E-Commerce Cyber Marketing Strategies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

E-Commerce Cyber Marketing Strategies - Essay Example Internet has become of the most phenomenon technological factor to most modern organizations, tapping the cost-effectiveness and affordability of the factor to achieve their objectives and goals (Krishnamurthy, 2006). As such, the internet has ingrained itself in the modern commerce and trade. Moreover, despite its rapid growth, analysts expect the internet to growth and advance further. The central goal of most organizations is to realize future threats and opportunities, and accordingly design a strategy. Commoditization of the internet has led to the development and evolution of electronic commerce, or E-commerce as commonly known (Hanson, 2000). Essentially, E-commerce refers to the concept of selling and buying services and products over computer networks or the internet. It incorporates technologies such as internet marketing, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, inventory management, systems, electronic data interchange, online transaction processing, and automatic data collection systems. E-commerce has led to the revolution of traditional marketing concepts, initiating strategies to enhance marketing strategies referred to as network marketing (Miletsky, 2000). This paper seeks to discuss and analyze four main E-commerce cyber marketing strategies: viral marketing, online advertising, permission electronic mail marketing, and search engine man agement and optimization. The paper also provides an analysis of their pros and cons, as well as a comprehensive comparison of the strategies. Lastly, the paper provides a decision-making criterion for selecting the best strategy. In marketing strategies, the most important factor to consider is to shorten the distance between consumption and production as well as reduce the lengthy circulation of commodities through numerous links. As such, the internet provides an ideal marketing platform, allowing consumers and producers to conclude their transaction in a click of a mouse button. This is the foundation of cyber marketing. Essentially, marketing is the communication between firms and customers with the intention of persuading the customer to purchase the goods and services of the firm. The increasing growth and popularity of the internet makes it an ideal target for marketing, supported by other significant factors such as cost effectiveness, reliability, speed, and accessibility (Bhusry, 2005). Consequently, marketers have come up with innovative strategies to tap the potential opportunity of E-commerce cyber marketing, including viral marketing, online advertising, permission electronic mail marketing, and search engine optimization. Viral Marketing Viral marketing essentially refers to the online word-of-mouth advertising. In this marketing concept, the firm provides something interesting that encourages others to spread marketing information about the product or service, cost effectively and quickly without much effort from the firm. Consequently, this potentially creates an exponential growth in the effect and visibility of the marketing message (Bhusry, 2005). In other words, the message spreads like a common cold virus form one person to the other. Cyber virus marketing is a very effective marketing strategy, and a successful campaign may present an opportunity of obtaining thousands of new every year. A prime example of a phenomenon viral marketing s trategy is Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com), the first provider of free E-mail services (Krishnamurthy, 2006). The firm began offering free accounts, attaching a