What is Online Marketing Part I

Online marketing can be split into 4 broad categories: Paid Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), E-Mail Campaigns, and Social Networking. To keep things brief today, I'll be focusing on the first two: PPC and SEO.

A lot of people consider PPC and SEO to be synonymous with Google. While there are other search engines out there (such as Bing and Yahoo), Google has been in the driving seat of the PPC & SEO market for the past decade. Anybody serious about online marketing will start here.

Online marketing has grown so much in the past 10 years, that online ad spending in the United Kingdom has in fact overtaken television ad spending.

UK advertisers spent £1.75bn on internet advertising in the six months ending in June 2010, a 4.6% year-on-year increase, according to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. To put this in perspective, in 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, just £19.4m was spent online. The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets.

As the trend continues, more and more people are using the internet to shop around. The biggest benefit to any business is the fact that the internet has no borders and empowers you with instant communication. Globalisation is truly exemplified when a small rural business in the middle of nowhere can attract customers from high profile international urban centers, regardless of geographical distances or cultural barriers. Any business looking to attract international customers should have a solid online marketing strategy in its toolbox.

And what makes all of this so exciting? Online marketing is cost effective, accessible, instant, measurable, and gives you a direct link to your potential customers. No other advertising medium I have ever come across offers this type of laser precision and x-ray vision.

PPC vs SEO

So what's the difference between PPC and SEO? Why would I want one over the other? Basically, PPC and SEO are both mechanisms to reach customers. They differ in the way they are implemented, the costs, and most importantly the benefit cycle. You can certainly apply both strategies, but in a bit I'll show you why it's better to choose just one to start with.

When searching on Google, the links that appear at the top and right of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) are enclosed in a box labeled "ads". These links are Google Adwords links, and are generated by PPC Campaigns. In the screenshot below, they are designated by the red boxes. The remaining links on the SERP are known as 'organic links' and are the results of SEO campaigns. In the screenshot they are designated by the green box.

In my next post, I'll be getting into the details of PPC vs SEO, where I'll be talking about the benefits and drawbacks of both strategies.

While that's stewing in the pot, you might start to think about whether online marketing makes sense for you. Here are some questions that will help you get started:

• Who is your target customer? What are the major problems they face?
• Where are your customers? Do they search for solutions to their problems online?
• Who are you competing with? Is your competitor attracting customers that you're not?