The way people communicate was always a fundamental driver for our evolution. Technological advancement in last years is changing how we get, evaluate and use information. For marketers, this doesn’t bring only new possibilities, but also new challenges how to use and control these technologies. There are more than 2 billion people using the internet and it caused that marketing is online and new forms of it are being created faster than ever. For many people, even professionals, it is nearly impossible to keep track of all these new online marketing terms. Online marketing is about delivering a message via the Internet to real people and make them do something - in most cases it is to make them spend money (Shankar, & HOLLINGER, 2007). According to Shama Kabani, successful online marketing basically works on a simple framework called ACT Methodology that can be broken down into 3 three distinct components:

• A - Attract

• C - Convert

• T - Transform

Attract - To attract means to get attention or stand out. The goal of this phase is to get traffic to the website by standing out from others. This happens mostly by using Social media and Search Engine Marketing. Convert - Converting strangers into consumers or customers. Primary focusing on attracted users who are ideal fit. These people are more likely to buy your

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• Stranger to Consumer - Consumer is a person who is consuming your information for example from your Blog, Twitter or Facebook. These people don’t spend money yet, but it is more likely that they will. Consumers are somehow binded with the brand and with that they can attract their friends and acquaintances to the brand. Social media are suited to this kind of conversion.

• Stranger to Customer - Converting people become paying customers. This happens via the company website.

Transform - Transforming company’s successes into attraction tools. It has two key parts: 1. Doing a good job and provide a perfect service and customer support. 2. Spread the word about success with clients. Share their stories of what they achieved through service or product. To better understand how the basic theories and parts of online marketing come together, I have created an info graphic where on the top there is the new mental model with the critical Zero Moment of Truth. Then there are approximate boundaries indicated between the model and the online marketing types and techniques (Carfi, & Chastaine, 2011). And on the bottom there are the ACT methodology phases to show how these are connected to the ZMOT model and online marketing techniques.

The Internet is a media that provides a convenient method to advertise a farm business, sell products, and communicate with consumers. The Internet is a large market for crops or specialty crop products. Farmers can advertise the farm products and services on the Internet by developing their own websites. In addition, farmers can advertise their products by participating in web based farm directories.

communications has grown to be an important part of a company’s promotional mix”. This view is also motivated and they state that companies are using online medium as a new marketing communication channel and marketing through internet is growing rapidly (Pride, & Ferrell, 2012). Throughout this study, the term Internet marketing, will be used in a broad sense. There will be sought to make the reader understand the closer definition by using other more precise terms, where applicable. But in general internet marketing can be trying to promote both sales and communication, e.g. Contact details, Product sales, Support possibilities, Aftersales options etc.

Principles to use in Internet marketing - The principles used in mass marketing are ineffective, when transferred to Internet marketing. To get the best results, it is essential, (Kabani 2012).) Pointed out, to use the applications and marketing strategies that are born in the Internet and suitable for online marketing. Electronic marketing (e-marketing) refers to the strategic process of distributing, promoting, pricing products, and discovering the desires of customers using digital media and digital marketing. E-marketing goes beyond the Internet and also includes mobile phones, banner ads, digital outdoor marketing, and social networks (Pride, & Ferrell, 2012). Because of the fierce competition on the Web for the attention of the potential buyers, it takes enormous marketing expenditures from the E-marketers to set them-selves out from the crowd, get visitors to their sites and get them actually make a purchase.

With the emergence of new communication channels via the Internet, we have seen an emergence of new ways that marketing promotions can be launched and new ways that marketing attacks can be initiated. As a U.S. presidential candidate, Barack Obama began using “viral marketing” techniques early in his campaign for the 2008 elections through extensive use of Internet social networking (Turban, et. al., 2010). Obama’s Democratic Party opponent, Hilary Clinton, was the victim of a damaging chain email campaign, in which she is falsely identified as having an involvement with the defense of Black Panther members accused of tortuous murders.

The main focus of this thesis will be to give a better understanding on the online aspects of marketing such as; websites, email marketing and social networking websites. Results of this thesis will give

hopefully be used as a tool in the decision making process (Brownlow, Mark, 2011) In today’s ever‐changing world small businesses need to adapt if they want to compete within the market. According to a recent survey conducted by Zoomerang and GrowBiz Media the top five areas that small businesses plan to increase their advertising budgets in the year 2011 are websites, email marketing, direct mail, social media and print design Out of the individuals that took the survey hosted by Zoomerang and Grow Biz Media, 17% of business owners plan to increase their marketing budget for website design, 15% plan on increasing their email marketing budgets and 13% plan on increasing their social networking budget. Overall the survey concluded that small businesses in 2011 plan to increase their overall online marketing budgets by 54% in comparison to offline forms that ranked at 46% overall. From these results it is safe to conclude that if a small business wants to stay competitive they will undoubtedly need to start gearing their marketing dollars toward the online form of advertising.

Brownlow (2011). Mark. “Why do email marketing?” March 2011. Carfi, Christopher & Chastaine, Leif (2011). “Social Networking for Businesses & Associations.” (White paper), Cerado website [accessed 15 March 2011] Kabani, Shama (2012). The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Pride, W. M. & Ferrell, O. C. (2012). Marketing Edition. Mason, Ohio: South-Western, Cengage Learning. Pride, W. M. & Ferrell, O. C. (2012). Marketing, 2012 Edition. Mason, Ohio: South-Western, Cengage Learning. SHANKAR, V. & HOLLINGER, M. (2007). Online and mobile advertising: Current scenario, emerging trends, and future directions. Marketing Science Institute, pp. 07-206. Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J., Liang, T.-P. & Turban, D. C. (2010). Electronic Com-merce 2010, A Managerial Perspective. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

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