Internet Marketing for Newbies – From the Beginning

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Internet marketing is a huge subject. The more people I speak to people in all walks of life, the more I have come to realise that many of the things that I take for granted are completely strange for others. It is clear that many of the assumptions we make about people when we start to talk about this area of making money online are starting from a different place to where the “man in the street” actually is.

So, for the next few posts, I will try to reset the terminology on the site so that anyone who is really just starting out should be able to get up to speed with the terminology that we all throw around so much.

I hope that this will help you if your business just happens to be in an area completely outside Internet Marketing and you are just looking to take your business online as an extra channel to market in these interesting economic times. Of course, if you want further help with this approach, particularly for projects in London, feel free to drop me a line through the contact page.

So, the first term we need to clarify is just the phrase “Internet Marketing”.  Well, let’s step back a bit and make sure that we all see marketing as the same thing. In essence, marketing is just the way that the value in a product or service is made visible to potential users of those things. It can be as broad in focus as marketing of a “brand” – making the value of an entire organisation clear to the public, or it can be as narrow as concentrating on an individual product, effectively making the sales of that product an obvious choice.

Internet Marketing (IM), then, is just the use of the internet as the main delivery mechanism for this “value message”. The appeal of this approach is obviously the huge reach of the internet. Taking your products to just a small fraction of the internet-using population holds enormous potential for most companies.

In a strange twist of terms, it is also possible that you will see the term “Internet Marketing” used in the context of this huge global marketplace where IM experts create products to help others just getting into the IM world themselves. While this may feel strangely incestuous at times, it is undeniable that people still need this kind of help.

If you are just starting out, let me know if going back this far is useful for you.

When is a Newbie Internet Marketer Not Really a Newbie?

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I went into London yesterday to help Daniel Wagner at a marketing event called the Ultimate Marketing Seminar. (In fact it is still running if you want to go looking…sign up is free).

Now, my attendance at the event isn’t that unusual. I am, after all, trying to meet as many folk in the UK internet marketing world as quickly as possible, as it is obvious that this is a very social space to be in.

What was an eye opener for me, came partly from some ideas that I had already explored for myself but also from the event itself. In fact, Daniel summed it up succinctly from the stage  when he drew a line (from 0 to 100%) and asked, “where are you on this line, in your chosen field of expertise?”  If you mark the line with an estimate of your skill, then anyone to the left of the mark is a potential client of yours and anyone to the right is someone you need to learn from.

Take that in. You have potential clients waiting for your knowledge in whatever field you are working in…..no matter where you are on the line.

As an additional reinforcement, I spoke to several of the other people attending the show in one of the breaks. They come from all walks of life, unified only by their desire to become entrepreneurs in their own field. This wasn’t just about internet marketing as a pure subject. What I found, was that the vast majority knew only that they had to be online and no more.

I had one of those “aha” moments everyone talks about. Here is a huge potential customer base. Go to non-IM events and just help people – how cool is that? Maybe some will become friends and dare I say it, customers.