Saturday, April 25, 2009

A Brief History of Online Internet Marketing

Having goods and services Internet marketing on the internet seems second nature now, but actually internet marketing is a relatively new phenomenon. When the internet first started and more of the public began to access it, companies Start to realize that they could utilize the internet to provide information to potential customers. The first examples of internet marketing were simply text websites. They were very basic and simple with no picture or graphics & Design. As the internet started to develop, many companies realized that they had a global audience at their disposal. Websites became more complex. They contained pictures of products and graphics intended to keep the customer interested.

For example, drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. launched an Internet marketing India campaign designed to build brand awareness for Excedrin. For 30 days during the 2000 tax season, the firm proclaimed Excedrin to be the "tax headache medicine" on a variety of financial Web sites. To entice surfers to click on the advertisement, Bristol-Myers offered a free sample of Excedrin to anyone who entered their name and address. According to Business Week writer Linda Himelstein, "The response was as good as any elixir. In just one month, Bristol-Myers added 1,990 new names to its customer list—some 9000 per day and triple the company's best-case scenario. What's more, the cost of obtaining those names was only half that of traditional marketing methods."

By our standard today, these first website seem archaic. However, they served their purpose as people began to turn to the internet for information about companies and what they had to offer. If someone wanted to buy something, they would call the company on a phone number provided by the website. Eventually, the technology existed so that companies could sell their products right from their website. E-commerce & E-marketing began to grow very quickly once methods to securely provide your credit card number became available. Consumers could now order products right from their home. Companies could reach customers all over the world. Online auction sites became very popular as people could sell their items to each other for a small fee.

Hoping for similar results, many traditional firms began incorporating the Internet into their existing marketing plans. Even technology industry giants like IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp. began dumping millions of dollars into Internet marketing efforts. Many smaller firms, including Internet upstarts, turned to highly trafficked sites like Internet portal Google!, paying for advertisements such as banner bars. In fact, Google! was one of the few Internet-based firms actually able to earn a profit from online advertising. By developing technology that allowed it to track a visitor's online activity and control what banner bars and button ads that visitor saw, Google! was able to target its messages in a manner never before seen by the marketing industry. Google! could also monitor the number of hits each advertisement received as a means of evaluating an ad's effectiveness. This innovative technology, coupled with the site's intense traffic levels

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