Online Marketing

“Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of you doing all the work looking for customers, they did all the work looking for you?”

This sentence, which I have read somewhere exactly represents difference between traditional and online marketing. In traditional marketing one has to look for prospects and then upto converting into customer, it is long selling process. While in online marketing as it is “search based”, users conciously comes to you looking for something, with help of search engines.

Online marketing is a cost saving way, its benefits and advantages are far more effective in long run as compared to traditional (Offline) Marketing. Almost all aspects of an online campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. This is reason why it is prefered by many firms.

In online marketing some targeting methods are:

1. Contextual Targeting:

In this target is done on the basis of context user is refering.

2. Behavorial Targeting:

in this targeting is done on basis of behavior shown by user in past.

3. Geogrphical Targeting:

On the basis of geographical location of user, targeting is done.

Some Online Advertising techniques used are:

1. Text Ads

2. Display Ads

3. Pop-ups

4. Flash Ads

5. Interstitial Ads

6. Email Ads

7. Advertorials

8. Onsite Sponsorship

9. Video ads and many other.

Viral Marketing:

Viral marketing refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes. It is a social media marketing method and is used widely these days. It can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly. Often the goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via “offbeat” stories worth many times more than the campaigning company’s advertising budget.

Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting, and the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at a low cost.

Types of Viral Marketing

Pass-along. This is the most common type of viral marketing. Web sites that ask their users to tell-a-friend about their products and services is an example of pass-along messaging

Incentivised viral: A reward is offered for either passing a message along or providing someone else’s address. This can dramatically increase referrals.

Online marketing is growing faster than other types of media. However it has some limitations also abd biggest is the inability of shoppers to touch, smell, taste or try-on tangible goods before making an online purchase.