Yesterday I got an email from an old prospect of mine.  He told me about how he decided to get in to internet marketing after I had met him at a work-at-home convention, and he wanted me to look at his opportunity.  When he gave me his links to check out, and I saw what he called “internet marketing”,  I was shocked.  What he called internet marketing was having a website and posting some stuff on Facebook!  This guy needed internet marketing brain surgery, and fast…because he was completely mis-informed.

It’s what lead me to write this article today.  It’s not that this prospect didn’t really grasp internet marketing, but he went on to try to show off his knowledge but got caught red-handed.  I want to make it very cut and dry:

Internet marketing is more than just having a website; it’s about lead generation and smart marketing!

Now, there are number of Facebook users who are going to be up in arms about this article.  They are going to argue that what they do on Facebook IS internet marketing.  The problem with that argument is that just fishing around for friends and acquaintances to like your page or product is not internet marketing.  Now, if you are generating serious retail from your Facebook fan page, and from your friends and people you know buying your product, then that’s great and all.  However, that’s just one tiny piece of the grand scheme of internet marketing.

Be very careful in what you deem as “internet marketing”.  This is especially true of business owners who have replicated websites where all they have changed is adding their tagline to the end of a domain that your corporate company owns.  What you are actually marketing is THEIR product, and you are not branding yourself.  As Mike Dillard points out in Magnetic Sponsoring, people buy because it’s you, not because of the product.  If you are not branding yourself, people can see through it, and that can lead to struggles.

So what IS internet marketing about?  It does cover a wide array of definitions, as Wikipedia points out.  However, we’re talking strictly about 21st century internet marketing.  It’s about leveraging multiple channels of social media, low-cost advertising, capture page conversions, and more importantly, exchanging free information for leads.  It’s about attraction marketing.  The days of just having a website and doing some SEO and Facebook are gone.  The individuals who make millions on the internet leverage multiple channels and facets to build their internet empire.  Internet marketing is about exploiting as many channels of distribution as possible.

What does that mean for the average new internet marketer?  Simple…use EVERYTHING within your ability to push your brand out to as many channels as possible.  Here is an internet marketing checklist that every internet marketing student should follow:

– Blogging

– Facebook/Google advertising

– Capture pages

– Article Marketing

– Free information (ebook, or pamphlet, or free video)

– Videos

– Pinterest or Instagram

– Twitter

– SEO/SEM understanding

Whatever choice you make, ensure that you invest the time to make it the best possible.  Another important facet is the analysis and re-tweaking stage.  You want to create the marketing piece, and get it out there.  Then, you want to use analysis tools such as Google Analytics or Ad Tracking to see what areas are suffering.  Analyze, edit, and repeat, until it brings about efficient results.  Don’t waste money with sub-par work!

This list is just the beginning.  Internet marketing is about the mastery of each one of these facets.  I can honestly tell you that if it had to, each of these pieces could be an university course within itself.  It’s an art to know how to use them all skillfully.  For any new marketer, this daunting list can only be tackled by picking one or two to develop an expertise in.  But if you are looking to make money fast, use an internet marketing platform to learn how to use them all quickly and harness the power by clicking here.  This is the best way to level yourself with your competition, who has already been in the field for quite some time.

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Frederick Lam