Internet Marketing

Internet marketing involves marketing products or services through the Internet. The expansion of the Internet has brought media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing results in instant responses and is unique to the medium. Internet marketing has broader scope than traditional media because it includes advertising through Internet web pages, email, and other wireless media. Additionally it includes a digital management system of customer data. With the help of the Internet, interactive marketing ties together creative and technical aspects including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing also concentrates on the placement of media at different stages of the engagement cycle of a consumer. Advertisements are visible through search engine marketing (SEM), targeted banner ads on specific websites, email marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. Pay-per-click Pay-per-click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, where advertisers pay the site host when a visitor clicks the ad. When dealing with search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click instead of a bidding system. Cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays a search engine company or other Internet publisher for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website. AdWords AdWords is the flagship advertising product of and main source of revenue for Google. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program has local, national, and international reach. Text advertisements on Google are short, and typically contain of a single title line and two content text lines. The Interactive Advertising Bureau determines the different standardized sizes that image advertisements are. Advertisers specify words related to their products or services that trigger "sponsored links" on the Google search engine results page. The order that paid listings or "sponsored links" appear in depends on pay-per-click bids by other advertisers and the "quality score" of all the ads shown as the result of a given search. To calculate the quality score, examine the history of click-through rates, the relevance of ad text and keywords, the account history of an advertiser, and other relevant factors as determined by Google. Google then uses this quality score to set a minimum bid amount for advertised keywords. The minimum bid takes into account the quality of the landing page, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business. However, Google has released a list of full guidelines for websites, the precise formula and meaning of relevance, its definition remains partly a secret only known to Google, and the parameters it uses can change. Social Media Marketing Social media marketing describes the use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis, or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations, and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Wikipedia, Orkut, and YouTube. In the context of interactive marketing, social media refers to a collective group of users who publish their own content, not by the employees of the web company. Social network marketing or social level marketing is an advertising method that uses social network services to increase web presence. This type of marketing involves everything from advertising directly on social networking sites, to developing and implementing viral marketing campaigns that spread across the web, through email, and by word of mouth, to creating niche market social networking sites focused on the product of service advertised. Many social media permit and encourage companies to create a profile. For example, on Facebook companies can create "pages" where users can become fans of the company, its products, and services, etc. Companies sometimes invest in Internet presence management, which includes social network marketing. Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" or unpaid search results and not paid inclusion. The theory is the higher up the sponsored link appears in the search results list, the more visitors will view it. SEO targets different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, video search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. Having presence in all these fields gives a website great presence. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO takes into consideration how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content, and HTML and associated coding, to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers that make it difficult for search engines to index it. In order to index a website, a search engine must be able to confirm the relevancy of a page. Link-building and examining one-way links, or links coming directly from other relevant websites, helps search engines determine a websites legitimacy. The process of building links should not be confused with being listed on link farms, which requires reciprocal return links that renders the overall back-link advantage useless. This oscillation causes confusion about which website is the vendor site and which is the promoting website.

Private Label Drinks

Consumers have an ever-growing array of choices in the beverage aisle, ranging from name brands like Coke and Pepsi, to private label drinks such as Safeway Select. A private label drink brand by producers who wish to participate in a robust category with their own line of beverages. Private label offerings have significantly improved in quality and consumer satisfaction. Private label has a presence in virtually every beverage category in the U.S. Store brands are private label products. They are in the largest and the smallest of beverage categories. Carbonated soft drinks, milk, bottled water and juices are prime categories for private label beverages. Although carbonated soft drinks remain popular, as the market has evolved and consumer tastes have shifted, private label has moved into the non-carbonated category which includes bottled water and fruit beverages, as chronicled in the ‘Private Label Beverages and Contract Packing in the U.S.' report, conducted by Beverage Marketing Corp. Branded products like Coke, Pepsi and Dr Pepper still dominate the industry, but the sheer size of the carbonated soft drink category has created an opportunity for private label brands. For the most part, the leading companies have done an effective job at blunting further inroads of private label through strong marketing of their products, leveraging their vast distribution network, and by pricing their products so that they are more in line with private label pricing schemes. The milk category boasts the largest and most developed private label activity. In 2007, private label account for more than 62% of U.S. fluid milk sales. Milk is the only category with more than half of its sales in private label. The greatest amount of private label milk sales are in non-fat, low fat and whole milk, while a smaller percentage of sales come from flavored milks and milkshakes. Consumers may not be as brand loyal with bottled water as with other categories. However, a large number of branded waters are experiencing success in the market, but this varies by water type. Waters that often serve as substitutes for tap water, such as so-called retail bulk water in large packages, tend to have the greatest amount of private label. Over 42% of retail bulk, water sales were private label a few years ago. Private label juice well represented within the US... This may provide an opportunity for private label because consumers may be less brand-loyal. In a recent sample, over 14% of shelf-stable fruit beverage sales in supermarkets were from private label. Once again, the category segment lacks significant differentiation that offers solid returns for private label. The branded leaders in this category have managed to withstand private label through strong branding and marketing, often revolving around package design and a promotional focus on the purity of their product. It is also notable that similar to milk, branded products have greater strength in the flavored segment of their categories. A private label brand can help retailers take advantage of a robust industry segment with a high quality product that suits customer needs.