Internet marketing is a continually evolving field and new and developing techniques of online selling and advertising have seen internet marketing branching into numerous areas. Competition in the arena of internet marketing techniques is itself fierce, and you will see many expressions such as web marketing, web advertising, e-marketing, internet advertising, search engine marketing, adsense, pay per click, B2B and many other related expressions when you start looking to find out more. With internet marketing there is the proverbial a thousand ways to kill a cat. Success or failure depends on knowing how to implement the particular techniques that will reap the most results. As to how effective these methods are compared to one another, it can be extremely difficult to say. The only real way to measure things is to correlate effectiveness in terms of the number of actual sales closed and genuine profit realized.

Last year, 2007, marked the start of a battle over the various methods of Internet Marketing. While traditionalists have placed their confidence with Googles 65 percent share among online searches. The revolutionaries have placed their stake with the development and prominence of the use of social media networking, now known in internet jargon as Web 2.0.

Experts identify the ultimate measure of success of any Internet marketing venture as the conversion rate of a sales lead into actual cash. Known in internet marketing terms simply as conversion rate, this is one of the most important metrics to measure when conducting any Internet Marketing campaign, as this tracks your success or failure in competition for traffic sources and click through triggers.

Studies by marketing analysts concluded that leads generated by search engine optimization techniques are now being overtaken by traffic triggered by Web 2.0, particularly traffic generated via social media networking. Internet marketing service provider comScore is an emerging global leader in measuring Internet metrics; and a study released by comScore, known in NASDAQ trading board by the initials SCOR, indicated that 95 percent of heavy social media users have visited an online store. The study also showed that among internet users in the United States, only 80 percent actually visited a retail stores website.

Market segmentation, similar to that measured in offline marketing, is another key indicator when checking out the Internet marketing competition. This segmentation explains the way in which a marketing brand can work well with one segment of the market only. Segmentation is when a brand does not work with other market segments because of inherent differences in the way the Internet achieves specific goals and the way processes are run. It is worthwhile to check out which market segment your product would likely to sell more to, and then find an Internet marketing brand that works best to promote your products. In this way, your lead conversion rate is sure to increase and you are better positioned to maintain an optimal conversion level.

In order to achieve a quick but conclusive comparison of your own Internet marketing brand against your competition, it is worthwhile setting up a few critical metrics and focus on measuring these. No matter how different your brand of Internet marketing is against your competitor, there is sure to be common data that you can measure because you are dealing with the same product.