Internet marketing is the act of assisting an internet user in finding what it is that he or she needs or might need and then showing them what to purchase so that their needs will be fulfilled. Advertising is different.

Advertising is not marketing; advertising is simply a way to locate the people that you’ll be marketing to.

Advertising is the act of getting the customer’s attention – Marketing is the art of directing that attention.

There are many forms of advertising, I’ll name a few.

Printed advertising is perhaps the broadest area of advertising. This includes ads in magazines, in news papers, on flyers and in circulars; this ranges out to other types of printed advertising such as signage (that’s those big signs at the mall or wherever) and even post cards.

I could go on and tell you about posters, billboards, and who knows what else… there are countless types of printed advertising.

Media advertising (as I’ve been calling it) is advertising on TV, radio or any other one way communication system; it’s expensive, but it allows you to reach a very large market. If your selling something that is targeted or niche orientated then these types of ads aren’t for you, but if you promote something that anyone can benefit from, and you can afford this, go for it.

There are many forms of internet advertising as well. Online advertising can be purchased in the form of banners, links clicked (PPC), popup impressions, ezine ads and many others. Some people argue that a high search engine ranking is the best online advertisement while others will attribute their web site’s success to links from other sites.

There are countless opinions about which types of internet advertising produce the best results; you'll have to experiment to find out what is going to work for you.

I'll warn you right now, experts have shown us that banners are possibly the least effective and the worst for conversion rates; make your banners look like they're not banners.

Side note: If you’re going to use PPC (or Pay per Click) advertising then you’ve got to know that the site you are promoting will convert the visitor into a buyer. If you’d like more information about this, look at what I said about conversion rates - click here.

I'll sum up this page with this statement:
There are countless ways to advertise; the act of getting someones attention so that you can market to them is advertising.

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