How Low Can Internet Marketing Go?

Anyone can get a graphic designer to put together an advert and have that advert plastered all over the newspapers and magazines. You know what that is going to cost and the chances of someone seeing it. You know in advance the circulation of each publication. Internet marketing – that is a slightly more specialist area. The biggest unknown in internet marketing is how low can it actually go?

Price

Technically speaking, it is possible to do your own internet marketing for free. Of course, you will be limited by the amount of time you can spend doing it and the channels open to you. For free you can do search engine optimisation and social media content. Pretty much anything else is going to cost you at least something.

If you look at agency offerings, there are companies that will offer to do certain aspects of internet marketing for free for a period of time when you build a website or host with them. These offers are generally not very effective, and you are not likely to get many leads.

As with all marketing, you get out what you put in. If you are not willing to put in money and time you are going to be disappointed with the results. If you are not willing to pay for a prime spot in a magazine, your advert will go unnoticed. If you are not willing to pay well for your internet marketing, you are not going to get a good return on investment.

Tactics

The tactics used in internet marketing can go pretty low. It is possible to completely destroy your competitions’ search engine rankings and waste their Adwords or social media advertising budget. You can probably even pay someone to do it for you.

From blasting sites with bad links and throwing up red flags in Google’s ranking algorithm to developing a bot to search for and click any advert except your own – it can be done. It is not ethical or fair, but it can (and probably does) get done. And that’s pretty low in my books.

Results

This is another area where internet marketing can go as low as it is possible to go. Internet marketing done wrong is capable of getting zero return on investment. Of course, done right, internet marketing can make a killing for you. 

The thing is, internet marketing can go as low as rock bottom, or it can go right up to the top and be the most effective (and most expensive) investment you make for your business. It all depends on who does the marketing for you and how that marketing is done.