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Whether you're new to the online world, or you've been surfing the 'net for years, knowing just a few internet marketing basics can easily put a few extra dollars in your pocket – for an existing business or a brand new venture. Whatever kind of business you have or are thinking about starting, the basic concepts involved are pretty much the same when it comes to marketing your products or services on the internet.
The process involves a product or service you are selling, an offer related to that product / service (price, guarantee, discounts, specials, etc.), marketing materials describing that offer (email, website, sales letter), prospecting (driving traffic to a website or using offline advertising to drive prospects to your offer), and closing the sale (the mechanics of the purchase, merchant accounts, payments, etc.). The topics we'll discuss are not just internet marketing basics – they apply to virtually any type of sales model.
Chances are, if you are at all familiar with business, you are probably familiar with this process in one form or another. Obviously, if you plan on making some money, you'll need a product or service to offer to the market – either your own or someone else's. If you offer someone else's products or services, presumably it's because they will give you a percentage of each sale that results from your marketing efforts. That's called affiliate marketing, and it's one of the pillows of many of the internet marketing basics courses you see online these days.
You'll also need some sort of delivery mechanism – for example, a website to host a digitally downloadable product, or a fulfillment department or vendor who will process and mail orders for physical products such as CDs and / or books.
Keep in mind that your goal in applying these internet marketing basics to your business might just be to get leads for your offline sales force to follow up with. There's no law that says you have to sell them something online with an automated sales system (although I sure prefer it to making phone calls and trying to sell in person).
Once you have the product and delivery figured out, you'll need to setup a sales page or other selling system (email capture + follow-up messages, eg) that describes your irresistible offer and persuades people to take some action – buy, leave their name and email, pick up the phone, etc. This will involve some good copywriting and online salesmanship, along with some graphic design and a little bit of technology to get your website setup. You may decide to use video, or one of those "virtual salespeople" who walks across your browser.
The traditional sales "close" in this scenario simply involves the click of the "Buy" button and a payment processing system that is properly connected to your website (if you're selling your own product). You may consider using PayPal or another merchant system to collect payments – I've found PayPal to be an easy, first place to start.
If you're selling information or software, one very popular place to sell your products is Clickbank. Not only do they have a built-in affiliate program, but they can also handle all the merchant functions without much involvement on your part. In fact, you'll find many courses covering internet marketing basics in the Clickbank marketplace. The only downside is the transaction fee and their willingness to give refunds quickly (which can be a good or bad thing).
Finally, one of the magic ingredients in this whole process is driving prospects – or "traffic," as they say in the online world – to your website, your offer. Ideally, it should be very targeted traffic – people who are actually looking for the solution or information you are selling. These days, this type of traffic can be generated quickly and easily simply by purchasing pay-per-click ads on networks like Google AdWords, where people who are searching for information see related ads, and advertisers only pay Google when the searcher clicks on the ad.
Naturally, there's a lot more to making money online than these internet marketing basics, but this should give you a pretty good overview of the entire system. Each one of these mini-systems describes to be studied and optimized on its own, but those are topics for other articles.
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