of Internet video is rapidly on the rise by consumers. You can leverage this to provide your prospect insight into your products, services, or process in an engaging and entertaining medium. Many businesses are fearful of the high production costs, but some of the most effective video campaigns are the ones without large production budgets and that speak in an authentic voice.

Need Help?

Calvert Design Group has been providing Southern Maryland Internet Marketing services for 10 years.  We have watched the industry grow and change.  A large part of our job is to stay on top of “what’s next” and keep our clients out in front, not playing catch up with the competition.