Internet Marketing Research

Copyright © Georges Blanc http://www.ProvenAccessMarketing.com/Bizonline.html Internet marketing is more effective than traditional marketing. Let's look at the five reason why that is so. The first reason is simple - more and more people are using the Internet - for research, for browsing and for shopping. In one month, between July and August of this year, the growth of Internet use in the United States grew half a percent, from 139,944,945 to 140,589,403. Not an amazing growth but this was for one 4-week period. Think of the number of new Internet users and consumers that would accrue over a year! In Switzerland the same month saw a growth of nearly five percent, form 3.5 million to 4.7 million Internet users. Sweden's growth was more than 3.5 percent, and Spain's over 3 percent. More and more folks are logging on to browse and shop. And, while these folks don't necessarily buy online (some firms may offer browsing capability but are not e-commerce enabled) approximately half of them peruse retail sites to comparison shop and once they find something they like drive to the retailer's local shop to make the immediate purchase. So, it doesn't matter whether you're a large national e-commerce enabled chain or a local mom and pop storefront. The fact is that Internet marketing is more effective for you than traditional marketing. The second reason why Internet marketing is more effective than traditional marketing is that its reach is so great. Someone once described marketing as throwing something out there as far and wide as you can and hoping some of it sticks. That's fairly accurate, although we try as best we can through market research and studies on who buys our products to determine our niche and the consumer we should approach with our marketing strategy. In some ways, however, marketing is a game of numbers. Whether Internet marketing or traditional marketing the fact is that the more consumers that see your message the more that will respond to it. Internet marketing has the higher numbers. Traditional marketing involves choosing a medium or media whose demographics are as nearly identical to our known customer base as possible. Traditional marketing is less effective because it has to rely on demographics to try to narrow your reach down to a manageable targeted viewer base. Internet marketing, however, doesn't need this market research. It just sends your message to everyone. The third reason Internet marketing is more effective than traditional marketing is that it offers so many varieties of innovative options. Not only does it offer the display advertising options long available in other media, along with audio and video capability, but you can also pay for search engine optimization, for banner and bullet advertising, for pop-ups, for affiliations and so many other non-traditional marketing techniques. The fourth reason Internet marketing is more effective than traditional marketing is that it costs less. Have you priced a newspaper ad lately? The method used commonly by advertising professionals to comparison shop for ads is to determine the cost per thousand. In other words, how much money it will cost you to get your Internet marketing or traditional marketing message in front of one thousand people. Internet marketing's cost per thousand is a small fraction of the cost per thousand of any traditional marketing medium. The fifth reason Internet marketing is more effective than traditional marketing is that most people want something now and want to get it easily. There's nothing easier than making a purchase on the Internet.