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So what exactly is online marketing? Online marketing is the process of putting your product or business in front of more than 1 billion active Internet users worldwide, who are looking for services and information online. It is the process of turning your current website, blog, or profile into a powerful medium to maximize your business and sales potential.

Online marketing is much more than buying ads online. It’s about how you communicate with your customers via email, message boards, and chatrooms. It is about updating your website with important product information and offers. It is any kind of promotion your company does using the Internet.

The center of your online marketing efforts should be your website. The feelings consumers have when they visit your website carry over to how they perceive your entire company or organization. No matter how effective your marketing campaign is, if you don’t have a well-designed, professional-looking website, people will not buy from you. (See Chapter 10 for details on improving the design of your website.)

The advantage of online marketing is that you don’t have to have a multimillion-dollar marketing budget to put together an effective campaign. There are now shopping cart templates, website templates, and even online marketing templates created by companies such as Yahoo!, Google, PayPal, and Microsoft that help companies with limited budgets get their e-business quickly off the ground. Also, if you know where to look and the right questions to ask, you can take very sophisticated online marketing strategies and implement them on almost any size budget because there are so many resources available to you. (See Chapter 11 on working with web developers.)