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Internet Marketer

What To Learn

High School

What high school courses should you take if you're interested in this career? Get your answers from the Marketing cluster Marketing Communications pathway, Marketing Management pathway.

Insider Info

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."

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