If you are new to internet marketing then this article will give you a birds eye view of what internet marketing is and how your business can benefit using the internet. Going by the official definition, internet marketing is simply put promoting your business, improving brand awareness and making sales using the internet. There are various ways by which you achieve this. Let’s take a look at some of them here:

1.) Email Marketing: Marketing using emails is perhaps the oldest and most basic form of internet marketing. Done right it can help your business get a whole lot of exposure. Done wrong on the other hand, your business could end up getting a bad name. You could be labeled as a spammer and it does not take long for word to spread through the net. So be careful before you venture into email marketing.

Study the Can-Spam guidelines and act accordingly. Develop your email list from the scratch using legitimate techniques. Never resort to buying lists or harvesting lists using spiders.

2.) Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is a safe and effective way to promote your business online. This works similar to a profit sharing mechanism where the advertiser (meaning you) will have to share a small percentage of the profit (also known as commission) with the publisher or the person who sends you business leads.

There are many affiliate networks that can help you set-up and run a profitable affiliate program. Some of the best ones are CJ (Commission Junction), Linkshare and Shareasale. The best part about joining one of these networks is that many publishers lurk around these networks looking for good programs to join. So if you offer a good deal you will get a lot of publishers quickly. And if you are lucky, you could even get yourself some super affiliates.

3.) Search Engine Optimization: SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your website so it ranks within Top 10 results for related keywords in Google and other search engines. There are millions who use Google and other search engines namely Yahoo and MSN to search for products and services online. A higher ranking in these engines will ensure that your brand gets exposure to all these people.

There are many SEO firms that can help you achieve high rankings. But make sure that you select a firm after proper research as there are plenty of firms out there who will give a bad name to your business by resorting to spam techniques. A simple tip would be to check out the testimonials page of the firm.

4.) Search Marketing: Search marketing is about buying pay per click ads on search engines like Google and their wide advertising network. There are many programs to choose from the best and the most recommended one being ‘Google Adwords’. You can sign up for Adwords for as low as $5 and get instant exposure to the traffic Google attracts. Search marketing gives you the freedom to bid on keywords specific to your business and also allows you to set your own spending limits. For instance, you can spend as low as $10/day and still get a good amount of traffic to your website.

Here again it is advisable to use a marketing firm to manage your search marketing campaign. You can also do it yourself if you want. Just check out the literature on the Google Adwords learning center which gives you details of how to go about it.

5.) Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing is about marketing your business using social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter to name a few. There are hundreds of highly popular social media sites online and a variety of ways to promote your business using them. The scope of this article does not allow us to discuss all of them. You can always google up the terms ‘Social media marketing techniques’ to get the required information

Apart from the above five techniques, there are many other techniques that include banner advertising, paid link advertising, in-text advertising to name a few. We will discuss these techniques in subsequent articles. Good luck with your business.