WHAT IS GREEN MARKETING?
Green marketing can be defined as, "All activities designed to generate and facilitate anyexchange intended to satisfy human needs or wants such that satisfying of these needs and wantsoccur with minimal detrimental input on the national environment."Green marketing involves developing and promoting products and services that satisfycustomer's want and need for Quality, Performance, Affordable Pricing and Conveniencewithout having a detrimental input on the environment.
Evolution of Green Marketing
The green marketing has evolved over a period of time. The evolution of green marketing hasthree phases. First phase was termed as "Ecological" green marketing, and during this period allmarketing activities were concerned to help environment problems and provide remedies for environmental problems. Second phase was "Environmental" green marketing and the focusshifted on clean technology that involved designing of innovative new products, which take careof pollution and waste issues. Third phase was "Sustainable" green marketing. It came into prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000.
Why Green Marketing?
As resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, it is important for the marketers toutilize the resources efficiently without waste as well as to achieve the organization's objective.So green marketing is inevitable.There is growing interest among the consumers all over the world regarding protection of environment. Worldwide evidence indicates people are concerned about the environment and arechanging their behavior. As a result of this, green marketing has emerged which speaks for growing market for sustainable and socially responsible products and services
Benefits of Green Marketing
Companies that develop new and improved products and services with environment inputs inmind give themselves access to new markets, increase their profit sustainability, and enjoy acompetitive advantage over the companies which are not concerned for the environment.
Adoption of Green Marketing
There are basically five reasons for which a marketer should go for the adoption of greenmarketing. They are -Opportunities or competitive advantage
Corporate social responsibilities (CSR)
Government pressure
Competitive pressureCost or profit issues
Relationship marketing
Relationship marketing was first defined as a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on sales transactions.[citation needed]
As a practice, relationship marketing differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognizes the long term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages.[citation needed]
With the growth of the internet and mobile platforms, relationship marketing has continued to evolve and move forward as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels. This includes tools for managing relationships with customers that goes beyond simple demographic and customer service data
. Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing efforts, (a combination of search optimization and strategic content), PR, social media and application development.
Relationship marketing is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients and sales prospects.[citation needed] It also involves using technology to organize, synchronize business processes, (principally sales and marketing activities), and most importantly, automate those marketing and communication activities on concrete marketing sequences that could run in autopilot, (also known as marketing sequences).
The overall goals are to find, attract and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. [1] Once simply a label for a category of software tools, today,
it generally denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs
Why relationship marketing?
1) Emphasis on relationship rather than a transactional approach to marketing.
2) Projecting a positive image of the organization among the consumers.
3) Extend the principles of relationship marketing in order to enter into diverse market domain.
4) Build goodwill in the market.
5) Improve customer satisfaction.
6) Enhance brand equity through customer retention and loyalty.
7) Maintain parity between internal market within the organization as well as with external relationship variables like customers, suppliers, referral sources etc.
8) Create a co-operative and collaborative activities that aimed at enhance mutual economic value of both marketer and customer at reduced cost. (Parvatiyar, 1996 )
9) Positive word of mouth
Social Marketing Defined
Social Marketing is a process that uses marketing principles and techniques to influence target audience behaviors that will benefit society, as well as the individual. This strategically oriented discipline relies on creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have positive value for individuals, clients, partners, and society at large.
Principles Shared with Other Disciplines
Many of social marketing’s key characteristics have been widely adopted by other fields, and in turn social marketing has integrated practices developed elsewhere. Among the important characteristics it shares with others are:
· AUDIENCE ORIENTATION: Social marketers view their audience as decision-makers with choices, rather than students to be educated, or incorrigibles to be regulated. Social Marketing begins with a bottom-up versus a top-down perspective, and therefore rejects the paternalist notion that “experts know what is best and will tell people how to behave for their own good” in favor of an audience-centered approach which seeks to understand what people want and provides them support in acquiring it.
· SEGMENTATION: In order to enhance efficiency and effectiveness, subsets of populations are selected, evaluated, and then prioritized as targets based on useful aggregation variables. The segments selected are those most likely to adopt the intended behavior or most important to the organization’s goals, and to provide value in yielding societal benefit.
Even among difficult to reach populations, strategies are developed that appeal to those within the chosen population that are the “most ready for action.”
· BEHAVIOR FOCUS: Behavior is defined as an individual’s observable action or lack of action. Social marketing is interested in behavior that results in societal benefit. Many marketing strategies also have intermediate responses, but Social Marketing success is ultimately measured on whether the desired behavior was adopted. It is not sufficient to merely change awareness, knowledge, attitudes, or behavioral intentions.
· EVALUATION: Efforts are evaluated, focusing on ongoing measurement of outcomes (levels of target audience behavior change), and the intended impact this has had on societal benefits. Social Marketing is a continuous process in which evaluation and monitoring provide data on the audience’s preferences and the environmental changes necessary to maintain and expand the impact of programs.
· CONSIDERATION OF UPSTREAM & MIDSTREAM TARGET AUDIENCES: Efforts to influence individuals downstream are often enhanced by also targeting those who are upstream (policy makers, corporations), and/or those who are midstream (e.g. friends, family and other influential others).
Unique Principles
While social marketing integrates many characteristics common to other forms of behavior change, four core principles remain truly unique to social marketing.
· VALUE EXCHANGE: Social Marketing is unique with respect to other behavior change tools in that the offer that is made is based on an understanding of the target audience's perceived self-interest that will be rewarded for performing the desired behavior. The concept of value exchange states that consumers will choose a behavior in exchange for receiving benefits they consider valuable and/or reducing barriers that they consider to be important. An exchange may result when the marketer has created a program that is perceived by each side to provide value.
· RECOGNITION OF COMPETITION: In a free-choice society there are always alternative options available. Competition can be described in terms of choice offerings available in the environment that lead to alternative behaviors. Social Marketing strategies lead to a unique exchange offering that is perceived by the audience to have greater value than that of any other available option.
· THE 4Ps OF MARKETING: Product, Place, Price and Promotion represent the fundamental building blocks of Social Marketing interventions. These tools are used to reduce the barriers that make it difficult for people to behave as desired, and to increase the benefits that induce people to be more likely to behave. The tools are used in concert to develop a favorably perceived relationship that is more appealing than all alternate choices. Social marketers assess and then balance the need for, and use of, these four elements to influence optimal change.
· SUSTAINABILITY: Sustainability results from continuous program monitoring and subsequent adjustment to changes occurring in the audience and environmental condition. This is necessary to achieve long run behavior.
·
Unique Value Proposition
Social Marketing’s unique position in the marketplace of behavior change ideas is to integrate the shared and unique characteristics described above into a program of behavior change. Social marketing is a process rooted in the belief that more than words and/or regulations are needed in order to succeed at influencing people’s behavior. Social marketers understand and build upon the consumer’s perception of:
· Self-interest
· Barriers to behavior, and
· Competitive forces that create attractive choices.
What Is Guerrilla Marketing?
by Jay Conrad Levinson
The first Guerrilla Marketing book was published by Houghton Mifflin in l984. Today there are 58 volumes in 62 languages, and more than 21 million copies have been sold worldwide. The book is required reading in many MBA programs throughout the world. The author taught the topic at the University of California, Berkeley Extension Division. He lectures on it worldwide.
In the words of the Father of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson, this describes guerrilla marketing:
"I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always -- achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.
"Guerrilla Marketing started out a single volume and has since acted biblically by being fruitful and multiplying into a library of 35 books and counting, an Association, a lush website, an abundance of video and audio versions, an email newsletter, a consulting organization, an internationally-syndicated column for newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, and presentations in enough countries for us to consider forming our own Guerrilla United Nations.
The need for guerrilla marketing can be seen in the light of three facts:
1. Because of big business downsizing, decentralization, relaxation of government regulations, affordable technology, and a revolution in consciousness, people around the world are gravitating to small business in record numbers.
2. Small business failures are also establishing record numbers and one of the main reasons for the failures is a failure to understand marketing.
3. Guerrilla marketing has been proven in action to work for small businesses around the world. It works because it's simple to understand, easy to implement and outrageously inexpensive.
Guerrilla marketing is needed because it gives small businesses a delightfully unfair advantage: certainty in an uncertain world, economy in a high-priced world, simplicity in a complicated world, marketing awareness in a clueless world."
DATABASE MARKETING
Database Marketing is a powerful competitive weapon for companies - especially large ones. The growth of database marketing is rooted in the small business philosophy of staying close to the customers, under-standing and meeting their needs and treating them well after the sale.
Much corporate marketing is tied to big, general marketing or advertising campaigns with a single message - the same for everyone. This message may be based on the companies Unique Selling Proposition (USP). However, customers have different needs and a single USP spelt out to the whole market is no longer enough.
Messages must be tailored to specific segments of the market and ultimately to the market segment of one, the individual customer. Computerising the customer database makes it possible to address messages more specifically and market additional products to each customer.
What is Database Marketing?
There is no universal definition of Database Marketing ( DBM ); try this one ...
DBM is an interactive approach to marketing communication, which uses addressable communications media (mail, telephone, fax, sales force etc) to extend help to its target audience, to stimulate their demand, and stay close to them by recording and keeping an electronic database memory of customer, prospect and all communication and commercial contacts, to help improve all future contacts.
The characteristics of fully fledged database marketing are ....
1. Each actual or potential customer is identified as a record on the marketing database; markets and market segments are groups of individual customers.
2. Each customer record contains not only identification and access information but also a range of marketing information. It also includes information about past transactions and about campaign communications.
3. The information is available to the company during the process of each transaction with the customer, to enable it to decide how to respond to the customer's needs.
4. The database is used to record customer responses to company initiatives.
5. The information is available to marketing policy makers to enable them to decide such things as which target markets/ segments are appropriate for each product/service etc.
6. In large companies, selling many products to each customer, the database is used to ensure that the approach to the customer is co-ordinated; and a consistent approach developed.
7. The database eventually replaces market research. Marketing campaigns are devised such that the response of customers to the campaign provides information which the company is looking for.
8. Marketing Management automation is developed to handle the vast amount of information generated by DBM. This identifies opportunities and threats more or less automatically!
This is fully fledged marketing automation. Very few companies have succeeded in doing this; but many have it as their goal.
DBM presents many challenges to management. It requires careful maintenance of great volumes of detailed customer data. Accessing the data, interpreting it, and using it to drive or support the marketing function requires a long-term marketing systems development policy.
ONLINE MARKETING
Online Marketing is the art and science of selling products and/or services over digital networks, such as the Internet and cellular phone networks.
The art of online marketing involves finding the right online marketing mix of strategies that appeals to your target market and will actually translate into sales.
The science of online marketing is the research and analysis that goes into both choosing the online marketing strategies to use and measuring the success of those online marketing strategies.
Types of online marketing include: · Ecommerce
· Online Advertising
· Search Engine Marketing
· Email Marketing
· Social Media Marketing
· Article Marketing
Types of Internet marketing
Internet marketing is broadly divided in to the following[4] types:
§ Display advertising: the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website or blog to drive traffic to a company's own website and increase product awareness.[4]
§ Search engine marketing (SEM): a form of marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of either paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion, or through the use of free search engine optimizationtechniques.[5]
§ Search engine optimization (SEO): the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.[6]
§ Social media marketing: the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.[7]
§ Email marketing: involves directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using electronic mail.[8]
§ Referral marketing: a method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of mouth.[9]
§ Affiliate marketing: a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.[10]
§ Inbound marketing: involves creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.[citation needed]
§ Video marketing: This type of marketing specializes in creating videos that engage the viewer into a buying state by presenting information in video form and guiding them to a product or service[citation needed] Online video is increasingly becoming more popular among internet users and companies are seeing it as a viable method of attracting customers
Green marketing can be defined as, "All activities designed to generate and facilitate anyexchange intended to satisfy human needs or wants such that satisfying of these needs and wantsoccur with minimal detrimental input on the national environment."Green marketing involves developing and promoting products and services that satisfycustomer's want and need for Quality, Performance, Affordable Pricing and Conveniencewithout having a detrimental input on the environment.
Evolution of Green Marketing
The green marketing has evolved over a period of time. The evolution of green marketing hasthree phases. First phase was termed as "Ecological" green marketing, and during this period allmarketing activities were concerned to help environment problems and provide remedies for environmental problems. Second phase was "Environmental" green marketing and the focusshifted on clean technology that involved designing of innovative new products, which take careof pollution and waste issues. Third phase was "Sustainable" green marketing. It came into prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000.
Why Green Marketing?
As resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, it is important for the marketers toutilize the resources efficiently without waste as well as to achieve the organization's objective.So green marketing is inevitable.There is growing interest among the consumers all over the world regarding protection of environment. Worldwide evidence indicates people are concerned about the environment and arechanging their behavior. As a result of this, green marketing has emerged which speaks for growing market for sustainable and socially responsible products and services
Benefits of Green Marketing
Companies that develop new and improved products and services with environment inputs inmind give themselves access to new markets, increase their profit sustainability, and enjoy acompetitive advantage over the companies which are not concerned for the environment.
Adoption of Green Marketing
There are basically five reasons for which a marketer should go for the adoption of greenmarketing. They are -Opportunities or competitive advantage
Corporate social responsibilities (CSR)
Government pressure
Competitive pressureCost or profit issues
Relationship marketing
Relationship marketing was first defined as a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on sales transactions.[citation needed]
As a practice, relationship marketing differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognizes the long term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages.[citation needed]
With the growth of the internet and mobile platforms, relationship marketing has continued to evolve and move forward as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels. This includes tools for managing relationships with customers that goes beyond simple demographic and customer service data
. Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing efforts, (a combination of search optimization and strategic content), PR, social media and application development.
Relationship marketing is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients and sales prospects.[citation needed] It also involves using technology to organize, synchronize business processes, (principally sales and marketing activities), and most importantly, automate those marketing and communication activities on concrete marketing sequences that could run in autopilot, (also known as marketing sequences).
The overall goals are to find, attract and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. [1] Once simply a label for a category of software tools, today,
it generally denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs
Why relationship marketing?
1) Emphasis on relationship rather than a transactional approach to marketing.
2) Projecting a positive image of the organization among the consumers.
3) Extend the principles of relationship marketing in order to enter into diverse market domain.
4) Build goodwill in the market.
5) Improve customer satisfaction.
6) Enhance brand equity through customer retention and loyalty.
7) Maintain parity between internal market within the organization as well as with external relationship variables like customers, suppliers, referral sources etc.
8) Create a co-operative and collaborative activities that aimed at enhance mutual economic value of both marketer and customer at reduced cost. (Parvatiyar, 1996 )
9) Positive word of mouth
Social Marketing Defined
Social Marketing is a process that uses marketing principles and techniques to influence target audience behaviors that will benefit society, as well as the individual. This strategically oriented discipline relies on creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have positive value for individuals, clients, partners, and society at large.
Principles Shared with Other Disciplines
Many of social marketing’s key characteristics have been widely adopted by other fields, and in turn social marketing has integrated practices developed elsewhere. Among the important characteristics it shares with others are:
· AUDIENCE ORIENTATION: Social marketers view their audience as decision-makers with choices, rather than students to be educated, or incorrigibles to be regulated. Social Marketing begins with a bottom-up versus a top-down perspective, and therefore rejects the paternalist notion that “experts know what is best and will tell people how to behave for their own good” in favor of an audience-centered approach which seeks to understand what people want and provides them support in acquiring it.
· SEGMENTATION: In order to enhance efficiency and effectiveness, subsets of populations are selected, evaluated, and then prioritized as targets based on useful aggregation variables. The segments selected are those most likely to adopt the intended behavior or most important to the organization’s goals, and to provide value in yielding societal benefit.
Even among difficult to reach populations, strategies are developed that appeal to those within the chosen population that are the “most ready for action.”
· BEHAVIOR FOCUS: Behavior is defined as an individual’s observable action or lack of action. Social marketing is interested in behavior that results in societal benefit. Many marketing strategies also have intermediate responses, but Social Marketing success is ultimately measured on whether the desired behavior was adopted. It is not sufficient to merely change awareness, knowledge, attitudes, or behavioral intentions.
· EVALUATION: Efforts are evaluated, focusing on ongoing measurement of outcomes (levels of target audience behavior change), and the intended impact this has had on societal benefits. Social Marketing is a continuous process in which evaluation and monitoring provide data on the audience’s preferences and the environmental changes necessary to maintain and expand the impact of programs.
· CONSIDERATION OF UPSTREAM & MIDSTREAM TARGET AUDIENCES: Efforts to influence individuals downstream are often enhanced by also targeting those who are upstream (policy makers, corporations), and/or those who are midstream (e.g. friends, family and other influential others).
Unique Principles
While social marketing integrates many characteristics common to other forms of behavior change, four core principles remain truly unique to social marketing.
· VALUE EXCHANGE: Social Marketing is unique with respect to other behavior change tools in that the offer that is made is based on an understanding of the target audience's perceived self-interest that will be rewarded for performing the desired behavior. The concept of value exchange states that consumers will choose a behavior in exchange for receiving benefits they consider valuable and/or reducing barriers that they consider to be important. An exchange may result when the marketer has created a program that is perceived by each side to provide value.
· RECOGNITION OF COMPETITION: In a free-choice society there are always alternative options available. Competition can be described in terms of choice offerings available in the environment that lead to alternative behaviors. Social Marketing strategies lead to a unique exchange offering that is perceived by the audience to have greater value than that of any other available option.
· THE 4Ps OF MARKETING: Product, Place, Price and Promotion represent the fundamental building blocks of Social Marketing interventions. These tools are used to reduce the barriers that make it difficult for people to behave as desired, and to increase the benefits that induce people to be more likely to behave. The tools are used in concert to develop a favorably perceived relationship that is more appealing than all alternate choices. Social marketers assess and then balance the need for, and use of, these four elements to influence optimal change.
· SUSTAINABILITY: Sustainability results from continuous program monitoring and subsequent adjustment to changes occurring in the audience and environmental condition. This is necessary to achieve long run behavior.
·
Unique Value Proposition
Social Marketing’s unique position in the marketplace of behavior change ideas is to integrate the shared and unique characteristics described above into a program of behavior change. Social marketing is a process rooted in the belief that more than words and/or regulations are needed in order to succeed at influencing people’s behavior. Social marketers understand and build upon the consumer’s perception of:
· Self-interest
· Barriers to behavior, and
· Competitive forces that create attractive choices.
What Is Guerrilla Marketing?
by Jay Conrad Levinson
The first Guerrilla Marketing book was published by Houghton Mifflin in l984. Today there are 58 volumes in 62 languages, and more than 21 million copies have been sold worldwide. The book is required reading in many MBA programs throughout the world. The author taught the topic at the University of California, Berkeley Extension Division. He lectures on it worldwide.
In the words of the Father of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson, this describes guerrilla marketing:
"I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always -- achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.
"Guerrilla Marketing started out a single volume and has since acted biblically by being fruitful and multiplying into a library of 35 books and counting, an Association, a lush website, an abundance of video and audio versions, an email newsletter, a consulting organization, an internationally-syndicated column for newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, and presentations in enough countries for us to consider forming our own Guerrilla United Nations.
The need for guerrilla marketing can be seen in the light of three facts:
1. Because of big business downsizing, decentralization, relaxation of government regulations, affordable technology, and a revolution in consciousness, people around the world are gravitating to small business in record numbers.
2. Small business failures are also establishing record numbers and one of the main reasons for the failures is a failure to understand marketing.
3. Guerrilla marketing has been proven in action to work for small businesses around the world. It works because it's simple to understand, easy to implement and outrageously inexpensive.
Guerrilla marketing is needed because it gives small businesses a delightfully unfair advantage: certainty in an uncertain world, economy in a high-priced world, simplicity in a complicated world, marketing awareness in a clueless world."
DATABASE MARKETING
Database Marketing is a powerful competitive weapon for companies - especially large ones. The growth of database marketing is rooted in the small business philosophy of staying close to the customers, under-standing and meeting their needs and treating them well after the sale.
Much corporate marketing is tied to big, general marketing or advertising campaigns with a single message - the same for everyone. This message may be based on the companies Unique Selling Proposition (USP). However, customers have different needs and a single USP spelt out to the whole market is no longer enough.
Messages must be tailored to specific segments of the market and ultimately to the market segment of one, the individual customer. Computerising the customer database makes it possible to address messages more specifically and market additional products to each customer.
What is Database Marketing?
There is no universal definition of Database Marketing ( DBM ); try this one ...
DBM is an interactive approach to marketing communication, which uses addressable communications media (mail, telephone, fax, sales force etc) to extend help to its target audience, to stimulate their demand, and stay close to them by recording and keeping an electronic database memory of customer, prospect and all communication and commercial contacts, to help improve all future contacts.
The characteristics of fully fledged database marketing are ....
1. Each actual or potential customer is identified as a record on the marketing database; markets and market segments are groups of individual customers.
2. Each customer record contains not only identification and access information but also a range of marketing information. It also includes information about past transactions and about campaign communications.
3. The information is available to the company during the process of each transaction with the customer, to enable it to decide how to respond to the customer's needs.
4. The database is used to record customer responses to company initiatives.
5. The information is available to marketing policy makers to enable them to decide such things as which target markets/ segments are appropriate for each product/service etc.
6. In large companies, selling many products to each customer, the database is used to ensure that the approach to the customer is co-ordinated; and a consistent approach developed.
7. The database eventually replaces market research. Marketing campaigns are devised such that the response of customers to the campaign provides information which the company is looking for.
8. Marketing Management automation is developed to handle the vast amount of information generated by DBM. This identifies opportunities and threats more or less automatically!
This is fully fledged marketing automation. Very few companies have succeeded in doing this; but many have it as their goal.
DBM presents many challenges to management. It requires careful maintenance of great volumes of detailed customer data. Accessing the data, interpreting it, and using it to drive or support the marketing function requires a long-term marketing systems development policy.
ONLINE MARKETING
Online Marketing is the art and science of selling products and/or services over digital networks, such as the Internet and cellular phone networks.
The art of online marketing involves finding the right online marketing mix of strategies that appeals to your target market and will actually translate into sales.
The science of online marketing is the research and analysis that goes into both choosing the online marketing strategies to use and measuring the success of those online marketing strategies.
Types of online marketing include: · Ecommerce
· Online Advertising
· Search Engine Marketing
· Email Marketing
· Social Media Marketing
· Article Marketing
Types of Internet marketing
Internet marketing is broadly divided in to the following[4] types:
§ Display advertising: the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website or blog to drive traffic to a company's own website and increase product awareness.[4]
§ Search engine marketing (SEM): a form of marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of either paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion, or through the use of free search engine optimizationtechniques.[5]
§ Search engine optimization (SEO): the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.[6]
§ Social media marketing: the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.[7]
§ Email marketing: involves directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using electronic mail.[8]
§ Referral marketing: a method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of mouth.[9]
§ Affiliate marketing: a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.[10]
§ Inbound marketing: involves creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.[citation needed]
§ Video marketing: This type of marketing specializes in creating videos that engage the viewer into a buying state by presenting information in video form and guiding them to a product or service[citation needed] Online video is increasingly becoming more popular among internet users and companies are seeing it as a viable method of attracting customers