research on internet marketing

Online Market Research: What It Is and How To Do It

From building a business to buying a house, on Competitive analysisline market research is an effective tool for making sound decisions.

Oh, and it’s not just you. 

Over 53% of consumers do online research routinely, with an astounding 95% reading online reviews before making a purchase.

What is online market research?

Online market research takes secondary data from the internet or collects primary data online to support research or expand knowledge for a chosen topic. The information is then analyzed to inform or substantiate a theory.

Here are a few things you can do with digital market research:

• Discover new topics or content to write about
• Track consumer journeys
• See what creatives and ads perform well
• Find the best marketing channels
• Explore which markets are ripe for entry
• Analyze a target audience
• Research potential product or service improvements
• Benchmark your business
• Understand market dynamics and spot trends
• Find out what your competitors are doing and unpack their tactics
• Uncover new opportunities

Digital market research can help a company grow efficiently and effectively —supporting a business in its quest to stay relevant; and to survive and thrive in its market.

Take two, and hear first-hand from Harvard Business School Professor Rem Koning about the difference between traditional market research and state-of-the-art Digital Intelligence powered by behavioral data from Similarweb. 

Online market research methods

Almost all online market research methods can be grouped into two subcategories; primary or secondary market research . Within these two core groups, you also have qualitative and quantitative research methods to consider.

Here’s a quick explainer of the core four types of online market research, including what they are and how to use them.

Primary Market Research

This is the first-hand collection of data by an organization. It gives full control over what questions are asked. The data obtained isn’t freely available online to anyone else , and the person or company conducting the research retains full ownership of the information they acquire.

This type of research wasn’t always this easy to do online. Thanks to advancements in technology and the heightened use of video conferencing in our daily lives – many types of primary research can be done remotely. Market research surveys , online focus groups, and interviews are perhaps the most widely adopted form of online primary research online.

See below for a complete list of primary research types.

Secondary Market Research

This takes information from various sources online and repurposes it to inform or pad-out research into a chosen topic. It’s often quicker and cheaper to conduct than primary market research but offers fewer controls regarding research methodologies and customization. This data is freely available to anyone online, providing no exclusivity with the insights or information used.

This type of digital market research is also known as desk research and is a tried and tested way to gather facts or insights into a market, consumers, competitors, or products. Research reports, digital intelligence platforms, media outlets, and rival websites are some of the most relevant types of research.

But there are others

Aside from the core online market research methods, there are two other well-known research types to consider.

Qualitative Market Research

This type of digital market research looks at how people feel about a specific topic or brand . It takes more time to plan than most other forms of research, often with a smaller group of people. Let’s say you want to trial a new feature or product; you’d do this form of research pre-launch or post-trial to get under the hood and understand consumer sentiment.

As a form of primary data, it’s a highly tailored form of research that aims to give granular insights into why things are the way they are. Some of the most popular forms of qualitative research that can be done entirely online include focus groups, online forums, and interviews.

Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing

Get actionable insights for market research here

Quantitative Market Research

Quantitative market research is a numbers game. It’s a process that collects and analyzes data, dealing with primary and secondary information contained in a numerical format. The uses of quantitative market research include making predictions, trendspotting, finding patterns, and establishing averages in a market or business.

If an organization needs to do market sizing , market validation , and forecasting – they’ll usually use quantitative research to inform these activities. It can be done online when you need to gather numerical data from or about a target audience . It’s delivered in mixed formats, including raw data, charts, graphics, and tables. A common form of quantitative research that’s done online is a survey—specifically those using close-ended questions with answer options that have a numerical value. Once the values are collected, various analysis tools can be used to turn them into insights.

Read More: 98 Quantitative Market Research Questions & Examples

How to do market research online

As with any project, you must establish its goals, AKA your research objective. Once you have clarity on what you’re trying to achieve , you can map out how to get from point A to point B.

Here’s a quick explainer to guide you through the process.

1. Establish research objectives

Consider what you want to learn from your research. Are you trying to find which market could be best to enter next? Perhaps you need to find new opportunities for efficient growth . You might even want to flesh out some ideas for future enhancements to your product.

Whatever it is, write it down and make it your project goal.

2. Select the right online market research methods

Now you know your goal, it’s time to lay out the foundation of your online market research strategy. At this point, the only thing to consider is the type of data you need and the right types of market research to use to help you get it.

There are four core types of market research to choose from.

• Primary market research
• Secondary market research (also known as desk research )
• Qualitative market research
• Quantitative market research

Not sure where to start? Read this post to learn more about the different types of market research .

3. Prepare research materials

As with most things in life, the better prepared you are, the easier the task is to complete. Online market research is no different. This essential third step in the digital research process entails laying the foundations for what’s to come. This means you need to collate any:

• Research questions
• Delegation of any responsibilities

As someone who’s written extensively about doing online market research and spoken with many thought leaders and professionals about the topic, the biggest tip I can provide is this.

Pro Tip: Take a systematic approach to documenting your findings. Record everything in a workable file in a centralized space. Having a mishmash of files, data, and assets will slow you down when it comes to the analysis phase.

Whatever type of online market research you’re doing, finding a template to use a framework can help speed things up . We’ve put together a free pack of 6 templates for you below.

4. Conduct your research

Carry out your online market research. Set a time limit, and try to stick to it. Regardless of the type of digital market research you choose, always keep your research goal in mind. If you’re using tools like Similarweb Research Intelligence to do industry, company, or market research, then make sure you compare the right data sets that examine the same periods and location. 

For secondary research, ensure that any reports or stats are backed up with verifiable sources. And for primary research, specifically, focus groups or surveys – be open to needing to change the line or type of questions being asked if you don’t feel confident the feedback will answer your research question adequately.

5. Analysis time

This final step in doing online market research involves summarizing your uncovered data. If you took on board the tip about using a systematic way of collecting data, this is where your foundation-setting will really start to pay off.

Once the data is summarized, you can start to analyze and uncover key insights that give you answers to your initial research questions and help bring you closer to your goals.

The market research process is ongoing and should never be viewed as a one-time thing. The more often you conduct it, the more insights and information you’ll uncover.

If you’re new to online market research, check out some free market research courses via the Similarweb Academy .

Online market research tools

Historically, market research was an arduous task that took time to do. Often, it would be done quarterly or perhaps yearly, using data that was already, to some extent, outdated.

Thankfully, times have changed. 

Today, modern online market research tools deliver real-time market data and fresh insights as and when you need them.

Online Surveys

A firm favorite for companies looking to get feedback fast. Surveys can be done with or without a mailing list; and shared on a website or on socials. Typeform and Survey Monkey .

Market research intelligence platforms (like Similarweb)

Software like Similarweb can give you highly relevant, up-to-date information about any market, company, or topic. Most types of online market research benefit from using digital intelligence tools. The data is trusted, it’s dynamic, and it’s one of the quickest types of online market research you can do.

Think with Google

Great for doing research into persona development, consumer insights, and digital trends.

Answer the Public

If you’re doing online market research into a specific topic, this is a real gem of a tool. It shows

what questions people are asking online relative to your theme, and can give insights into a target audience and their relative concerns.

The Internet

I know it sounds a little elementary, but there’s a world of information available online. From trade associations to research companies that provide syndicated research reports , through to your rivals and even their social media profiles – there are plenty of insights waiting to be uncovered.

Read our dedicated blog on the topic if you want to find more online market research tools .

Similarweb for online market research

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence is your gateway to endless online market research insights. Whether analyzing an industry or market, doing competitive research, or examining a target audience and their online behaviors, you can do this and more from within a single platform.

Competitive analysis is one of the most valuable types of online market research any firm can do. It takes a rival’s website and unpacks its successes in its basic form. When you do this systematically with your industry leaders and rising stars, you can see what channels, keywords, social platforms, ads, and content work best in your market.

Here, you can view website traffic and engagement metrics , marketing channels, competition keywords, and core audience demographic information, like age, geographics, device split, and gender. It shows the specific tactics and successes of any site. 

Oh, and it’s not just for market research; you can also use Similarweb to do audience analysis, benchmarking, company research , and consumer journey tracking across the web, mobile, and app channels.

Wrapping up: online market research

Whether you’re just starting or part of an established firm, you face dilemmas that online market research can help solve . In the past, market research was timely and costly, but that’s not the case anymore. With tools like Similarweb, you have a world of information and insight at your fingertips.

It’s easier, quicker, and more resolute than ever before. 

Try it out, for free, for a week – and see what you can discover about your market and the people in it.

A type of digital market research conducted online. It uses primary, secondary, quantitative, or qualitative research methods and is designed to help inform strategy or uncover more information about a topic.

What are the benefits of online market research?

You can do online market research with little-to-no professional training, it’s quick to conduct, and almost anyone can access secondary research data on the internet. Online research tools like Similarweb can significantly speed up the time it takes to complete a research project.

What is the best type of digital market research?

The best type of market research will depend on three things—your research goals, the time available, and your resources. Choosing the correct method of research will be crucial to your success. Read our guide to the different types of market research to see which is best for you.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

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Internet marketing: a content analysis of the research

• Special theme
• Open access
• Published: 31 January 2013
• Volume 23 , pages 177–204, ( 2013 )

Cite this article

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• J. Ken Corley II 1 ,
• Zack Jourdan 2 &
• W. Rhea Ingram 2  

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The amount of research related to Internet marketing has grown rapidly since the dawn of the Internet Age. A review of the literature base will help identify the topics that have been explored as well as identify topics for further research. This research project collects, synthesizes, and analyses both the research strategies (i.e., methodologies) and content (e.g., topics, focus, categories) of the current literature, and then discusses an agenda for future research efforts. We analyzed 411 articles published over the past eighteen years (1994-present) in thirty top Information Systems (IS) journals and 22 articles in the top 5 Marketing journals. The results indicate an increasing level of activity during the 18-year period, a biased distribution of Internet marketing articles focused on exploratory methodologies, and several research strategies that were either underrepresented or absent from the pool of Internet marketing research. We also identified several subject areas that need further exploration. The compilation of the methodologies used and Internet marketing topics being studied can serve to motivate researchers to strengthen current research and explore new areas of this research.

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Introduction

In the early years of the Internet Age, the potential of using the Internet as a distribution channel excited business managers who believed this tool would boost sales and increase organizational performance (Hansen 1995 ; Westland and Au 1997 ). These believers suspected an online presence could offer advantages to their customers, while providing a shopping experience similar to the traditional bricks-and-mortar store (Jarvenpaa and Todd 1996 ). The advantages included providing around the clock access for customers, reducing geographic boundaries to provide access to new markets, and enabling immediate communication with customers.

The prediction of an explosion of online shopping became a marriage between information technology experts and marketing professionals. Most would believe the information technology researchers were studying the Internet technology and its advantages, while the marketers were focused on the consumer’s use of the technology. As technology advanced, more marketing activities emerged to market goods and services via the Internet. Today, Internet marketing is defined as “the use of the Internet as a virtual storefront where products are sold directly to the customer” (Kiang et al. 2000 , p. 383), or another view includes “the strategic process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing products for targeted customers in the virtual environment of the Internet” (Pride et al. 2007 ). This research attempts to categorize the various Internet marketing activities in a broad context including strategies such as customer relationship management (Hwang 2009 ), electronic marketplaces (Novak and Schwabe 2009 ), online auctions (Loebbecke et al. 2010 ), and electronic branding (Otim and Grover 2010 ) in tandem with unique IS issues including web site evaluation (Chiou et al. 2010 ), piracy (Smith and Telang 2009 ), security (Ransbotham and Mitra 2009 ), and technology architecture (Du et al. 2008 ).

With concepts as varied as this in one research domain, a periodic review is necessary to discover and explore new technologies such as mobile banking (Sripalawat et al. 2011 ), virtual worlds (Sutanto et al. 2011 ), and social media (de Valck et al. 2009 ) as they emerge on the Internet marketing landscape. The following sections of the paper will examine the current literature to determine what is known about the concept of Internet marketing. First, a description of the methodology for the analysis of the Internet marketing research is presented. This is followed by the results including an analysis of a smaller sample of the Internet marketing research in the top Marketing journals. Finally, the research is summarized with a discussion of the limitations of this project and suggestions for future research.

Methodology

The approach to this analysis of the Internet marketing research is to first identify trends in the Information System (IS) literature. Specifically, we wished to capture the trends pertaining to (1) the number and distribution of Internet marketing articles published in the leading journals, (2) methodologies employed in Internet marketing research, and (3) the research topics being published in this area of research. During the analysis of the literature, we attempted to identify gaps and needs in the research and therefore discuss a research agenda which allows for the progression of research (Webster and Watson 2002 ). In short, we hope to paint a representative landscape of the current Internet marketing literature base in IS in order to influence the direction of future research efforts in this important area of study.

In order to examine the current state of research on Internet marketing, the authors conducted a literature review and analysis in three phases: Phase 1 accumulated a representative pool of articles; Phase 2 classified the articles by research method; and, Phase 3 classified the research by research topic. Each of the three phases is discussed in the following paragraphs.

Phase 1: accumulation of article pool

We used the Thomson Reuters Web of Science (WoS) citation database and Google Scholar to search for research articles with a focus on Internet marketing. The search parameters were constrained based on (a) a list of top ranked journals, (b) a specific time range, and (c) key search terms.

First, the researchers chose to use the top 30 journals from Peffers and Tang’s ( 2003 ) IS journals ranking (see Table  1 ). Peffers and Tang’s ( 2003 ) ranking of ‘pure’ IS journals was adopted for this study because it was based on the responses of IS researchers who were asked to rank journals by their “relative value to the researcher and the audience as an outlet for IS research.” In Peffers and Tang’s ( 2003 ) original ranking scheme two journals, ‘Communications of the Association of Information Systems’ and ‘Information and Management,’ tied for fifth place. Peffers and Tang resolved this issue by ranking both journals in the fifth position skipping the rank of the sixth position. As noted in Table  1 , 7 of the top 30 journals were not listed in the WoS database. Consequently, all 30 journals were searched using Google Scholar and only 23 journals were searched using the WoS database. The search parameters were further constrained to a specific timeframe.

Electronic commerce and Internet marketing did not exist prior to the widespread adoption and dissemination of the public Internet and the Worldwide Web (WWW). Therefore, the search parameters were further constrained based on the historical timeframe in which technologies capable of facilitating the development of e-commerce were first introduced. The graphical user interface based browser known as Netscape Navigator was launched as a free download for public use in 1994. Many experts identify the launch of Netscape Navigator as the historical event leading to the global public’s widespread adoption and use of the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) (Friedman 2006 ). Therefore, the search parameters for both WoS and Google Scholar were constrained to time period of 1994 through August of 2011.

The final constraint was based on the key search term “Internet Marketing.” In both WoS and Google Scholar the search engine scanned for the term ‘Internet Marketing’ and close variations of this term found in the title, abstract, and keywords of articles published in the top 30 IS journals between January of 1994 and August of 2011 when the search was executed. There was considerable overlap in the pool of articles returned from the two search engines (WoS and Google Scholar). Once duplicate entries and non-research articles (book reviews, editorials, commentary, etc.) were removed 453 articles remained in the composite data pool. The researchers then reviewed each article and identified 42 articles that were unrelated to the topic of Internet marketing. These 42 articles represented false positives returned from the WoS and Google Scholar search engines and were subsequently removed leaving 411 articles in the final composite article data pool for analysis.

Phase 2: classification by research strategy

Once the researchers identified the articles for the final data pool, each article was examined and categorized according to its research strategy. Due to the subjective nature of research strategy classification, content analysis methods were used for the categorization process. Figure  1 illustrates steps in the content analysis process adapted from Neuendorf ( 2002 ) and successfully employed by several similar research studies (Corley et al. 2011 ; Cumbie et al. 2005 ; Jourdan et al. 2008 ). First, the research categories were adopted from Scandura and Williams ( 2000 ) (see Table  2 ), who extended the research strategies initially described by McGrath ( 1982 ). Specifically, nine categories of research strategies were selected including: Formal theory/literature reviews, sample survey, laboratory experiment, experimental simulation, field study (primary data), field study (secondary data), field experiment, judgment task, and computer simulation.

Overview of literature analysis

Second, to guard against the threats to reliability (Neuendorf 2002 ), we performed a pilot test on articles meeting the search parameters from other top journals. That is, the articles used in the pilot test (a) were not part of the data set generated in Phase 1, and (b) the data generated from the pilot test were not included in the final data analysis for this study. Researchers independently categorized the articles in the pilot test based on the best fit among the nine research strategies. After all articles in the pilot test were categorized, the researchers compared their analyses. In instances where the independent categorizations did not match the researchers re-evaluated the article collaboratively by reviewing the research strategy definitions, discussing the disagreement thoroughly, and collaboratively assigning the article to a single category. This process allowed the researchers to develop a collaborative interpretation of the research strategy definitions. Simply stated, this pilot test served as a training session for accurately categorizing the articles for this study with respect to research strategy.

Each research strategy is defined by a specific design approach and each is also associated with certain tradeoffs that researchers must make when designing a study. These tradeoffs are inherent flaws that limit the conclusions that can be drawn from a particular research strategy. These tradeoffs refer to three aspects of a study that can vary depending on the research strategy employed. These variable aspects include: generalizability from the sample to the target population (external validity); precision in measurement and control of behavioural variables (internal and construct validity); and the issue of realism of context (Scandura and Williams 2000 ).

Cook and Campbell ( 1976 ) stated that a study has generalizability when the study has external validity across times, settings, and individuals. Formal theory/literature reviews and sample surveys have a high degree of generalizability by establishing the relationship between two constructs and illustrating that this relationship has external validity. A research strategy that has low external validity but high internal validity is the laboratory experiment. In the laboratory experiment, where the degree of measurement precision is high, cause and effect relationships may be determined, but these relationships may not be generalizable for other times, settings, and populations. While the formal theory/literature reviews and sample surveys have a high degree of generalizability and the laboratory experiment has a high degree of precision of measurement, these strategies have low degree of contextual realism. The only two strategies that maximize degree of contextual realism are field studies that use either primary or secondary data because the data is collected in an organizational setting (Scandura and Williams 2000 ).

The other four strategies maximize neither generalizability, nor degree of precision in measurement, nor degree of contextual realism. This point illustrates the futility of using only one strategy when conducting Internet marketing research. Because no single strategy can maximize all types of validity, it is best for researchers to use a variety of research strategies. Table  2 contains an overview of the nine strategies and their ranking on the three strategy tradeoffs (Scandura and Williams 2000 ).

Two coders independently reviewed and classified each article according to research strategy. Only a few articles were reviewed at one sitting to minimize coder fatigue and thus protect intercoder reliability (Neuendorf 2002 ). Upon completion of the independent classification, a tabulation of agreements and disagreements were computed, intercoder crude agreement (percent of agreement) was 91.8 % percent, and intercoder reliability using Cohen’s Kappa (Cohen 1960 ) was calculated ( k  = 0.847). These two calculations were well within the acceptable ranges for intercoder crude agreement and intercoder reliability (Neuendorf 2002 ). The reliability measures were calculated prior to discussing disagreements as mandated by Weber ( 1990 ). If the original reviewers did not agree on how a particular article was coded, an additional reviewer arbitrated the discussion of how the disputed article was to be coded. This process resolved the disputes in all cases.

Phase 3: categorization by internet marketing research topic

Typically the process of categorizing research articles by a specific research topic involves an iterative cycle of brainstorming and discussion sessions among the researchers. This iterative process helps to identify common themes within the data pool of articles. Through the collaborative discussions during this process researchers can synthesize a hierarchical structure within the literature of overarching research topics and more granular level subtopics. The final outcome is a better understanding of the current state of a particular stream of research. This iterative process was modified for this specific study on the topic of Internet marketing.

During the initial stages of the current project the researchers began investigating tentative outlets for publishing a literature review on the topic of Internet marketing. A special call for papers (CFP) on the topic of Internet marketing from the journal ‘Electronic Marketing’ was identified as a potential target journal by one of the authors. Further investigation revealed that the editors had outlined six specific research topic categories for the special CFP including: Business Models of Online Marketing, The Future of Search Strategies, The Internet Advertising Landscape, Commercial Exploitation of Web 2.0 in Consumer Marketing and in an Organizational Context, Evaluation of Online Performance, and Other Topics. Each of these six research topics was accompanied by a general definition and a few examples. The researchers adopted these six research topics to categorize the articles in the data pool.

A second pilot study was performed mirroring the first pilot test as a means of training for categorizing articles by research topic. Researchers independently categorized the articles in the pilot test based on the best fit among the six research topics. After all articles in the pilot test were categorized, the researchers compared their analyses. In instances where the independent categorizations did not match, the researchers re-evaluated the article collaboratively by reviewing the research category definitions, discussing the disagreement thoroughly, and collaboratively assigning the article to a single category. This process allowed the researchers to develop a collaborative interpretation of the research topic definitions (see Table  3 ).

Once we established the category definitions, we independently placed each article in one Internet marketing category. As before, we categorized only a few articles at a time to minimize coder fatigue and thus protect intercoder reliability (Neuendorf 2002 ). Upon completion of the classification process, we tabulated agreements and disagreements, intercoder crude agreement (percent of agreement) was 86.2 %, and intercoder reliability using Cohen’s Kappa (Cohen 1960 ) for each category was calculated ( k  = .08137). Again, the latter two calculations were well within the acceptable ranges (Neuendorf 2002 ). We again calculated the reliability measures prior to discussing disagreements as mandated by Weber ( 1990 ). If the original reviewers did not agree on how a particular article was coded, a third reviewer arbitrated the discussion of how the disputed article was to be coded. This process also resolved the disputes in all cases.

In order to identify gaps and needs in the research (Webster and Watson 2002 ), we hope to paint a representative landscape of the current Internet marketing literature base in order to influence the direction of future research efforts in this important area of study. In order to examine the current state of this research, the authors conducted a literature review and analysis in three phases. Phase 1 accumulated a representative pool of Internet marketing articles, and the articles were then analyzed with respect to year of publication and journal. Phase 2 contains a short discussion of the research strategies set forth by Scandura and Williams ( 2000 ) and the results of the classification of the articles by those research strategies. Phase 3 involved the creation and use of six Internet marketing research topics, a short discussion of each topic, and the results of the classification of each article within the research topics. These results are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Results of phase 1

Using the described search criteria within the selected journals, we collected a total of 411 articles (For the complete list of articles in our sample, see Appendix A .) In phase 1, we further analyzed the articles’ year of publication and journal. Figure  2 shows the number of articles per year in our sample. Please note that 2011 only represents articles acquired using WoS and Google Scholar search engines which were available at the time (August 2011) the search was conducted. There is a general increasing trend over the 18 year period, but no articles were found to be published in 1994 & 1996. The year 2010 shows the most activity with 52 articles (12.7 %). With Internet marketing issues becoming ever more important to researchers and practitioners, this comes as no surprise. Understanding 2011 was only a partial year in our sample, we were not concerned by the difference in quantity of publications over time.

Number of Internet Marketing Articles Published Per Year

In order to identify the research strategies used by Internet marketing research articles in the top 30 Information Systems (IS) journals in our sample, Table  4 was created to show the number of Internet marketing articles in each journal broken down by research strategy. This table illustrates the high level of Internet marketing publications that use the Formal Theory/Literature Review, Sample Survey, Field Study – Primary, and Field Study – Secondary research strategies. This indicates a body of research that is still in the exploratory stages. This table also illustrates the proclivity of some journals to accept certain research strategies over others. For example, the journals Decision Support Systems , International Journal of Electronic Commerce , and Journal of Management Information Systems had articles in this data set using seven of the nine research strategies. With this information, researchers that favour certain research strategies can target their research papers to journals that favour these strategies.

Number of Internet Marketing Articles Published in Each Research Strategy Category

Results of phase 2

The results of the categorization of the 411 articles according to the nine research strategies described by Scandura and Williams ( 2000 ) are summarized in Fig.  3 and Table  5 . Of the 411 articles, 110 articles (26.8 %) were classified as Formal Theory/Literature review making it the most prevalent research strategy. This was followed by Sample Survey with 94 articles (or 22.9 %), Field Study – Secondary Data with 91 articles (22.1 %), Field Study – Primary Data with 66 articles (16.1 %), and Computer Simulation with 25 articles (6.1 %). These five research strategies composed 94 % of the articles in the sample. No articles were classified as a Judgment Task. So, the remaining three research strategies represented the remaining six percent of the sample which included Lab Experiment with 11 articles (2.7 %), Field Experiment with 11 articles (2.7 %), and Experimental Simulation with 3 articles (0.7 %).

Further analysis showing the research strategies over the 18 year period from 1994 to August 2011 (Table  6 ) illustrates that Formal Theory/Literature Review, Sample Survey, Field Study – Secondary Data, and Field Study – Primary Data are represented in almost every year of the timeframe. No articles were found in the years 1994 & 1996, and only one article was found in 1995. These four strategies are exploratory in nature and indicate the beginnings of a body of research (Scandura and Williams 2000 ). Further categorization and analysis of the articles with respect to Internet marketing topic categories was conducted in the third phase of this research project.

Results of phase 3

Table  7 shows the number of articles per Internet marketing research topic category. These six categories provided a topic area classification for all of the 411 articles in our research sample. Of the 411 articles, 41.1 % were classified as ‘Business Models of Online Marketing’ making it the most prevalent Internet marketing topic category. This category was followed by ‘The Internet Advertising Landscape’ (22.4 %), ‘Evaluation of Online Performance’ (16.5 %), and ‘Other’ (10.0 %). These four research strategies accounted for 90 % of the articles in the sample. The topic categories titled ‘Commercial Exploitation of Web 2.0 in Consumer Marketing and in an Organizational Context’ and ‘The Future of Search Strategies’ represented the remaining six per cent (5.8 %) and four percent (4.1 %) of the articles. This illustration of the share of Internet marketing research that is represented by each category reveals the amount of attention topic categories of Internet marketing research have historically received among the top 30 IS journals.

By plotting Internet marketing research topics against research strategies (Table  8 ), many of the gaps in Internet marketing research are exposed. The gaps are at the intersection of less used methodologies (Judgement Task, Experimental Simulation, Lab Experiment) and less studied domains in Internet marketing (Search Strategies and Web 2.0). We believe these gaps exist for two reasons. First, some of these research strategies are not prevalent in IS research, and some top IS journals do not accept papers that use unusual research strategies. So, researchers avoid unorthodox strategies. The reason some of these categories have not been studied is because they represent relatively new phenomena, and the research has not caught up with the business reality. The great news for researchers interested in Internet marketing is that this domain should provide research opportunities for years to come. To better illustrate the categorization process, Table  9 presents a sample of articles noting their corresponding research strategy and research topic. These articles were randomly selected as typical examples and are not meant to serve as hallmarks of a particular research strategy or research topic within Internet marketing research.

About half (49 %) of the journal articles in this study use the Formal Theory/Literature Review and Sample Survey research strategies indicating the exploratory nature of the current research. We speculate the strategies used to study these topics were prevalent for several reasons. First, these strategies are the most appropriate for the early stages of research. In these exploratory years of Internet marketing research, formal theory/literature reviews are appropriate in order to determine what other strategies are being used in the research, define the topics under investigation, and find research in reference disciplines that are conducting similar research. Second, many researchers in business schools may prefer to administer sample surveys and field studies instead of laboratory experiment, experimental simulation, judgment task, and computer simulation because of the preferences for certain research strategies in the top journals in Information Systems and Marketing. Finally, organizations are less likely to commit to certain strategies (i.e. primary & secondary field studies and field experiments) because these strategies are more expensive for the organizations. These types of research strategies are very labour intensive to the organization being studied because records will need to be examined, personnel will need to be interviewed, and senior managers will be required to devote large amounts of their expensive time to help facilitate the research project. It is interesting to note that many of the articles coded as Field Study – Secondary and Computer Simulation used historical auction and pricing data freely available from the World Wide Web to avoid this issue.

Investigating the marketing literature

In order to investigate the Internet marketing research being conducted in the top Marketing Journals, we also performed a smaller literature review using the top five ranked marketing research journals following the same methodology previously described for the top 30 ranked IS journals. This list was compiled from three recent marketing journal rankings (Hofacker et al. 2009 ; Moussa and Touzani 2010 ; and Polonsky and Whitelaw 2006 ). The data pool included 24 articles, and after screening out irrelevant articles (book reviews, opinion pieces, etc.) the remaining 22 articles were categorized by research strategy and research topic (see Appendix B ). Upon completion of the categorization process, we tabulated agreements and disagreements. Intercoder crude agreement (percent of agreement) was 95.4 % for research strategy and 90.9 % for research topic. Cohen’s Kappa could not be calculated because the sample size was too small. These two calculations were well within the acceptable ranges (Neuendorf 2002 ). The results of the literature review of the top five marketing journals are displayed in Tables  10 and 11 .

The number of articles published on the topic of Internet marketing in each of the top five ranked marketing journals is presented in Table  10 . It is interesting to note that no articles were found in Journal of Consumer Research while 16 of the 22 (72.7 %) articles in the data pool were published in Marketing Science . This could indicate (a) Marketing Science is a top outlet for Internet marketing research or (b) the other Marketing journals use keywords other than “Internet marketing” to classify this area of research. The number of articles categorized based on both research strategy and research topic is presented in Table  11 . The three research strategies with the largest number of articles among the top five marketing journals were “Formal Theory / Lit Review” (45.5 %), “Field Study - Secondary” (27.3 %), and “Field Study – Primary” (18.2 %). This indicates, like the research published in the top IS journals, the Internet marketing research published in the top marketing journals is also still in the exploratory stages.

Fourteen of the twenty-two articles (63.6 %) were categorized within the research topic labelled “the Internet Advertising Landscape” while no articles were categorized within the research topics “Commercial Exploitation of Web 2.0” or “Evaluation of Online Performance.” In contrast to the analysis of the top thirty ranked IS journals in which the top three research topics were “Business Models of Online Marketing” (41.1 %), “the Internet Advertising Landscape” (22.4 %), and Evaluation of Online Performance (16.5 %); the top three research topics within the top five marketing journals were “the Internet marketing Landscape” (63.6 %), “Business Models of Online Marketing” (13.6 %), and “Other Topics” (13.6 %). Due to the small number of articles in the sample, it is difficult to make any statements regarding trends in the Internet marketing research in the top Marketing journals.

Limitations and directions for future research

The current analysis of the Internet marketing literature is not without limitations and should be offset with future efforts. In summary, this literature review highlights the upward trend of Internet marketing research but also the limitations of both the research strategies employed and the topics investigated. The authors would suggest future literature reviews should expand article searches to full article text searches, search a broader domain of research outlets, and include other Internet marketing related search terms. Our literature analysis is meant to serve as a representative sample of articles and not a comprehensive or exhaustive analysis of the entire population of articles published on the topic of ‘Internet marketing.’ To further investigate this body of research, future research studies could explore the diversity of the Internet marketing research domain (Lee et al. 2007 ) or revisit Ngai and Wat’s ( 2002 ) electronic commerce literature review to assess the progress of that research stream. Other studies could take a more in depth look at the various business models or Internet advertising strategies associated with Internet marketing by reviewing the literature in areas such as electronic auctions, search strategies, social media, e-tailing, and various other research domains.

As Internet marketing continues to grow, future studies should consider the role of research relative to generalizability, precision of measure, and realism of context. Future research efforts should adopt more precise measures of what is occurring in this domain. Much of the research in our sample reports the new technologies and issues in Internet marketing without attempting to explain the fundamental issues of IS research. This is to be expected as this research domain appears to still be in the exploratory stages. For researchers to continue to attempt to answer the important questions in Internet marketing, future studies need to employ a wider variety of research strategies to investigate these important issues. Scandura and Williams ( 2000 ) stated that looking at research strategies employed over time by triangulation in a given subject area can provide useful insights into how theories are developing. In addition to the lack of variety in research strategy, very little triangulation has occurred during the timeframe used to conduct this literature review. This absence of coordinated theory development causes the research in Internet marketing to appear haphazard and unfocused.

However, the good news is that many of the research strategies and topics in this research are available for future research efforts. Of particular interest to researchers and practitioners would be studies observing consumer behaviour in real time using lab and field experiments or measuring purchasing behaviour from using stored click stream data in a secondary field study. We encourage researchers in fields of IS and Marketing to continue developing the body of research on this important topic using cross-disciplinary teams composed of researchers from business and the behavioural sciences. In addition, future studies could consider the six Internet marketing categories with respect to the research strategies. More specifically, each ‘zero’ appearing in Tables  8 and 11 represent gaps in the literature which provide countless opportunities for researchers to build upon the current body of published research. With this in mind, we hope this research analysis lays a foundation for developing a more complete body of knowledge relative to Internet marketing research within the fields of Information Systems and Marketing.

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Appendix A – data sample (411 information systems articles)

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Albrecht, C. C., Dean, D. L., & Hansen, J. V. (2005). Marketplace and technology standards for B2B e-commerce: progress, challenges, and the state of the art. Information & Management, 42 (6), 865–875. doi: 10.1016/j.im.2004.09.003

Allen, G., & Wu, J. A. (2010). How well do shopbots represent online markets? A study of shopbots’ vendor coverage strategy. European Journal of Information Systems, 19 (3), 257–272. doi: 10.1057/ejis.2010.6

Amblee, N., & Bui, T. (2008). Can brand reputation improve the odds of being reviewed on-line? International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 12 (3), 11–28.

Amir, Y., Awerbuch, B., & Borgstrom, R. S. (2000). A cost-benefit framework for online management of a metacomputing system. Decision Support Systems, 28 (1–2), 155–164. doi: 10.1016/s0167-9236(99)00081-0

Anckar, B., & Walden, P. (2000). Destination Maui? An exploratory assessment of the efficacy of self-booking in travel. Electronic Markets, 10 (2), 110–119.

Animesh, A., Ramachandran, V., & Viswanathan, S. (2010). Quality Uncertainty and the Performance of Online Sponsored Search Markets: An Empirical Investigation. Information Systems Research, 21 (1), 190–201. doi: 10.1287/isre.1080.0222

Animesh, A., Viswanathan, S., & Agarwal, R. (2011). Competing “Creatively” in Sponsored Search Markets: The Effect of Rank, Differentiation Strategy, and Competition on Performance. Information Systems Research, 22 (1), 153–169.

Antony, S., Lin, Z. X., & Xu, B. (2006). Determinants of escrow service adoption in consumer-to-consumer online auction market: An experimental study. Decision Support Systems, 42 (3), 1889–1900. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2006.04.012

Apigian, C. H., Ragu-Nathan, B. S., & Ragu-Nathan, T. (2006). Strategic profiles and Internet Performance: An empirical investigation into the development of a strategic Internet system. Information & Management, 43 (4), 455–468.

Aron, R., & Clemons, E. K. (2001). Achieving the optimal balance between investment in quality and investment in self-promotion for information products. Journal of Management Information Systems, 18 (2), 65–88.

Arunkundram, R., & Sundararajan, A. (1998). An economic analysis of electronic secondary markets: installed base, technology, durability and firm profitability. Decision Support Systems, 24 (1), 3–16. doi: 10.1016/s0167-9236(98)00059-1

Ayanso, A., & Yoogalingam, R. (2009). Profiling Retail Web Site Functionalities and Conversion Rates: A Cluster Analysis. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 14 (1), 79–113. doi: 10.2753/jec1086-4415140103

Ba, S., Stallaert, J., Whinston, A. B., & Zhang, H. (2005). Choice of transaction channels: The effects of product characteristics on market evolution. Journal of Management Information Systems, 21 (4), 173–197.

Bai, X. (2011). Predicting consumer sentiments from online text. Decision Support Systems, 50 (4), 732–742. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2010.08.024

Bakos, J. Y., & Nault, B. R. (1997). Ownership and investment in electronic networks. Information Systems Research, 8 (4), 321–341. doi: 10.1287/isre.8.4.321

Bakos, Y., & Katsamakas, E. (2008). Design and ownership of two-sided networks: Implications for Internet platforms. Journal of Management Information Systems, 25 (2), 171–202. doi: 10.2753/mis0742-1222250208

Bakos, Y., Lucas, H. C., Oh, W., Simon, G., Viswanathan, S., & Weber, B. W. (2005). The impact of e-commerce on competition in the retail brokerage industry. Information Systems Research, 16 (4), 352–371. doi: 10.1287/isre.1050.0064

Bampo, M., Ewing, M. T., Mather, D. R., Stewart, D., & Wallace, M. (2008). The effects of the social structure of digital networks on viral marketing performance. Information Systems Research, 19 (3), 273–290.

Bapna, R., Chang, S. A., Goes, P., & Gupta, A. (2009). Overlapping online auctions: empirical characterization of bidder strategies and auction prices. MIS Quarterly, 33 (4), 763–783.

Bapna, R., Goes, P., & Gupta, A. (2003). Replicating online Yankee auctions to analyze auctioneers’ and bidders’ strategies. Information Systems Research, 14 (3), 244–268. doi: 10.1287/isre.14.3.244.16562

Bapna, R., Jank, W., & Shmueli, G. (2008). Price formation and its dynamics in online auctions. Decision Support Systems, 44 (3), 641–656. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2007.09.004

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Basu, A., & Muylle, S. (2003). Online support for commerce processes by web retailers* 1. Decision Support Systems, 34 (4), 379–395.

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Belanger, F., Hiller, J. S., & Smith, W. J. (2002). Trustworthiness in electronic commerce: the role of privacy, security, and site attributes. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 11 (3–4), 245–270.

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Benbunan-Fich, R., & Fich, E. M. (2004). Effects of Web traffic announcements on firm value. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 8 (4), 161–181.

Bergen, M. E., Kauffman, R. J., & Lee, D. (2005). Beyond the hype of frictionless markets: Evidence of heterogeneity in price rigidity on the Internet. Journal of Management Information Systems, 22 (2), 57–89.

Bhargava, H. K., & Choudhary, V. (2004). Economics of an information intermediary with aggregation benefits. Information Systems Research, 15 (1), 22–36. doi: 10.1287/isre.1040.0014

Bhatnagar, A., & Papatla, P. (2001). Identifying locations for targeted advertising on the Internet. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 5 (3), 23–44.

Bhattacharjee, S., Gopal, R., Lertwachara, K., & Marsden, J. R. (2006). Whatever happened to payola? An empirical analysis of online music sharing. Decision Support Systems, 42 (1), 104–120.

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Bock, G. W., Lee, S. Y. T., & Li, H. Y. (2007). Price comparison and price dispersion: products and retailers at different Internet maturity stages. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 11 (4), 101–124.

Bockstedt, J. C., Kauffman, R. J., & Riggins, F. J. (2006). The move to artist-led on-line music distribution: A theory-based assessment and prospects for structural changes in the digital music market. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 10 (3), 7–38. doi: 10.2753/jec1086-4415100301

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Bunduchi, R. (2005). Business relationships in Internet-based electronic markets: the role of goodwill trust and transaction costs. Information Systems Journal, 15 (4), 321–341. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2575.2005.00199.x

Burgess, S., Sellitto, C., Cox, C., & Buultjens, J. (2009). Trust perceptions of online travel information by different content creators: Some social and legal implications. Information Systems Frontiers , 1–15.

Byers, R. E., & Lederer, P. J. (2001). Retail bank services strategy: A model of traditional, electronic, and mixed distribution choices. Journal of Management Information Systems, 18 (2), 133–156.

Cao, Q., Duan, W., & Gan, Q. (2010). Exploring Determinants of Voting for the. Decision Support Systems .

Cao, Y., Gruca, T. S., & Klemz, B. R. (2003). Internet pricing, price satisfaction, and customer satisfaction. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 8 (2), 31–50.

Castañeda, J. A., Muñoz-Leiva, F., & Luque, T. (2007). Web Acceptance Model (WAM): Moderating effects of user experience. Information & Management, 44 (4), 384–396.

Cazier, J. A., Shao, B. B. M., & Louis, R. D. S. (2007). Sharing information and building trust through value congruence. Information Systems Frontiers, 9 (5), 515–529.

Chang, H. H., & Chen, S. W. (2009). Consumer perception of interface quality, security, and loyalty in electronic commerce. Information & Management, 46 (7), 411–417.

Chang, M. K., Cheung, W. M., & Lai, V. S. (2005). Literature derived reference models for the adoption of online shopping. Information & Management, 42 (4), 543–559. doi: 10.1016/s0378-7206(04)00051-5

Changa, K. C., Jackson, J., & Grover, V. (2003). E-commerce and corporate strategy: an executive perspective. Information & Management, 40 (7), 663–675. doi: 10.1016/s0378-7206(02)00095-2

Chellappa, R. K., & Kumar, K. R. (2005). Examining the role of “Free” product-augmenting Online services in pricing and customer retention strategies. Journal of Management Information Systems, 22 (1), 355–377.

Chellappa, R. K., & Shivendu, S. (2003). Economic implications of variable technology standards for movie piracy in a global context. Journal of Management Information Systems, 20 (2), 137–168.

Chellappa, R. K., Sin, R. G., & Siddarth, S. (2011). Price Formats as a Source of Price Dispersion: A Study of Online and Offline Prices in the Domestic US Airline Markets. Information Systems Research, 22 (1), 83–98. doi: 10.1287/isre.1090.0264

Chen, C. C., Wu, C. S., & Wu, R. C. F. (2006). e-Service enhancement priority matrix: The case of an IC foundry company. Information & Management, 43 (5), 572–586. doi: 10.1016/j.im.2006.01.002

Chen, L. D., Gillenson, M. L., & Sherrell, D. L. (2002). Enticing online consumers: an extended technology acceptance perspective. Information & Management, 39 (8), 705–719. doi: 10.1016/s0378-7206(01)00127-6

Chen, P. Y., & Hitt, L. M. (2002). Measuring switching costs and the determinants of customer retention in Internet-enabled businesses: A study of the Online brokerage industry. Information Systems Research, 13 (3), 255–274. doi: 10.1287/isre.13.3.255.78

Cheng, F. F., & Wu, C. S. (2010). Debiasing the framing effect: The effect of warning and involvement. Decision Support Systems, 49 (3), 328–334.

Cheng, H. K., & Dogan, K. (2008). Customer-centric marketing with Internet coupons. Decision Support Systems, 44 (3), 606–620. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2007.09.001

Cheng, T. C. E., Lam, D. Y. C., & Yeung, A. C. L. (2006). Adoption of Internet banking: An empirical study in Hong Kong. Decision Support Systems, 42 (3), 1558–1572. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2006.01.002

Cheng, Z., & Nault, B. R. (2007). Internet channel entry: retail coverage and entry cost advantage. Information Technology & Management, 8 (2), 111–132. doi: 10.1007/s10799-007-0015-9

Cheung, K. W., Kwok, J. T., Law, M. H., & Tsui, K. C. (2003). Mining customer product rating for personalized marketing. Decision Support Systems, 35 (2), 231–243. doi: 10.1016/s0167-9236(02)00108-2

Chiou, W. C., Lin, C. C., & Perng, C. (2010). A strategic framework for website evaluation based on a review of the literature from 1995–2006. Information & Management, 47 (5–6), 282–290.

Chircu, A. M., & Kauffman, R. J. (2000a). Limits to value in electronic commerce-related IT investments. Journal of Management Information Systems, 17 (2), 59–80.

Chircu, A. M., & Kauffman, R. J. (2000b). Reintermediation strategies in business-to-business electronic commerce. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 4 (4), 7–42.

Chircu, A. M., & Mahajan, V. (2006). Managing electronic commerce retail transaction costs for customer value. Decision Support Systems, 42 (2), 898–914. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2005.07.011

Cho, V. (2006a). Factors in the adoption of third-party B2B portals in the textile industry. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 46 (3), 18–31.

Cho, V. (2006b). A study of the roles of trusts and risks in information-oriented online legal services using an integrated model. Information & Management, 43 (4), 502–520. doi: 10.1016/j.im.2005.12.002

Choi, J., Lee, S. M., & Soriano, D. R. (2009). An empirical study of user acceptance of fee-based online content. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 49 (3), 60–70.

Choudhary, V. (2010). Use of pricing schemes for differentiating information goods. Information Systems Research, 21 (1), 78.

Choudhury, V., & Karahanna, E. (2008). The relative advantage of electronic channels: A multidimensional view. MIS Quarterly, 32 (1), 179–200.

Christiaanse, E., Van Diepen, T., & Damsgaard, J. (2004). Proprietary versus Internet technologies and the adoption and impact of electronic marketplaces. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 13 (2), 151–165. doi: 10.1016/j.jsis.2004.02.004

Chua, C. E. H., & Wareham, J. (2008). Parasitism and Internet auction fraud: An exploration. Information and Organization, 18 (4), 303–333. doi: 10.1016/j.infoandorg.2008.01.001

Chua, C. E. H., Wareham, J., & Robey, D. (2007). The role of online trading communities in managing Internet auction fraud. MIS Quarterly, 31 (4), 759–781.

Chun, S. H., & Kim, J. C. (2005). Pricing strategies in B2C electronic commerce: analytical and empirical approaches. Decision Support Systems, 40 (2), 375–388. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2004.04.012

Clemons, E. K. (2009a). Business models for monetizing Internet applications and Web sites: Experience, theory, and predictions. Journal of Management Information Systems, 26 (2), 15–41.

Clemons, E. K. (2009b). The complex problem of monetizing virtual electronic social networks. Decision Support Systems, 48 (1), 46–56.

Crowston, K., & Myers, M. D. (2004). Information technology and the transformation of industries: three research perspectives. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 13 (1), 5–28. doi: 10.1016/j.jsis.2004.02.001

Currie, W. L., & Parikh, M. A. (2006). Value creation in web services: An integrative model. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 15 (2), 153–174. doi: 10.1016/j.jsis.2005.10.001

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de Valck, K., van Bruggen, G. H., & Wierenga, B. (2009). Virtual communities: A marketing perspective. Decision Support Systems, 47 (3), 185–203. doi: 10.1016/j.dss.2009.02.008

De Wulf, K., Schillewaert, N., Muylle, S., & Rangarajan, D. (2006). The role of pleasure in web site success. Information & Management, 43 (4), 434–446.

Dehning, B., Richardson, V. J., Urbaczewski, A., & Wells, J. D. (2004). Reexamining the value relevance of e-commerce initiatives. Journal of Management Information Systems, 21 (1), 55–82.

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Corley, J.K., Jourdan, Z. & Ingram, W.R. Internet marketing: a content analysis of the research. Electron Markets 23 , 177–204 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-012-0118-y

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Issue Date : September 2013

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Conducting Online Market Research: Tips and Tools

How to use online market research tools, including search techniques and tips for using the internet for researching your competition and market..

Your may alread y be conducting online market research for your business-;but you may not know it. Some of the easiest to use and most common tools are located right at your fingertips. Web searches, online questionnaires, customer feedback forms-;they all help you gather information about your market, your customers, and your future business prospects.

The advent of the Internet has presented small businesses with a wealth of additional resources to use in conducting free or low-cost market research. The following pages will describe the different types of tools to conduct online market research, go over the general categories of market research, and advise you how to create the best online questionnaires.

Online Market Research Tools

The following techniques can be used to gather market information with the help of a few mouse clicks and keystrokes:

• Keyword Search. You know how to do a simple Web search using search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Take that a step farther by searching for "keywords" that people would use to find your type of products or services on the Internet. See how much interest there is in these keywords -- and how many competitors you have in this market. Keyword searches can also help remind you of product niches that you might not have considered. There are other reasons to conduct keyword searches. 'First, you're going to be reminded of product niches that you might not of thought of.' says Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide, an online guide to search engines, portals and directories. 'Second, these services will also give you a guesstimate of how many existing sites already use that phrase,' Laycock continues. 'How many existing sites already offer that product.' WordTracker and Trellian's Keyword Discovery are popular keyword search engines.
• Competitor Links. A traditional search engine can also help you check out your competitors, their prices, and their offerings. Try typing 'link:www.[competitor's name].com' into Google to find out how many other sites link to your competitor's website. 'It is a great way to see a competitor's link development and PR campaigns,' says Shari Thurow, Web expert and author of the upcoming book Search Engine Visibility. 'Is the competitor promoting a product or service similar to your own? Maybe you can get publicity because you have a new or better product.'
• Read Blogs. Blogs are updated much more regularly than traditional websites and, therefore, they can be another gauge of public opinion. Search blogs by using blog-specific search engines, such as Technorati or Nielsen BuzzMetrics' Blogpulse . 'Blogs tend to move at a faster pace and be more informal in tone, so you're more likely to pick up conversation about a new product type or need on a blog than on a standard web site,' Laycock says.
• Conduct Online Surveys. Another way to gauge public opinion is through online surveys. While not as scientific as in-person or phone surveys that use a random sampling of the population, online surveys are a low-cost way to do market research about whether an idea or a product will be appealing to consumers. Now many companies offer to conduct online research for you or give your company the tools to carry out your own surveying. Some online survey companies include EZquestionnaire , KeySurvey , and WebSurveyor .

Research Tools and Techniques

There are a variety of types of market research tools -- both offline and online -- that are used by many large businesses and can be available to small and mid-sized businesses. When these techniques involve people, researchers use questionnaires administered in written form or person-to-person, either by personal or telephone interview, or increasingly online. Questionnaires may be closed-end or open-ended. The first type provides users choices to a question ("excellent," "good," "fair") whereas open-ended surveys solicit spontaneous reactions and capture these as given. Focus groups are a kind of opinion-solicitation but without a questionnaire; people interact with products, messages, or images and discuss them. Observers evaluate what they hear.

Major categories are as follows:

• Audience Research. Audience research is aimed at discovering who is listening, watching, or reading radio, TV, and print media respectively. Such studies in part profile the audience and in part determine the popularity of the medium or portions of it.
• Product Research. Product tests, of course, directly relate to use of the product. Good examples are tasting tests used to pick the most popular flavors-;and consumer tests of vehicle or device prototypes to uncover problematical features or designs.
• Brand Analysis. Brand research has similar profiling features ("Who uses this brand?") and also aims at identifying the reasons for brand loyalty or fickleness.
• Psychological Profiling. Psychological profiling aims at construction profiles of customers by temperament, lifestyle, income, and other factors and tying such types to consumption patterns and media patronage.
• Scanner Research. Scanner research uses checkout counter scans of transactions to develop patterns for all manner of end uses, including stocking, of course. From a marketing point of view, scans can also help users track the success of coupons and to establish linkages between products.
• Database Research. Also known as database "mining," this form of research attempts to exploit all kinds of data on hand on customers-;which frequently have other revealing aspects. Purchase records, for example, can reveal the buying habits of different income groups-;the income classification of accounts taking place by census tract matching. Data on average income by census tract can be obtained from the Bureau of the Census.
• Post-sale or Consumer Satisfaction Research. Post-consumer surveys are familiar to many consumers from telephone calls that follow having a car serviced or calling help-lines for computer- or Internet-related problems. In part such surveys are intended to determine if the customer was satisfied. In part this additional attention is intended also to build good will and word-of-mouth advertising for the service provider.

Writing Online Questionnaires

When it comes to using Web-based surveys, small businesses should stick to a few simple but important rules:

• The Shorter the Better. Don't alienate survey takers with long questionnaires. Limit yourself to 25 questions, which should take people five to seven minutes to finish, says Mary Malaszek, owner of Market Directions, a Boston market-research firm that works with businesses of all sizes. If surveys are much longer, people will abandon them 'and then you can't use them, and the next time you send them a survey they won't even open it,' she says. Other methods for keeping surveys short, according to a SensorPro white paper on online survey guidelines: make the first page simple, present answer options in multiple columns or a drop-down box, and put a status bar at the top of each question page so respondents know how close they are to being finished.
• Avoid Open-Ended Questions. Since people want to zip through a survey, don't include a lot of open-ended questions where they have to type out the answers. Close-ended questions they can click on a button to answer-;Yes, No, Maybe, Never, Often-;work much better, Malaszek says. Companies can use close-ended questions to get the same kind of in-depth analysis open-ended questions provide by using rankings scales, which ask a respondent to rate something on some type of scale, 1 to 5, or 1 to 10, she says.
• Be Persistent. If you're asking customers or vendors to take a survey, it's okay to send more than one invitation, especially to people who've previously indicated they would be willing to participate. Just make sure you've got people's permission, so they don't think you're spamming them, the survey experts say.
• Be Patient. Businesses decide they want to do a survey then get impatient when they can't get the results right away, Malaszek says. Even though online surveys reduce some of the work, they take time to design and administer, and when the results are in, more time to interpret. It's a good idea to pick one person to shepherd the process, she says.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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McQuarrie, Edward F. The Market Research Toolbox: A Concise Guide for Beginners. Sage Publications, 15 June 2005.

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Vincour, M. Richard. "When Your Customer Speaks, Listen." American Printer. 1 April 2006.

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How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples. 

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A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research  using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words. 

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email. 

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched. 

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website. 

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above  customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake. 

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

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Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?  

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions. 

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?” 

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

 → Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by 

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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Home › Blog › Online Market Research Methods to Take Your Products to the Next Level

Online Market Research Methods to Take Your Products to the Next Level

• by Mushegh Hakobjanyan
• June 26, 2023

Conducting online market research can be a very effective tool for better understanding your target audience, how people feel about your products, and how you should shape your future marketing strategy. In fact, 53% of consumers do online research on a regular basis, and studies have shown that 95% of people read online reviews before making a purchase.

In this article, we will examine market research methods and the different forms they take, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of different types.

What Is Online Market Research?

Online market research is market research that uses online data – both your own and that of other companies – to learn more about your target audience and scale your offerings appropriately.

Successful online market research can help your business grow faster and more effectively. It holds several advantages over in-person research, including:

• Much lower costs. Surveys conducted by email, for example, can cost between $3000-5000, as opposed to offline surveys that can cost $100,000 or more. This includes saved costs on facilities, and saved time for participants as they do not have to travel to take part.
• Greater potential representation of people from different time zones or geographical areas.
• Ease of data storage. Asking questions online automatically allows answers to be stored and filed for analysis and archival purposes.
• A greater degree of anonymity and honesty from respondents. Regardless of whether questions are open-ended, multiple choice, or of other sorts, people can feel more comfortable being honest knowing that they can be anonymous.

There are also some disadvantages to conducting market research online, which people should keep in mind:

• People might not place sufficient emphasis on questions to read them carefully if they don’t have a distinct “event” to go to. They could be distracted by other things and simply check off answers for the sake of doing so.
• There is a risk of some participants not fully understanding certain questions. When this happens, people have no recourse to clarify or ask follow-up questions.

Despite the limitations, online market research certainly has enough benefits that it can provide very useful insights into business trends and facts for businesses who conduct it. It can be an effective way of generating behavioral targeting ideas to better understand your consumer base.

Online Market Research Methods

Online market research consists of two different types of approaches depending on whether a company is conducting its own research or using research that has already been conducted by others. They are referred to as primary and secondary methods. 

Primary Market Research

Primary market research is research that involves the collection and analysis of a company’s own data. The data that is used in analyses is only visible to the company itself. Primary market research involves the use of methods such as market research surveys, online focus groups, and interviews. Offline primary resear ch also includes the use of observation groups.

In conducting primary market research, you are aiming to gather information about your target audience and their preferences in order to refine your offerings more appropriately. 

One of the distinguishing features of primary research is that the groups you collect information from are ones that reflect your target audience. That is, they have similar characteristics in common, and the data that you collect is likely to match that, which will apply to your company. 

The advantages of primary market research are the following:

• The research you conduct in using primary research methods is fully your own. You do not have to share it with people outside your company, and in conducting future analyses, you have reliable bases to work from in that you will already be familiar with your existing data.
• In conducting primary research, you have control over how you want to formulate processes, whether they be surveys, interviews, or other methods. The data that you receive will reflect precisely the initial purpose of your research.
• You have the opportunity to focus on your own business’ goals and concerns, as opposed to looking at broader business concerns within your industry, your geographical area, etc. You can delve as deep into your chosen research areas as you want. 

There are also some disadvantages to doing this type of research that you should keep in mind:

• There is a significant amount of time involved in planning, carrying out, and analyzing primary research. Some companies don’t have the resources necessary to do this. Although online tools have made it easier in recent years, conducting your own research is still more time consuming than accessing secondary research.
• Having the skill base to know how to conduct a proper research experiment can be complicated. You need to have a thorough understanding of how to carry research out and how to analyze results in order for it to be truly effective.
• Primary research only allows for a narrow sampling of any given group. Even if you choose a target group that you think represents your interests, you still only have your own chosen sample of people/categories/indicators to work with. And this doesn’t necessarily give you an accurate representation of your larger potential audience. 

Secondary Market Research

Secondary market research is research that has already been conducted by other groups that you access for your own purposes. For companies that do not have the time, resources, and money to conduct their own research, secondary market research can be useful in illustrating industry trends, demographic information, or other information that affects different aspects of industries. 

Secondary market research includes studies conducted by government agencies, trade associations, or larger businesses in a given industry that have sufficient resources to carry out large-scale research themselves. 

There are advantages to doing secondary research, rather than primary research:

• Many reports, studies, and other types of articles that have already been concluded are open to the public. This means that you can often access them without excessive difficulty and without having to pay. Many research studies are available online, and you can contact associations or government offices if you see references to studies that you would like to investigate further. Although private companies might require payments to access their information, doing so will still likely be cheaper and easier than conducting the same research yourself.
• Reading and analyzing research studies that have already come out can be beneficial in not only providing data, but bringing to light trends or issues that you might not have been aware of in your industry. They can also help shed light on shifts in industry leaders, changing demographics within your target group, or other valuable information.

There are some disadvantages to relying on this type of research, of course. They include:

• Using other entities’ work as a basis for determining your own strategy can provide an inaccurate foundation for you. 
• There could be any number of variables that are different between your company and the ones whose research you review. 
• This type of research doesn’t allow you to focus on single products or particular aspects of your business.

Qualitative and Quantitative Market Research

Market research can also be broken down into two types based upon the style of methods that researchers use. They are known as qualitative and quantitative methods, and we will provide an overview of both of them.

Qualitative Market Research

Qualitative market research is a research method that involves asking open-ended questions to groups of people in order to collect their thoughts and opinions on products and services. This type of research usually involves smaller groups of people in online focus groups or interviews.  

Both qualitative and quantitative research have distinct advantages to them. In order to really gain a solid understanding of your audience’s feelings about products, you should conduct both types of research.

Qualitative market research can be instrumental in understanding how people feel about different aspects of your business. In other words, you can gain insight into why people prefer certain types of things over others, rather than simply the numbers of them that they consume.

The advantages of using qualitative research methods over quantitative ones include:

• Using smaller groups of people allows for greater depth of answers. If you are looking to refine a product line or understand why your product might be falling in the market, you can learn more through a qualitative research study.
• You have the opportunity to choose a particular group that represents a narrow set of interests if you want to control the number of factors involved.
• Asking open-ended questions not only provides additional insight, but can serve as a basis for future discussions and research projects.

There are also disadvantages to using qualitative research methods:

• Because groups are limited in size, they might not accurately represent the opinions of the larger population.
• Qualitative research only examines particular aspects of the products being discussed, so they do not provide an overall assessment of attitudes towards products as a whole.
• In being asked open-ended questions, people might be reluctant to give honest answers.

Quantitative Research Methods

The other major type of market research is quantitative research. Qualitative research is research that aims to obtain larger-scale information from people using surveys, polls, or questionnaires to uncover trends and larger public sentiment about products or services .

Quantitative research methods offer distinctly different advantages for your business. The distinctive features of quantitative research include the following:

• Larger numbers of respondents. If you have a larger pool of people from whom you can receive responses, your results will likely be more reflective of the population as a whole. 
• Quantitative research often involves the use of random samples of the population. Random samples provide a wider representation of society. Also, it reduces the amount of bias that is often present in qualitative studies as open-ended question formation can often be skewed in favor of certain types of answers.
• Quantitative research allows for anonymity. By simply being one of many respondents in a large-scale survey or other research, participants don’t feel as if they are divulging potentially controversial or offensive opinions.

There are also some disadvantages to using quantitative methods:

• Answers might be limited or inaccurate. By not allowing people to complete open-ended questions, and therefore allowing for the inclusion of context, you might be getting skewed or inaccurate results.
• You don’t get the depth of answers that you would get using qualitative methods.
• People might pay less attention as answers are simply easy to check off and they want to get the survey (questionnaire, etc) over with.

How to Do Market Research Online

Let’s now take a closer look at some of the distinct practices involved in online market research. As we will explain, each of these types has particular advantages to it.

Online Surveys

Online surveys are surveys that are conducted online for the purpose of gaining insight or information about your target customers in order to better refine your products to conform to their needs.

Conducting online surveys can be useful for various purposes, from assessing the potential popularity of new products to better understanding customer needs regarding existing ones, and learning more about your brand popularity overall.

There are a set of steps that you should follow in conducting an online market survey:

• Figure out what you want to learn. Are you working with new products? Do you want to gauge customer satisfaction levels with a particular existing product or line of products? Do you want to improve the customer experience in general?
• Decide who you want to survey. This will be related to your goals: 
• Obviously, if you’re assessing satisfaction with a particular type of toy, for example, your target group will consist of parents. 
• If you’re trying to get information on anti-aging cream, you will target women of a certain age group who tend to use these types of creams.
• Determine as accurately as possible other factors related to your potential respondents: geographic location, income bracket, etc. This will help you hone your marketing strategy once you’ve completed the survey, and also give you more accurate results.

3. As surveys usually involve quantitative methodology , you could ask different types of questions to your participants, including: Multiple choice questions:

a. “How satisfied are you with producing X?”

• A. Very satisfied
• B. Somewhat satisfied
• C. Not satisfied

b. Numerical scale questions: “How satisfied are you with this product on a scale of 1-5?”

4. Take circumstances into consideration. With in-person surveys, this would involve things like time of day, location, etc., but of course online surveys don’t include these kinds of factors. So instead you should focus on things like platforms. What are the preferred social media of your target group? If you’re sending your survey out by email, think about whether this is really the best way to reach the group you want. If you determine that your target group is people aged 30-40 who use Facebook more than other platforms, you should consider sending out your survey via a paid post on people’s Facebook pages.

5. Calculate your results. The types of results that you want should be part of your initial design and the goals you set out from the beginning. There are many different kinds of results that you could look for, depending on your goals:

• You could look for the highest number of any given type of response. For example, if you’re trying to find out how the majority of customers feel about a particular product, you could assess what the most popular responses are.
• You could assess how many people either really like or really dislike a given product (how many rate it a 1 or a 5).
• You could rank your respondents’ results against those of the respondents in a secondary research project to compare how a similar demographic feels about a particular product type to yours.

These are just a few of the types of outcomes that you can have as research goals. What you look for all depends on your larger strategic plans and what you want to accomplish in your marketing efforts.

6. Analyze how your results fit into your overall product line and goals. Your results will influence your larger marketing strategy, and possibly individual product lines, as well.

Explore Industry Reports

A secondary research method that you can use to obtain more wide-scale information about your industry as a whole is to explore industry reports. Unlike surveys, industry reports give you information about numerous different aspects of your industry, including:

• large-scale trends in your industry over time
• detailed financial statistics that help you better understand things like consumer spending habits, typical operating costs, etc.
• Information about industry leaders and their individual statistics
• How market share is divided according to different metrics

Although obtaining industry reports can be complicated, as well as expensive, there are places that you can look for them that might save money and effort:

• The Bureau of Economic Analysis 
• Dun & Bradstreet
• Trade associations for your industry in particular

Although industry reports might be expensive to obtain copies of (you might pay $3000 or more to access a given report), the costs are far lower than those of conducting your own research.

Using a combination of the broader information to be gained from industry reports, as well as your own primary and secondary research, will together give you a much more complete picture of the particulars of your business, as well as where you stand vis-a-vis the competition and the industry in general.

Start Conversations with Focus Groups

Finally, focus groups are a way to collect potentially even more in-depth qualitative information than any of the above methods. Focus groups generally include up to ten people and involve a series of open-ended questions intended to gain insight into people’s feelings about products, services, or other aspects of business. If you’re looking to gain a deep understanding of what people like or dislike about your products, and why they feel that way, focus groups can be a very effective way to do this.

In conducting a focus group session , it is the job of the moderator to steer the conversation as he or she sees fit. Initial questions could include things like the following:

• “How do you feel about product X?”
• “How often do you use it?”
• “Is there anything you don’t like about this product?”

An effective moderator is one that asks probing follow-up questions to gain additional insight into questions, and to try to include group members that might be reluctant to speak out. Follow-up questions could include things like the following:

• “Is there anything else you’d like to add about the product?”
• “What would need to change for you to buy product X?”
• “We discussed product X in detail, but product Y less so. Is there anything about the product Y you’d like to add?”

Advantages and Disadvantages of Having Focus Groups Online

Although focus groups have traditionally been conducted in person, technology has made it possible for them to be done online by participants logging in from their own locations. This widens the possibilities for participation geographically and saves costs on facilities, transportation, etc.

However, one of the advantages of having in-person focus groups is that group members form a dynamic with each other, and the conversation is one that builds on itself. Members get ideas from other members, and the conversation ends up being a group effort in the end. This can still happen online, although some researchers believe that the lack of in-person contact can limit the natural flow of conversation.

Analysis of Results

Once you’ve completed your research, it will be time for you to analyze it. A careful analysis can provide insights into not only your original questions, but it can also reveal other aspects of your business and/or wider industry that you hadn’t considered before. 

Regardless of whether your research is qualitative or quantitative, the results that you obtain can be useful to your product line development overall. Even if you have focused a study on one particular product, for example, answers can give you insight into your larger business.

Research projects can build upon one another. Once you’ve completed a research project on a given subject, you can use the results as a foundation for further studies. And in this way, you can build your products to new levels.

Market research can help your company in innumerable ways. Whether you are a new company, or a more established one, conducting market research can help you grow, understand and resolve problems, and gain a better understanding of your products and your industry overall. Once you have the online market research tools to carry projects out, you will be better equipped to undertake studies yourself.

Conducting market research used to be a time consuming and costly undertaking, but thanks to technological advancements and the growth of online methods, it has become faster, cheaper, and more accessible for a much greater range of companies.

Mushegh Hakobjanyan

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• Glossary What Is Internet Marketing?

What Is Internet Marketing? Your Guide to Internet Marketing in 2024

Internet marketing definition.

Internet marketing is a type of marketing that promotes a business and its offerings through online channels to drive site traffic, generate leads, and increase sales.

If you’re looking to expand your marketing efforts, internet marketing is a great opportunity to reach more prospects and convert them into customers.

Want to learn more about Internet marketing? We’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ll answer these questions:

What is Internet marketing?

• What are some examples of Internet marketing?
• What are the benefits of Internet marketing?
• How can I use Internet marketing?

Why is Internet marketing important?

• How can I start building an Internet marketing strategy?

What does an Internet marketing company do?

Do i need internet marketing for my business.

Need an  Internet marketing consultant? Give us a call at 888-601-5359  or  contact us online to get in contact with one of WebFX’s talented Internet marketing consultants today!

Digital vs. Traditional Marketing

Download this guide to understand the key advantages, costs, and opportunities for each to decide which is best for your marketing strategy!

Internet marketing, also called digital marketing or online marketing, involves promoting a brand and its products or services to online audiences using the Internet and digital media.

With Internet marketing, you use a combination of online strategies to help you build better relationships with your audience and attract more interested leads.

7 Internet marketing examples

Internet marketing uses  several techniques  and strategies to drive online traffic, leads, and sales. Online marketing involves using these major strategies:

Internet marketing strategies

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
• Social media advertising
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing

Let’s go through each one:

SEO definition

SEO services is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search results. This strategy helps you appear in more relevant search results, so you can drive more qualified traffic to your site.

Much of SEO involves increasing your rank in search by using techniques to:

• Research and incorporate keywords or search terms that your target audience uses into your content
• Generate high-quality content that provides your audience with relevant answers to their questions
• Improve  user experience  by improving  web design
• Earn backlinks from authoritative sources in your industry to gain online reputation

2. Content marketing

Content marketing definition.

Content marketing strategy  focuses on sharing valuable, industry-relevant information with your audience.

With quality, relevant content, you can build up an attentive audience and get them to check out your business. Content comes in numerous forms including:

• Infographics

Content marketing is about consistently creating helpful and high-quality content. Your content must be:

• Easy to read: The vocabulary is around an 8th-grade reading level.
• Researched: It integrates your target keywords and answers your audience’s questions clearly, succinctly, and accurately.
• Unique: It adds relevant information to the discussion in your own style.
• Interesting: It provides a good experience for your reader.
• Error-free: It is grammatically correct and provides useful, accurate information.

3. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Online paid advertising generally involves  paid search  ads and display ads. Most online paid advertising functions on a pay-per-click basis, where businesses pay for the ad only when users click.

Much of the benefit of online ads comes from the fact that most online ads are less intrusive than their traditional ad counterparts like billboards or cold calling.

PPC advertising  is one of the best Internet marketing strategies to drive traffic to your site quickly at a low cost. With PPC advertising, you can easily appear high in search results, and the return is high since you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

4. Social media advertising

Social media advertising  is also another cost-effective Internet marketing strategy to start generating an online presence.

If you want to use social media advertising, you’ll need to choose which platforms you want to use to reach your audience. Popular social media advertising platforms include:

• X formerly (Twitter)

Social media platforms gather a plethora of user information, which you can use to target your ideal customers — the ones who are most interested in your offerings.

Pulling in these audiences with various engaging social media ad types will boost your traffic and engagement, as well as your sales and conversions.

5. Social media marketing

Social media networks provide a great opportunity to market online because they are easy to use to share information. That’s why  social media marketing  is a great option for your business.

With social media, you can:

• Increase brand awareness: Social media lets you have a larger online presence. You can build up your brand identity and show up as a relevant interest for your audiences. When your audience sees your presence on social media, they’ll get more familiar with your brand.
• Interact with audience members: Social media provides useful platforms for interacting with your audience one-on-one. Whenever your audience has questions, concerns, or thoughts they want to share, you can be there to provide quality interaction right when they do. Your engagement with your audience on social media can help set you apart from your competition and show that you care for your audience.
• Build your brand voice: Social media is one of the best places to show off what makes you unique. You can showcase how your quality products and services improve your audience’s life. You can also show off the relevant content that you produce.

Social media provides an essential means of engaging with your customers, building your brand voice and identity, and providing people with great customer service.

6. Email marketing

Email marketing enables you to connect one-on-one with leads interested in your products or services. There are several different types of emails you can send, but some of the most popular ones are:

• Newsletters
• Customer service
• Loyalty/rewards
• Recommendations

You can also take advantage of the advanced targeting and personalization options that come with email marketing strategies. With emails, you want to hit users with reminders and deals when they’re most likely ready to convert.

Send personalized emails to your audience when:

• You publish new content they might like: Show off your new content and get your audience to interact with your content and brand. Show that you have something in common with them.
• They look at your products and services: You can send promotions on those products or services, or recommend similar ones they might be interested in.
• They abandon a cart of products: Remind them of the items in their cart to increase the chances of them making a purchase.
• They’re celebrating a birthday or special event: Discounts and coupons sent on these days work great for getting your audience to convert.

When you personalize an email, be sure to include the subscriber’s name. It makes them feel connected to you and that you care about them enough to get to know them. Adding their name makes them more likely to engage because they’ll know the email content is specific to their interests.

Tools like EmailMarketingFX can help you efficiently and effectively personalize emails.

7. Web design

Your site’s web design is important for online marketing because it acts as your business’s central online hub. Your presence and activities on other online platforms most often lead your customers to your website where they can convert.

A good portion of  website marketing  focuses on building websites that appeal to your audience and get them to continue engaging with your site’s pages.

Having a good design means making sure that your UX is flawless. It also involves aspects like:

• Creating a modern design that suits your brand
• Implementing easy-to-use navigation and layout
• Responsive web design
• Website security
• Providing fast load times

Benefits of Internet marketing

Internet marketing allows you to connect with your customers using their preferred communication channels and build strong, long-lasting relationships with them.

Here are the benefits of Internet marketing:

• It drives a better return on investment (ROI) : Internet marketing strategies are more cost-effective than traditional marketing strategies. These strategies have a better ROI because you target more interested leads, making them more likely to convert.
• It allows you to reach more interested audiences: Online marketing enables you to reach audiences interested in your products or services wherever they may be.
• It allows you to interact with audiences regardless of the time: With automation and other Internet marketing techniques, you can stay in touch with your audience 24/7, so you can be there right when they’re ready to convert, no matter the time or time zone.
• It can be tailored to any industry and any business size: Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise, you can use Internet marketing to reach your audience, who is guaranteed to be online.
• It provides convenient ways for audiences to convert: The Internet makes it easy for your audience to convert. All it takes is the push of a button to buy, sign up, download, or contact you.

6 ways to use Internet marketing

Let us count the ways you can use Internet marketing for your business:

Ways to use Internet marketing

• Build brand awareness
• Generate website traffic
• Attract qualified leads
• Nurture and convert leads
• Reduce churn
• Improve customer satisfaction

Let’s discuss each one.

1. Build brand awareness

You can use various Internet marketing strategies to increase brand awareness, one of which is SEO.

For example, let’s say you have a veterinary clinic and want more pet owners to know about your practice. You can use SEO for veterinarians to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) when users search for terms relevant to your practice.

When your website appears and ranks in SERPs, more pet owners become aware of your practice.

2. Generate website traffic

If you want more online users to visit your website, you can employ Internet marketing strategies like PPC.

With PPC, you can drive qualified traffic to your site by displaying ads on websites and relevant SERPs. This strategy lets you reach online users who may be interested in your brand and offerings. Because they’re likely doing their research, they may click your ad and visit your site.

3. Attract qualified leads

Several Internet marketing strategies can draw prospects to your business. You can use PPC to target specific audiences and drive qualified traffic to your site.

Content marketing is also an Internet marketing strategy that attracts qualified leads. By creating helpful content that addresses your prospects’ pain points, you’re organically attracting prospects to your business.

For example, let’s say you’re in the business of outdoor recreation . By publishing content relevant to your niche, such as fishing 101 or cycling safety tips, you’re getting the attention of your prospects.

Because your content has been helpful to them, they’ll likely trust your business and engage with you.

4. Nurture and convert leads

Nurturing your leads to conversion takes a variety of Internet marketing tactics. A key strategy you can use is email marketing.

Email marketing enables you to stay in touch with your leads. You can send personalized messages such as birthday messages and special offers on products they’re interested in.

5. Reduce customer churn

Customer churn , or attrition, occurs when customers stop buying your products or subscribing to your service. To reduce attrition, you must take care of your customers and keep them satisfied.

A variety of strategies can help you reduce churn. One of them is a loyalty program , which rewards customers who repeatedly purchase or interact with you.

Social media marketing is an Internet marketing strategy that helps you retain your customers. You can create groups that cultivate a sense of community, and where you can gather their feedback and answer community questions.

6. Improve customer satisfaction

Ensuring your customers are satisfied with their experience with you is important to growing your business. That’s because satisfied customers will likely repurchase from you and refer you to other people they know.

Digital marketing strategies like email marketing and content marketing play a role in keeping your customers happy. You can conduct surveys through email to gather their feedback and sentiments on your products or their transactions so you can improve their overall experience.

Meanwhile, creating free, helpful content for your customers and prospects is a great way to show them that you’re a brand that can address their concerns.

Keep reading to learn how to use Internet marketing to grow your business.

Table of Contents

• What is Internet Marketing?
• 7 Internet Marketing Examples
• Benefits of Internet Marketing
• 6 Ways to Use Internet Marketing
• FAQ About Internet Marketing

Related Resources

• What is Ecommerce Digital Marketing?
• What is Full-Service Internet Marketing?
• What is Growth Marketing?
• What is Inbound Marketing?
• What is Marketing?
• What is Search Marketing?
• What is Web Marketing?
• 13 Signs It’s Time to Switch Internet Marketing Companies
• 5 Essentials for Understanding Internet Marketing
• 9 Best Internet Marketing Strategies for Growing Your Business

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Faq about internet marketing.

Got lingering questions about Internet marketing? We’ve got answers!

Internet marketing is important because it expands a business’s reach and allows them to connect with more leads interested in their business.

The importance of Internet marketing lies in that it best aligns with the way consumers prefer to discover and purchase products and services.

How do I create an Internet marketing strategy?

Internet marketing allows you to communicate your brand’s message to your audience, so when building your Internet marketing strategy, it’s essential to keep your audience and brand in mind.

Use these four steps to help you build your Internet marketing strategy:

1. Identify your Internet marketing goals

The best Internet marketing plan is built around and continuously works towards a set goal. Without something to work towards, your Internet marketing strategies will fail to produce the results you want.

When building an Internet marketing strategy, identify what you want to achieve with your online marketing. Possible goals you could choose from are:

• Driving traffic to your site
• Boosting engagement
• Earning calls
• Encouraging downloads
• Gaining subscribers
• Netting sales
• Growing followers on social media

2. Define your audience

To create a proper Internet marketing strategy, you need to identify your audience first. You want to identify who is interested in your products or services.

Take a look at your typical customer. What attributes define them?

You can document information like:

• Demographics
• Socioeconomic status
• Buying habits

Without researching your audience, you run the risk of improperly targeting your audience. You’ll drive less than satisfactory results with your campaigns if you don’t target the right people.

3. Identify the strategies you want to use in your Internet marketing campaign

After you have identified your Internet marketing goal as well as your audience, the next step is to determine which Internet marketing strategies would work best for your business.

You’ll want to use strategies that enable you to reach your target audience. Where is your audience likely to engage with your business? You’ll want to consider what keywords they’re searching or what social platforms they use.

It’s also important to consider your budget, too. You want to ensure you’re investing in strategies that fit within your budget, so you don’t overspend.

4. Monitor your strategies

For Internet marketing strategies to drive the best results, you need to analyze the data from your campaigns.

Online data tracking tools such as  Google Analytics  can help you keep track of data from your Internet marketing strategy in real-time. This platform is great for SEO and PPC strategies. You can track:

• How many people visit your site
• How long they stay on your pages
• How many people click your ad
• How many conversions you receive

The metrics these tools pull in will help you determine how well your Internet marketing strategy performs.

This data will help you optimize your Internet marketing strategy. By monitoring your campaigns’ performance, you can see what’s working and not working for your business. As a result, you can optimize your tactics to drive better results for your business.

An Internet marketing company is a firm that helps businesses improve their ROI in their digital marketing efforts.

These companies are adept at Internet marketing strategies and using them together to drive results for their clients and meet their goals.

Yes. Every business will benefit from using Internet marketing.

You can reach more prospects through the channels they prefer with Internet marketing. In addition, it lets you enjoy a better ROI than traditional marketing, because you’re targeting consumers who are interested in what you offer.

Get started with Internet marketing with WebFX

Ready to start building your Internet marketing strategy? If so, WebFX is the  Internet marketing agency  for you!

We’re a Harrisburg-based digital marketing agency with 28 years of experience helping our clients attain their Internet marketing goals, and we know how to drive real results .

Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to learn more about how WebFX can help you grow your business!

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Internet Marketing: How To Leverage Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is a broad concept that encompasses every way a company can promote its products or services online.

These days, so much of marketing happens online that the phrase “internet marketing” feels almost redundant.

While outdoor advertising and in-person events can still be highly effective ( Heyday Canning Co. and HATCH have both had success with the latter), it’s tough to launch a business without a serious internet marketing strategy. Events generating buzz do so in part because attendees shared their experiences on social media.

In this article, we’ll provide an overview of some of the most popular types of digital marketing with real-life examples from business owners and marketers who use them successfully.

What is internet marketing?

Internet marketing is the promotion of goods or services online, including on social media platforms, websites, and search engines , and via email. Promotion can range from digital advertising to organic content.

Content marketing vs. traditional advertising

In the past, most marketing consisted of buying ad space in publications and on TV billboards. Traditional marketing tactics can still be effective, but costly, and there’s no guarantee that potential customers will actually see your ad.

Content marketing is a type of internet marketing that focuses on creating and sharing engaging content on digital channels to attract and retain customers. High-quality content marketing comes in many forms, such as blog posts , infographics, videos, images, and helpful guides.

Content marketing is a long-term digital strategy that can take months or even years to produce results. But, when done right, it can be a very effective way to grow your business.

Types of internet marketing strategies

Social media marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, content marketing, online advertising.

An effective online marketing strategy includes efforts across multiple digital platforms. Here are a few different types of internet marketing to consider:

Social media marketing involves promoting your business on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X. There are lots of ways to leverage these platforms, including creating your own content (organic social media marketing), partnering with influencers, and buying ads.

Skin care brand Dieux built a loyal following with its short-form videos created by cofounder Charlotte Palermino and shared on both Instagram and TikTok. Charlotte recommends creating your own social media content if you have a limited marketing budget.

“If you are starting a company and you don’t come from money and you don’t have that institutional money, get scrappy,” Charlotte says on Shopify Masters . “It’s incredible what you can do and build on your own. TikTok, for example, is like free marketing if you can figure it out.”

Rather than chasing the latest social media trends, Charlotte suggests focusing on your brand story.

“Algorithms are really fickle, so you have to stay on point with your storytelling,” Charlotte says. “For Dieux, it’s always about telling stories.”

Charlotte says one of Dieux’s most viral videos is one in which she discusses the environmental impacts of different types of product packaging.

“It’s just like a five-minute video about plastic and aluminum, and it’s doing incredibly well because it’s about storytelling,” she says.

Charlotte’s genuine interest in these topics comes through in her posts, which helps Dieux connect with its customers and increase brand awareness. She recommends creating content about something that you feel passionate about.

“If you feel like you could just talk about something for 10 minutes, then make a video on it and try to cut it down to two.”

When making purchasing decisions, shoppers tend to trust other people more than they trust advertisements. Influencer marketing can take many forms, such as partnering with a celebrity to create a limited-edition version of your product or sponsoring posts from a creator with a loyal following among your target audience.

Rachel Karten, social media consultant and author of the newsletter Link in Bio , suggests small businesses work with creators who have a standard format or recurring series.

“It’s a lot easier to plug into something that already gets views and that the audience is already obsessed with,” Rachel says.

CAVA, a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain Rachel works with, used that strategy to partner with Sabrina Brier, a creator known for her relatable skits about friendship. “We worked with her and it was sort of like ‘the friend who gossips during the lunch break,’” Rachel says. “You can just plug into her style as opposed to trying something new or asking them to do something that their audience doesn’t really know them for.”

Affiliate marketing is similar to influencer marketing but has a different payment model. While influencers are typically paid a flat rate per post, affiliates who feature your product are paid by sales or by clicks when they refer customers to your site.

Find influencers to drive sales with Shopify Collabs

Shopify Collabs makes it easy to partner with creators, promote your products, reach new customers, grow your sales, and track affiliate campaign performance all from Shopify admin.

When a customer signs up for your email list, that gives you a direct channel to speak to them, which is why email marketing is one of the most popular types of internet marketing.

“I love email as a marketing channel,” Curt Nichols, Glade Optics founder and CEO, says on Shopify Masters . “Any time you have a channel like that—where you own the relationship with the customer, and you’re not reliant on a third party to get your message out—is always beneficial.”

The trick with email marketing is standing out in a crowded email inbox.

For Glade, what worked were very simple emails—“the body of the email is plain text, no photos, maybe one or two hyperlinks”—sent directly from the founder. “The email comes in looking like it’s an email from a friend or a family member,” Curt says.

“It’s a great way for me to develop relationships with people in our ecosystem. On top of that, ESPs [email service providers] actually recognize those emails as closer to friends and family emails, versus those from a brand.”

But he didn’t just dive into this type of email marketing on a whim; Curt conducted A/B testing to see which types of emails resonated with customers. Additionally, Curt sends a more traditionally branded welcome series of emails to new subscribers. The plain-text emails are for customers who are already familiar with the brand.

Create branded emails in minutes with Shopify Email

With Shopify Email, you can easily create, send, automate, and track email campaigns, all from your Shopify admin—no coding required.

Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that includes the creation and distribution of valuable content online to attract and engage potential customers. This can include social media, but more often it refers to a brand’s own blog, where you can share stories and case studies related to your products, industry, and other topics your customers may be interested in.

Content marketing can be an effective tool for educating and engaging with your customers, and it can attract a larger audience to your site when paired with a strong SEO strategy . Content marketing isn’t just a way to get new audiences to your website. It can also support existing customers.

Bicycle and outdoor gear company Retrospec publishes content ranging from tips for charging an electric bike to how-to guides for conducting a tune-up and fixing a flat tire.

“We’re using our guide center as a resource to educate our customers and make sure the post-purchase experience is one that’s pleasant,” founder and CEO Ely Khakshouri says on Shopify Masters . “And we also use that as a tool to gather information since we’re able to see which searches and queries we are not serving and use that as a cue to what content we need to be working on to address the most frequent requests.”

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of practices designed to make your website more easily found by search engines. One of the main advantages of SEO is that you can capture audiences from search engines without paying for ad space.

For Bluebird Provisions founder Connor Meakin, incorporating SEO best practices helped bring new customers to the bone broth company’s website.

“I started writing articles about bone broth, bone broth benefits, stuff about collagen as well. I found a process where I was able to get articles to rank on the first page,” Connor says on Shopify Masters . “Before I knew it, we were acquiring customers a couple months after this for free. It was unbelievable.”

Connor recommends ensuring that customers can easily find your homepage and product pages to start.

“The first thing I would say to store owners is to make sure you have the on-page SEO ,” Connor says. “I call it the fundamentals. Make sure you have your website in check. Make sure it loads fast, or at least make sure it’s not obviously slow. Then you can invest in a third-party app to make sure that your title tags and everything are optimized for your search terms.”

Once your website is optimized, you can dive into SEO content marketing . Connor suggests creating content in clusters.

“The content cluster is essentially building a cluster of articles around one key piece of content,” Connor says. “In our case, it was bone broth.”

He started with a longer article on the benefits of bone broth, then created many shorter articles that linked out to the core article.

“From there, you’re basically answering questions that you are receiving or that someone would want to learn about when reading an article about the benefits of bone broth.” 

Even if your focus is on organic content, most businesses will invest some of their marketing budget into advertising . Here are some options:

• Pay-per-click (PPC). One of the many benefits of PPC advertising is that it typically allows you to track performance better than other platforms.
• Search engine marketing (SEM). Advertising on search engines buys your way to the top of search results. This tactic can be helpful when your website is new or you have a lot of competition for market share, as these conditions make it hard to earn a high ranking organically.
• Social media advertising. Paid social media posts give you the option to target potential customers based on demographics, interests, and behaviors, so you can reach those most likely to be interested in your products or services.

How to develop an internet marketing strategy

• Identify goals and set metrics
• Define your target audience
• Devise a marketing plan
• Execute and monitor

The internet is vast, and with so many different types of internet marketing to explore, getting started can feel intimidating. Before diving into every platform at once, take time to consider what might work best to build your online presence.

1. Identify goals and set metrics

Consider what you want out of internet marketing and how you will measure your success. Your marketing goals should align with business goals like increasing sales, traffic, brand awareness, or engagement.

You’ll also need to choose key performance indicators (KPIs) —the metrics that you will use to measure your marketing campaign’s success. Neil Hoyne, chief strategist of data and measurement for Google, cautions against building your marketing strategy around short-term KPIs like clicks and conversions.

“The metrics that a lot of companies use are not there because they were proven to work. They’re there because engineers could put them in a report,” Neil says on Shopify Masters .

Instead of focusing on conversion rates, Neil recommends using customer lifetime value (CLV) —the total amount one customer will spend during their relationship with your business—to guide your marketing strategy.

For example, if your goal is to acquire better customers, “look at the average value of the customers you acquired last month,” Neil says. “Let’s say they’re $500. The challenge that I’d have for any business is to, say, next month, see if you can make that number go up just a little bit.”

2. Define your target audience 

Your marketing campaigns will be far more successful if they are tailored to your target audience . Create buyer personas to represent the type of customer you want to attract. Not sure where to start? This is where CLV can again come in handy.

“You just get this understanding to say, ‘These are the people your business gets along with. These are the people that aren’t as interested,’ and you can start adjusting your marketing plans accordingly,” Neil says.

Once you’ve identified your best customers, determine what sets them apart. Where do they come from? What do they buy? When do they buy? The answers to these questions will tell you which channels to invest in, which products to promote, and when to promote them.

If you’re building a marketing strategy for a brand-new product or business, you can answer these questions based on market research . As your business grows, you can collect actual customer data to keep your campaigns relevant.

Put your customer data to work with Shopify’s customer segmentation

Shopify’s built-in segmentation tools help you discover insights about your customers, build segments as targeted as your marketing plans with filters based on your customers’ demographic and behavioral data, and drive sales with timely and personalized emails.

3. Devise a marketing plan

Now that you have your goal and buyer personas, you can create a plan to achieve your goal. If your goal is to increase next month’s average customer value, you can use the buyer personas you created based on data from high-CLV customers to decide which channels and tactics to focus on this month.

For example: “If I find one channel is bringing in better customers in another channel, I may say I’m gonna spend a little bit more with that channel to see if it can improve my customer mix,” Neil says.

Adjust your marketing budget accordingly, and create any new assets you may need for this month’s campaign. It can be helpful to change just one variable at a time; otherwise, it may be hard to determine which tactic or channel is responsible for any changes you observe.

4. Execute and monitor

Before implementing a new marketing campaign, make sure you have a way to monitor its success.

For example, let’s say your goal is to attract better customers by increasing your investment in the channel attracting high-CLV customers. You’ll need to monitor both the CLV and which channels your customers are coming from.

You may look at your monthly sales and attribute them to individual customers (rather than orders). You might use a combination of data reports from the channel you’ve invested in and your own post-purchase surveys to determine if the increased investment is working.

At the end of the month, you’ll be able to compare this month’s average customer value to last month’s, and you’ll know whether any change was connected to your strategy or something else entirely. Then, you can use the results to adjust your marketing strategy if needed.

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Internet marketing FAQ

What is an example of internet marketing.

Running Instagram and TikTok ads for your online business is an example of internet marketing.

What are the different types of internet marketing?

There are many different types of internet marketing efforts, but some of the most common include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing.

What is the purpose of internet marketing?

The purpose of internet marketing is to help businesses promote their products and services online. By doing this, businesses can reach a larger audience and generate more sales.

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To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, the state of internet marketing research: a review of the literature and future research directions.

European Journal of Marketing

ISSN : 0309-0566

Article publication date: 31 July 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine the internet marketing literature to determine how internet marketing research has evolved in terms of quantity, content, and publication outlets. In addition, the paper identifies important trends in the internet marketing literature and provides a view of the research gaps and expected topical areas of interest.

Design/methodology/approach

A content analysis was performed on approximately 1,400 internet‐related marketing articles identified by searching the ABI/INFORM database. A total of 902 peer‐reviewed internet marketing articles appearing in nearly 80 different journals were identified. The study revealed that 60 percent of the internet research had been published in the last three years. The three most researched internet marketing areas were consumer behavior, internet strategy, and internet communications. The topics with the highest growth over the past two years were research issues and consumer search. Over the past 15 years, 14 articles appeared in the top three marketing journals.

The article identified important trends in the internet marketing research to provide future direction, particularly in terms of research gaps and expected topical areas of interest. The three major research areas that are likely to grow in the next few years are: consumer trust pertaining to the internet, the use of the internet by consumers for marketing related activities, and where is the internet headed in terms of integrating strategies?

Originality/value

The study provides both academics and practitioners with an updated review of the internet marketing literature along with a sense of how internet marketing research is evolving.

• Internet marketing
• Worldwide web

Schibrowsky, J.A. , Peltier, J.W. and Nill, A. (2007), "The state of internet marketing research: A review of the literature and future research directions", European Journal of Marketing , Vol. 41 No. 7/8, pp. 722-733. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560710752366

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

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Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

• Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
• Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

• Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
• Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
• Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
• Focus Groups
• Product/ Service Use Research
• Observation-Based Research
• Buyer Persona Research
• Market Segmentation Research
• Pricing Research
• Competitive Analysis Research
• Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
• Brand Awareness Research
• Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

• Define your buyer persona.
• Identify a persona group to engage.
• Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
• List your primary competitors.
• Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

9 Best Marketing Research Methods to Know Your Buyer Better [+ Examples]

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

28 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Total Addressable Market (TAM): What It Is & How You Can Calculate It

What Is Market Share & How Do You Calculate It?

Free Guide & Templates to Help Your Market Research

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

• DOI: 10.4018/978-1-87828-997-1
• Corpus ID: 166399253

Internet Marketing Research: Theory and Practice

• Published 19 February 2001
• Business, Computer Science

16 Citations

Technology-driven online marketing performance measurement: lessons from affiliate marketing, a synthesis of research on the properties of effective internet commerce web sites, measuring consumer motivations to share rumors: scale development, competition in online comparison shopping services, developments in studies on the relationship between firm and consumer: a structurationist view, does greater online assortment pay: an empirical study using matched online and catalog shoppers, creating a culturally sensitive marketing strategy for diffusion of innovations using hofstede's six dimensions of national culture, semiotics of brand building: case of the muthoot group, marketing medical education: an examination of recruitment web sites for traditional and combined-degree m.d. programs, addressing the personalization – privacy paradox : an empirical assessment from a field experiment on smartphone users 1.

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Social Media Marketing Strategy Tips For 2024

Published: Aug 15, 2024, 8:25am

Table of Contents

What is social media marketing, why social media marketing is important, 11 tips to build your social media marketing strategy, bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Social media marketing was born in the mid-2000s with the rise of platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, but did not start hitting its stride until Facebook introduced “Facebook Flyers Pro” in 2007. Since then, it has revolutionized the marketing landscape by allowing companies to reach an unprecedented amount of potential customers worldwide.

But how exactly do businesses harness the power of the 5 billion-plus people using social media? In this article, we will dive into what exactly social media marketing is, why it is important and provide tips for you to up your social media marketing strategy in 2024.

Social media marketing is all about using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok to chat with your audience, get your brand recognized and increase sales. It involves creating posts, images and videos that your audience will love, interact with and share. This method capitalizes on the interactive nature of social media to foster engagement, allow businesses to showcase their products and build a community around their brand. Creating an effective social media marketing campaign requires setting clear objectives, choosing the right social media platform or platforms, using analytics tools to track performance and adjusting strategies accordingly.

Traditional marketing methods such as print ads, television commercials and billboards often hoped to grab interested customers from a broad reach. The digital age of social media marketing has ushered in an era of personalization and precision targeting. Social media allows businesses to gather insights into user behavior, preferences, disinterests and online activities. Marketers can then create social media campaigns that target the direct audience that they want to attract. This new level of personalization has transformed the way businesses interact with their audiences.

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Social media marketing is a game-changer for businesses because it allows you to reach so many people around the world in real time. It is no wonder why so many businesses have ditched old-school marketing strategies such as billboards or radio spots in exchange for comprehensive social media campaigns. Some of the biggest advantages of social media marketing include:

• Increase brand awareness: You can expand your brand’s awareness by consistently posting on social media sites. This is especially useful for small or new businesses to be able to introduce themselves and their business personality to a new audience.
• Drive traffic: Creating intriguing content with compelling calls to action can drive followers to visit your website. You can funnel users directly from your social media platform to your website by including tailored links in your posts, stories or reels. For example, promoting a new blog post on X with a “Read Now” button can bring followers onto your site.
• Generate leads: Social media platforms provide tools for lead generation such as Instagram’s “Swipe Up” feature or LinkedIn’s lead-generation forms. Let’s say you’ve launched a new e-book. You can gather new leads to expand your email list by advertising the e-book on Facebook and attaching a direct download link in exchange for an email address.
• Real-time discovery of industry trends: Social media serves as a live feed for market patterns and trends. You can capitalize on viral topics by watching trending hashtags or popular discussion points within your industry.
• Cost-effective: In comparison to traditional marketing channels such as print or TV ads, social media marketing offers ways to publicize your product without spending a fortune. Social media marketing can be completely free if you do not have a marketing budget. You can, however, leverage your reach through sponsored content or ads on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
• Humanize your brand: Consumers appreciate brands with authentic personalities. You can create a relatable brand by sharing “behind-the-scenes” content or telling your company’s story through posts or stories. For example, Patagonia regularly shares posts highlighting its commitment to environmental conservation, which strongly resonates with its customer base.

At first glance, social media marketing might appear straightforward, but to truly make an impact it requires more than just a few posts online every now and again. Along with any successful marketing strategy, it involves meticulous planning, consistent content creation, thorough analysis and strategic adjustments. Here are 12 tips on building a comprehensive social media marketing strategy to help you harness the full potential of social media for your business.

• Set S.M.A.R.T., relevant goals: Before starting your social media marketing strategy, make sure to set S.M.A.R.T. goals. S.M.A.R.T. stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Begin by outlining clear, actionable goals using this criterion. For instance, instead of vaguely aiming to “increase sales,” strive to “increase sales by 15% over the next quarter through social media referral traffic.” This will provide a precise path for your strategy.In addition, set goals that are relevant to your business. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to increase your social media footprint? Do you want to drive traffic to your website? Reach, impressions and engagement rate are among the 13 essential social media metrics to measure in 2024 . Make sure the goals you set are relevant to your business’s objectives.
• Identify target audience: Before you begin, it is important to know who you are talking to. Create a sketch of your ideal customer. Describe their demographic traits including age, location and gender as well as psychographic traits such as interests, problems and values. If you deal in luxury watches, your audience likely consists of older, affluent individuals with an interest in style and status. Or if you have a boutique yoga studio, your ideal audience is probably a woman between 25 and 50 who prioritizes health and wellness.
• Choose the right platforms: The big seven social media platforms are Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Each platform attracts a different type of audience. Analyze where your core audience spends the most time online and target those platforms. For example, if your brand caters to professionals or B2B clients, LinkedIn may prove more beneficial than TikTok.
• Create valuable content: Never publish content just to post something. Always create content that your audience will find beneficial. Aim to inform, engage or inspire. For a fitness brand, this might include workout tips, healthy recipes or motivational posts. In addition, it is a good idea to occasionally incorporate interactive elements such as Q&As, polls or challenges to engage your audience actively and foster a sense of community.
• Consistent branding: Maintain uniform design elements such as logo and brand colors and voice, whether it is formal or casual across platforms. This consistency will help with brand recognition.
• Use visual content: As the old saying goes, a picture is with a thousand words. Make use of visuals—photos, infographics or videos—to increase engagement. Leverage visual storytelling in order to convey your brand’s personality. For example, a bakery might post mouthwatering photos of its cupcakes or a step-by-step video tutorial on dough kneading. Additionally, incorporating user-generated content such as customer photos or reviews can add authenticity to your feed.
• Automate scheduling: Use social media management tools to schedule posts in advance. Not only will this help you save time, it will also ensure your content is delivered on a consistent basis. A regular posting schedule helps keep your brand’s presence fresh in the minds of your audience. Buffer, Hootsuite and Zoho Social are three of the best social media management software platforms on the market.
• Engage actively: Join conversations and reply promptly to comments. Don’t be afraid to show a human side to your interactions. Chipotle, for instance, has more than 30 million followers on social media. The company is renowned for its witty, engaging responses in its social media interactions.
• Collaborate with influencers: Partner with relevant influencers to get your brand in front of new eyes. Collaborating with these partners can help you tap into specific communities and boost your credibility by leveraging the trust they’ve established with their followers. A children’s clothing brand might collaborate with parenting bloggers while a new restaurant might collaborate with a local food blogger.
• Analyze and adapt: Use analytics tools to track your performance. If Instagram Stories drive more engagement than regular posts, for instance, shift your focus accordingly. This data-driven approach allows you to understand your audience better so you can tailor your strategy for maximum impact.
• Monitor trends: Social media trends evolve rapidly. Keeping up to date can unlock new avenues—be it new features such as Instagram Reels or trends such as the sustainability movement—to align your strategy with broader user behavior. Adapting to the latest trend helps keep you relevant and can even open doors to innovative methods of customer engagement and user-generated content.

Since its inception in the early 2000s, social media has revolutionized the marketing landscape by offering businesses an unprecedented ability to reach audiences, prioritize personalization and build real-time connections between brands and consumers. It helps businesses ramp up brand visibility, drives traffic, pulls in potential leads and catches the wave of trending topics—all while being budget-friendly. If your business wants to ride the social media wave, you should focus on creating clear and achievable goals, targeting your ideal audience and creating valuable content. Mix in some smart scheduling tools, actively engage with your followers and use analytics to continually fine-tune your strategies and you can significantly amplify your brand’s online impact.

What are the five Ps of social media marketing?

The five Ps of marketing—Product, Price, Promotion, Place and People—form the cornerstone of marketing strategies. “Product” refers to what a company sells, whether it is tangible goods or intangible services. “Price” is the cost consumers are willing to pay. “Promotion” is all communicative tactics used including advertising, PR or social media engagement. “Place” is the channels or physical locations where the product or service is sold. “People” refers to everyone involved in the business including customers, employees, vendors and partners.

What are the seven Cs of social media marketing?

The seven Cs of social media marketing are the guiding principles for building a robust social media marketing plan. They include “Community,” referring to the group of people your brand brings together, while “Collaboration” and “Communication” refer to the value of working alongside users and other brands to collaborate and share valuable insights. “Constraints” acknowledge the limitations that social media platforms can present to marketers. “Connectivity” and “Channels” focus on establishing a seamless link between social media platforms and choosing the right mediums to reach your target audience. “Content” is central to attracting an audience through relevant, engaging and high-quality content.

What is the golden rule of social media marketing?

The golden rule of social media marketing is to foster genuine interactions that build trust and community. Crafting content that initiates conversations enables brands to spark conversations and build a community. This strategy emphasizes authentic connection with the audience to help brands achieve enduring marketing success through active participation.

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Jennifer Simonson draws on two decades as a journalist covering everything from local economic developement to small business marketing. Beyond writing, she tested entrepreneurial waters by launching a mobile massage service, a content marketing firm and an e-commerce venture. These experiences enriched her understanding of small business management and marketing strategies. Today, she channels this first-hand knowledge into her articles for Forbes Advisor.

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Neuromarketing and big data analysis of banking firms’ website interfaces and performance.

1. Introduction

2. literature background, 2.1. banking firms, digital marketing, and user engagement, 2.2. metrics and kpis of friendly website user interface (ui), 2.3. neuromarketing and big data analysis implications on website interface and performance, 2.4. hypotheses development, 3. materials and methods, 3.1. methodological concept.

• The research started with the collection of data on website customers and digital marketing activities from banking firm websites. A website’s user behavioral data (pages per visit, bounce rate, time on site, etc.) were sourced from the website platform Semrush [ 61 ], which enables the extraction of big data from corporate webpages.
• The next step involved statistical analysis using methods such as descriptive statistics, correlation, and linear regression. By analyzing the coefficients obtained, researchers can determine the impact of banking firms’ website customer data on their digital marketing and interface performance metrics, including purchase conversion, display ads, organic traffic, and bounce rate.
• After statistical analysis, a hybrid model (HM) incorporating agent-based models (ABMs) and System Dynamics (SD) was used for the simulation. The software AnyLogic (version 8.9.1) [ 62 ] was employed to create a hybrid model that simulates the relationships between the study’s dependent and independent variables over 360 days. This model aims to represent the dynamic interaction between banking firms’ website interface metrics and key metrics of their digital marketing strategies.
• The final stage included a neuromarketing approach to gain deeper insights from 26 participants who viewed the websites of the selected banking firms. They were instructed to search and observe, in 20 s, the selected banking firm websites and their provided financial products and services. Eye-tracking and heatmap analysis were conducted using the SeeSo Web Analysis platform (Eyedid SDK) [ 63 ]. This method seeks to extract additional information about the onsite activity and engagement of the participants from the qualitative methodological concept.

3.2. Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) Framework

3.3. research sample, 4.1. statistical analysis, 4.2. simulation model, 4.3. neuromarketing applications, 5. discussion, 6. conclusions, 6.1. theoretical, practical, and managerial implications, 6.2. future work and limitations, author contributions, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Giannakopoulos, N.T.; Sakas, D.P.; Migkos, S.P. Neuromarketing and Big Data Analysis of Banking Firms’ Website Interfaces and Performance. Electronics 2024 , 13 , 3256. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13163256

Giannakopoulos NT, Sakas DP, Migkos SP. Neuromarketing and Big Data Analysis of Banking Firms’ Website Interfaces and Performance. Electronics . 2024; 13(16):3256. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13163256

Giannakopoulos, Nikolaos T., Damianos P. Sakas, and Stavros P. Migkos. 2024. "Neuromarketing and Big Data Analysis of Banking Firms’ Website Interfaces and Performance" Electronics 13, no. 16: 3256. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13163256

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