Marketing is defined by various marketing experts as follows:
Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.
Kotler.
Marketing is the process whereby society, to supply its consumption needs, evolves distributive systems composed of participants, who, interacting under constraints - technical (economic) and ethical (social) - create the transactions or flows which resolve market separations and result in exchange and consumption.
Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.
Drucker.
From all the above definitions made by experts in the field of marketing following terms stand out or can be considered as the main edifice for marketing:
• Social Process – Technical (economic) and ethical
• Exchange of products and values
• Distributive Systems composed of participants
• Encompasses the whole business and not just sales
• Care, concern , responsibility and answerability
I am going in details of the definitions of marketing as the field of online marketing is still at the evolving stage and currently the most common way of reaching out to the masses and classes online is through search engines.
Hence, we can see that SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION) is one of the most sort after services by website owners . The number of SEO companies offering SEO training and services are mushrooming online and offline giving commitments for high rankings and showing rosy pictures to the clients of million dollar online business to them.
No doubt the power of the web and reaching out to people has great potential of making your business and company have a global reach, but the concept of online marketing has to be taken into account as a whole for tapping this actual potential.
In order to understand and wisely work out the online marketing strategy for your company one has to go to the basics of this term.
Yahoo made a fortune with banner Ads. In early 2000 and many companies allocated huge budgets for this and got online presence but such a presence was short lived and had very less recall value.
But that was the need of the hour as netizens were not mature enough or cyber savvy enough at that time to find what they were searching for on the web and the search industry also was still growing .
But, now in 2010 the situation is very different
• The people have become more net savvy
• The search industry has grown and has a lot to offer as regards search options
• The number of websites offering content and information on various topics has grown exponentially
• Accessing the social media has become a part of everyone’s daily activity
• The integration of search and social media (Real Time Search) has given an impetus to public opinion like never before.
• The Online Competition has increased multifold
Just as banner Ads. got the most attention way back in 2000 , in 2010 SEO is the online marketing method which every company wants to allocate a budget to.
Surely, getting your site optimized for search engines is the wisest decision any company can take keeping the current scenario in mind and SEO is something that no company can do away with because if your business is not on the search engines then it is on the invisible web and if you are not visible on the web then you cannot expect any business from the web.
In order to be visible on the web, SEO is one of the options but as a wise marketing strategy to ensure long term online presence all the options for online marketing and keeping the current scenario in mind, we always suggest to clients to have a inhouse online marketing team or if the company under consideration is an SME and has humble marketing budgets then one person at least should take a regular active interest in the online presence development of the business as the social media presence also is of utmost important for every company keeping the future trend in mind.
As your company needs to have voice of your own on the web and the social media sites and blogging gives you the power to speak for your company, gracefully thank your well wishers or defend your company in case of any bad word spread regarding your product or service so that your online reputation is always taken care of.
The SEO company will monitor the rankings for your website on the search engines but in order to monitor the social media one needs to hire a social media company services or the best way is to have a inhouse team or person handling this function.
Online business is global business and it is only through this tool that you can reach out to a potential customer, thank a satisfied customer, attend to complaints of dissatisfied customers and thus develop a rapport ensuring repeated business.
Hence, SEO is just the first step to reach out to the potential online market but there is a lot more which has to be done to establish the online WOM and ensure long term business.
In conclusion, we go back to the important aspects of marketing derived from the definitions by the Gurus of marketing mentioned above i.e:
• Social Process – Technical (economic) and ethical
• Exchange of products and values
• Distributive Systems composed of participants
• Encompasses the whole business and not just sales
• Care, concern , responsibility and answerability
Hence all these aspects have to be incorporated even in the online marketing plans and strategies of the company and this is possible only if each and every person of the organization starts thinking in these terms and identifies with it.
As budgets allocated today by companies for internet marketing should ensure long term presence on the web and not just fade away like the presence gained by banner ads. in the past, and the online marketing strategies and methods today available have the potential for acheiving this purpose.
