I started internet marketing full-time in April 2009 but it has always been difficult to explain to others what internet marketing really is.  I’ve struggled to come up with a simple explanation but I recently had a moment of epiphany.

I was watching the introduction to one of Eban Pagan’s courses and he suddenly asked the audience if they new what internet marketing was?  He answered his own question… internet marketing is online advertising.

This blog post for example is advertising – it has been written to attract eyeballs and to persuade you to take action i.e. sign up to my list, buy a product or simply keep in touch until one of these events happens.  This is advertising.

Creating videos and audios, or indeed any content, is advertising.  That means that if you are doing any sort of internet marketing it means that you are in the advertising game and you need to study the rules of advertising.

This means crafting headlines that attract attention, structuring your content to lead to a desired outcome and asking for ‘the click’ within your content.  It means that gathering data such as # of views, # of clicks, heat maps, conversion rates and so on is vital to success.

It means that understanding sales psychology – things like scarcity tactics, trust builders such as social proof, authority building, reciprocation etc – is important to include in your content and sales letters.

Sometimes, when we are creating content, we can lose sight of the ultimate purpose of creating the content in the first place.  If you can remember that you are in the game of advertising it will help you to create content that converts.

It will also help you to choose which skills you need to improve in order to get better at internet marketing i.e. advertising skills.

Advertising – this is what internet marketing really is.