Are you an internet marketing manager in a company? Are you business owners looking to market your product in the internet? Are you fresh graduate looking for opportunity to enter internet marketing career?
Internet marketing is a unique career. Internet is relatively new (it only started to be widely available and affordable in late 90s), but it is so powerful that in almost 20 years, not doing internet marketing will cost a significant amount of customers. Companies start hiring for internet marketing expert, and small business owners, if they have no resources to spend on employees, have to learn about it alone.
The good news is, thanks to the uniqueness of internet marketing, you don’t have to earn a degree from formal education to be skilled in it. Some companies may still require degree from new employees, but experiences speak louder.
One of the uniqueness of internet marketing is how fast it evolves. Internet marketing used to be simply done by email and website. Business entities printed their website address in business card, hoping people will memorize it and visit it directly. Inquiry, order, and any communication are done solely by email, or at least phone call.
Social media changes the game. Customers want more timely responds and better customer services. Interactions are done in many ways, from comment to message to chat service to online call. They want to read less text and see more pictures.
With how fast the change is, it’s understandable how difficult it is to understand the nature of internet marketing, especially from academic perspective. A reliable research may need up to five years to gather data, but by the time the result is out, it’s already obsolete.
Academic setting is not the only place to gain knowledge and insight about internet marketing. Instead, learning from practitioners may expose you to wider possibilities and innovation. They do internet marketing for a living and face various problems arise from it on daily basis.
If you are only starting to learn about internet marketing, but can’t commit to formal education enrollment for various reason like family, time, or money, learning from practitioners is the best resource you can invest in. Even if you have internet marketing academic background, it’s not going to hurt to learn more from practitioners. Their insight from real-world problem will complete your knowledge about internet marketing.
Many valuable and useful information is available in the internet nowadays, either free or premium. Internet not only changes the game in internet marketing, but also in knowledge transfers. You can find full course about marketing in internet with far less money than enrolling in college.
Many successful marketers with years of experience – from working for big companies to raising a million-dollar website on their own – set up their own websites and blog what they know about internet marketing. They usually offer a package of learning materials and sell it for considerably low price, considering the value their product has. The most successful marketers are usually very generous about sharing, and very friendly and approachable.
However, there’s a bad side to this easy transfer of knowledge as well. Since anybody can share anything, there’s no telling if the information you get from the internet is actually true. Someone who claims to be marketing expert with shining CV and list of experiences and list of awards can actually be a fictitious character specifically made to attract innocent internet users into believing in his existence and success in order to sell some dubious learning material. Scammers exist out there, who’s trying to sell you things of lesser value by claiming they’re an expert.
However, don’t lose any hope yet. Don’t feel discouraged, because gold contents are still abundant in the internet.
You only have to learn how to separate them from the rubbish. There are three ways to tell:
Check the credibility
Check who write the course, articles, blog, newsletter, or whatever content about internet marketing you are currently learning. Is he or she a real person? Does he or she have any website? Does he or she have prior publication about internet marketing elsewhere? Does he or she work in internet marketing business?
Try to contact the website master before any purchase. See if his response is timely and professional enough. Inquire what you are still in doubt about the product he or she is offering, and see if the response answers your questions or not.
Check the recentness
Like we have covered above, internet marketing moves fast. A year or two passes and what used to work become obsolete all of a sudden. Therefore, learning materials need to be up-to-date with the current technology and trend. Don’t buy a learning package that was made in 2006, unless it has been revised several times. Good learning materials always check whether their content is still relevant or not, and if not, then they’ll revise their content.
Check the free content
Free content, naturally, won’t be as insightful as the premium content. However, it still gives you glimpse on how competent the author is. Follow the website for a week or two, see if you agree with the articles published. Questions to ask yourself include: does this author give basic or advanced lesson? Can you understand what he or she is teaching? After you read the free content, do you have general idea about internet marketing or does everything still sort of vague and shapeless?
If you find yourself fairly sure with three factors above, then go ahead and buy the full version. Chances are, you won’t regret buying the premium package since it’s full of insight. If you have a business and a competitor, knowing a thing your competitor doesn’t can really set you two apart and make all the difference. If you are a beginner, good materials can give you knowledge of internet marketing in fairly short time, cutting your learning time efficiently. If you’re a professional, you’ll have up-to-date, valuable and useful information to boost your internet marketing career.