Internet marketing is an umbrella term that includes all the ways and means by which you can promote your products and services online.

For most businesses it is now imperative to have an online presence. Any business (corporate or small business owner) whether already established or in the introductory stage needs to have a strong Internet marketing strategy. With more and more people using the internet every day, marketers cannot ignore this space any longer.

Today searchers do not only rely on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, they discuss, ask and find out through their social networking circles. Where a tweet can evoke thousands of responses, can marketers ignore the fact that they need a strong Internet Marketing strategy? Each and every business needs to have a presence in the social networking circles so that they can answer and reach out to potential customers instantly.

The target audience today is much more equipped at researching and finding out almost anything that they want to know. So whether your target market is local or international, there needs to be an Internet marketing strategy that will address the needs of the population that you are targeting.

Along with the offline marketing plan, the strategy of any marketer should be to include various aspects of Internet Marketing. Just like a cook who mixes certain ingredients in a certain proportion to cook a meal to perfection, the same way marketers need to include Search engine optimization, Search engine Marketing, Social networking, etc in their Internet Marketing strategy in the right proportion. Not all products and services require the same level of SEO (Search engine optimization) or SEM (Search Engine marketing) and it is up to marketers to strategize and form an Internet marketing plan that will be a right mix of all the components that form part of the Internet Marketing Umbrella.

For an effective internet marketing strategy, the objective has to be very clear.

Are we promoting a product that needs eyeballs instantly or can we gradually build that kind of audience?

Do we have a target date by which we would require people to register for an event or is it mostly open ended?

The answers to these and many such questions will provide the Internet marketing solutions and will form the basis of the strategy;

Whether to have an extensive SEO for the web site to begin with or to start with basics and keep working on SEO, while extensively using SEM so that the audience gets to know about the products/ services from day 1.

Internet marketing / website marketing and how it is planned and what strategies are used to promote products and services on the Internet are very important for any business to succeed online.

In my next few posts, I will take up:- the various components of Internet Marketing (web marketing), discuss ways in which businesses can draw up strategies depending upon their requirement, the best practices of Internet marketing, and how much of role does SEO have in it.