Introduction
Internet marketing is also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, web marketing, or eMarketing which significantly signifies a business transaction and various marketing of products through the use of the internet. Marketing over the internet works together with the artistic and technical sense of the internet. These comprise web design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing does not just mean creating a website or placing advertisements on it though. Its efficiency needs a wide-ranging strategy that will synergize the business structure of a company and attain its objectives. Considerations such as website function, its appearance, and the way it attracts website visitors should be highlighted in the determination of its successful marketing strategy (Fisk et al., 2004).
Internet is seen to be one of the major innovations when it comes to marketing and it has brought a lot of advantages in the field. Having an interactive sense of internet marketing, can give immediate responses and extract those responses as a means of a unique distribution channel. Internet marketing is sometimes taken more largely because it points out to the digital media through internet, electronic mails and wireless form of media (Kotler, 2003). However, internet marketing also involves the systems wherein electronic relationship management is applied as well as the management of digital customer data. Moreover, web marketing may also mean placing a media of the different customer relations through search engines (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2004). Advertising over the internet directory is usually non-paid and links to the business’ website directly. Giving customers the information they want from a product, will be very convenient for them to scan the web pages and save time instead of picking up the phones to ask questions about the ad (Jones and Coviello, 2005). However, one indeed does not have to create a website to market products online, but it is more advisable to own one especially for larger firms to have more efficiency in their marketing deals.
Discussion
Internet marketing history began in the past decades though this seemed to be not broad and limited advertisements were only seen because of people’s unawareness of such trends. Advertising online started its consistent fame during the year 1994 and increased its worth to the industry up until 1997 and now (Jeyaraj et al., 2006). Web sites are developed for the companies in each industry with various kinds of products available for all kinds of consumers. And hence, other firms started to realize that a website should be backed up by many advertisements linked to other sites to create traffic among various sites that serve as their competitors (Houghton and Winklhofer, 2004; McFarland and Hamilton, 2006).
Looking forward with other competitors in a domestic and global sense, many firms have now emerged into the inclusion into the use of the internet in their marketing plans (McDermott and O’Connor, 2002). Just like for example the IBM Corporation and Microsoft Corporation, they are considered to be two of the most progressive technology company in the world but still, they set a lot of effort and spend millions of money for internet marketing. And this primarily applies to a business-to-business transaction. The developing technology on the internet such as Yahoo!, enabled small firms to upstart internet marketing through placing banner ads on the site and be able to promote the business. Yahoo! is just an example where various internet marketing can be visualized and its operation widely caters to the system and processes of internet marketing with its activities. This form of technology connects businesses worldwide and significantly impacts the process of selling industrial goods and services (Grandon and Pearson, 2005).
Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is not as expensive as marketing through print, TV, radio, and other forms of media. Cost can be minimized and time can be saved as well the marketer’s effort. A business-to-business transaction relatively needs this innovation to be able to promote a wide-ranging technique of communicating and selling goods and services through other business organizations (Fillis and Wagner, 2005). The nature of the medium tolerates consumers to acquire information about the product and buy products and services with no hassle. Hence, businesses get the advantage of attracting other firms to do business and bring apparent results. The impact may account for the efficiency of the business strategies and may attain the goals and manage its cost- volume- profit well.
Marketers also are seen to be advantageous through using the internet as their distribution channel and in evaluating statistics (BarNir et al., 2003). All areas of an internet marketing campaign can be managed and assessed properly. Advertisers as well can utilize different kinds of techniques such as pay per click, pay per play, and other similar terms that entail how a certain website gets compensated through the visits of other business firms and consumers (Bengston et al., 2007). In this technique, marketers can keep track of each product which businesses, in particular, are interested in. Such kind techniques can not be obtained from other kinds of media.
However, disadvantages most especially for a business-to-business transaction among marketers can cause internet marketing a way to build a non-personal relationship between buyers and sellers wherein an unsure deal may arise. This points out the gap in reality because internet marketing accounts for a process of non-personal selling. Though products and services can be seen and described over the website of a business, still it lacks the sense of touch and sometimes unsatisfactory for the products and services may largely arise and internet marketing somehow are vulnerable to different kinds of fraud. But this is just a case-to-case basis of what the real world of innovation brings (Storey, 2003).
In 2007, internet marketing grew rapidly. The exposure, response, and totality of the internet’s efficiency are seen through other forms of media. Internet marketing can provide a more sense of accountability for the advertisers and depict a B2B marketing transaction. Marketers and their clients comprehend more in evaluating the collaborative effects of marketing such as how it affects the sales of stores (Fillis et al., 2004). The impact of this multichannel marketing can be very hard to recognize but appears to be an essential part of appreciating and assessing the worth of each marketing campaign through different forms of media (Eyuboglu and Kabadayi, 2005).
Trends
Internet marketing can be viewed in various ways such as the terms e-commerce, lead-based websites, publishing, and affiliate marketing though other business models are used as a marketing campaign over the internet (Drucker, 2002). E-Commerce is the term used for the goods sold directly to the consumers or businesses (Daniel et al., 2002). Lead-based websites signify the acquisition of sales just through the websites and the sale of advertising is coined as publishing. Affiliate marketing on the other hand promotes sales through giving incentives for the visitors of the websites like the free screen savers that appear every time you click on a particular page.
The techniques of internet advertising have been drastically affected by the innovations in technology through the telecommunications industry. Some firms adapted to the new trends of telecommunications such as broadband and as simple as text ads. Advertisers can now more function well about the commitments and management of online branding with other firms. Lack of personal transaction and inability to ensure that fraud does not arise, broadband was introduced to act and do business transactions accordingly. This enables viewers to see a TV-like advertisement with just the click of a mouse and set a particular objective of reaching the target audience explicitly. In this trend, dealing with business transactions can be through a face-to-face manner though other parties are located afar. This is just one famous trend that emerges in internet marketing today. Blogs, voice broadcast, spam are just examples of terms and known trends in digital marketing. The blog is a user-generated website where most businesses start today. Various kinds of posts can be seen on blogs and is a good way of advertising and marketing a product. For an instance, an entrepreneur starts up a jewelry business and posts his or her crafts on the blog wherein visitors can be potential buyers (Cooney, 2005). In many instances, business affiliations arise in this form of advertising wherein a simple blog site turns out into a bigger business and can put up a company.
Impact on Industries
Internet marketing largely impacts many retail-oriented industries such as films, banking, telecommunication, pharmaceuticals, and advertising. Today, internet marketing in some way has replaced radio marketing about its market share. For music industries, a lot of consumers, B2B and B2C, are now into purchasing and downloading music online. Banks offered the capability of performing banking tasks online and it has increased over the years. Online banking is viewed to get the attention of consumers because it is more convenient especially for large businesses (Johnson and Bharadwaj, 2005). Fast growth in the online banking industry has emerged and almost half of the internet users transact with banking activities over the internet.
Auctions over the net have also taken their place and various items are made available specifically on eBay. E-Stores such as eBay are seen to be a result of marketing innovation where a market can execute the process of exchange through businesses to other businesses. The outcome on the advertising industry itself has been intense. For a short period, online advertising has developed to be valued like tens of billions of dollars yearly. Internet marketing has had an increasing impact on the electoral process as well. In the present year, candidates for Presidency use Internet marketing strategies to appeal to people.
In real-life situations, the impact of exchanges over the internet on business-to-business distribution provides a higher level of service and forecloses entry opportunities. In this case, the new online business firms planned to influence the ability of the internet in lessening costs and take away the inefficiencies in the conventional industrial value chains. It is more supposed that conventional channel intermediaries will be restricted in the process. In contradiction with all the suppositions, online trading exchanges still is not perfect in general. There is evidence that buyer-sponsored exchanges can be successful in assisting buyers to purchase goods and services in a B2B online exchange. However, there are lots of reasons which are highlighted because of their lack of success that comprise of inertia among the industrial buyers in utilizing new technologies for procurement, and the significance of the human touch, regulatory concerns, and the vital restrictions of existing Web technologies. In addition, it is not clear that a network focused on a distributor will refuse to accept being transformed into a series of joint trades. Still, the resistance is certainly what confused the designs of entrepreneurs who introduced internet-based transactions.
Conclusion
Generally, the impact of internet marketing in a B2B sense considers a wide efficiency in the market. Advantages and disadvantages it may bring but still, the overall impact benefits the business firms all over the world. Internet on domestic and global marketing and selling of industrial goods and services to businesses innovates and develops new trends in marketing. This is effective as well because all businesses are now into the use of internet marketing in small and large firms (Jones et al., 2003). This links between domestic and global areas wherein businesses around the globe are given opportunities to market products and services in all kinds of industries. It will also open new channels for the firms to distribute products and reach a worldwide market.
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