Additional Information
You'll need good technical, business and communication skills in this career.
"The key in Internet marketing, 80 percent of it is about copywriting,
so you have to have a really good, direct-response copywriting skill set,"
says Gregg Meiklejohn. He's an Internet marketer.
"Writing skills are probably one of the most overlooked and probably one
of the single most important skills that an Internet marketer has to have,"
agrees Internet marketer Susan Negen, "because you're trying to sell, persuade,
convince, encourage via the written word."
Those writing skills don't necessarily have to be developed in a college
or university setting, according to Meiklejohn. "There are a lot of excellent
online programs and phone-based training that you can pick up," he says. "You
don't necessarily have to go to school to become an Internet marketer."
"I would actually have people focusing on Internet marketing ahead of traditional
marketing, advertising, [and] whatnot," Meiklejohn says. "And keep in mind
that the key to Internet marketing is copywriting, [while] the keys to traditional,
brand-based advertising are graphic and production applications -- dancing
hamsters, animated beer bottles, all that."
The best copywriting speaks directly to the reader, as opposed to the impersonal
tone of much traditional advertising. Rather than simply trying to convince
someone of why they have to buy your products and services, you're establishing
trust and rapport.
"Rather than being third-party institutional, which is how people are trained
in marketing school [and] which is wrong, persuasive copy is first-person
conversational," says Meiklejohn.
Sam Alfstad is the co-founder of an Internet marketing publication. He
says that decades in advertising have taught him that people with a wide range
of interests and knowledge make the best marketers.
"We always found that generalists were the people who did the best," says
Alfstad. "There's a lot of professions where you have to know one thing deeply,
[but in advertising] it's the ability to pick up information from many sources
and cross-fertilize them and be excited about the combinations."