It should be clear to everyone by now that this Internet thing is not a pass- ing fad. In fact, Internet marketing is not a matter of achieving greater success, but of survival.

The question is no longer "should you be marketing on the Internet?" but rather, "how will you do it?" The problem is, it can be a daunting universe out there if you are late to the online game. Let's break it down for you here, piece by piece.

The first step is really buying into Internet marketing. That was No.1 for my own company. In 2010, our monthly, submitted application count averaged 800. In February of this year, we started broadcasting a daily, half-hour Internet talk show and educational videos over the Internet.

The next month, the application count soared to 1,300 and sustained an aver- age monthly application count of 1,100 monthly applications through the end of August. At the end of August, the Inter- net video year-to-date clicks exceeded 210,000 and 320,000 for website visits. The bottom line: more than $20 million in paid target premium through August of this year, compared to total paid tar- get premium of $23 million in all of 2010.

Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics, said, "We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it." Just consider these stats gleaned from his book:

• Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Sweden, Israel, Greece, Chile, North Korea and Australia.
• In February, 37 million watched the Darth Vader Volkswagen ad on You- Tube. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Every min- ute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
• 95 percent, of companies use LinkedIn for recruitment.
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S. One in five divorces is blamed on Facebook. Half of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook. What happens in Vegas stays on Face- book, Twitter, etc. The Ford Explorer launch on Facebook generated more traffic than a Super Bowl ad. If Face- book were a nation it would be the world's third largest. Yet Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google are not in China. Babies in Egypt have been named Facebook.
• Groupon reached 1 billion in sales faster than any company in history. Social gamers will buy 6 billion in virtual goods by 2013. Contrast that to moviegoers buying only 2.5 billion in real goods. A third of bloggers post opinions about products and brands. Ninety percent trust peer recommen- dations. Only 14 percent trust adver- tisement. Ninety-three percent of marketers use social media for busi- ness. (Think about it: Social media has overtaken pornography as the No.1 activity on the web.)

Delve into Internet marketing and you
will find similar success.

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