After the fall of the myths associated with the technological bubble and the consistent crisis of ideas based on the global projection, now it is when there begin being clear the advantages of the professional and commercial use of Internet. On the one hand, the cost saving and time, for other the enlargement of the network of commercial contacts and appearance of new opportunities of business. Internet generates big opportunities to the companies on earlier hardly attended markets.

For it, we dare to say that sufficient indications seem to be observed as to think that we have initiated of logical form a really important transition in the traditional way of understanding the economy, the company and also the marketing.

Internet has provoked a considerable evolution, since in the latter years the convergence has taken place between traditional companies and virtual companies. Between these two ways of understanding and of acting in the business, the traditional company has chosen to have a more and more significant presence in the network – creating a website and providing it with more and more resources and elements–. Of course, at different speeds.

In this so novel competitive stage they arise you doubt, to a certain extent reasonable, if the company is sufficiently prepared for the change and if, really, it understands what the real rules are to compete. And here there are opposing reactions: them there is that they believe in the change and are renewed, and them there is that they desist before trying to understand the magnitude of the change. In the same situation is the marketing. Many persons in charge do not know if to resort to the old skills, to adapt them – but: how? – or to begin defining completely new things.

Let's start for saying that it is not true that the marketing has changed radically. Simply it has evolved towards what it has always chased: to support a more direct communication with the client and to personalize absolutely his offer of products and services.

The real importance of the marketing in Internet is that, definitely, it appears with all his power. The actions can come to a such grade of particularization and sophistication that they surprise to the most experienced. That's why it produces an inevitable speed sensation; it is not easy to plan to way - length term, the milestones are immediate and we are not used to obtaining a feedback of our actions in real-time. But opposite to these enormous advantages, there arise some questions that it is convenient to know and to dominate to understand perfectly what we call netmarketing or marketing in the network.

And now let's keep on reflecting.

A) The traditional marketing functions tend to transform

Internet ride I obtain an inherent effect of virtualization and managerial atomization. The companies and business units in Internet are generally smaller and agile. Along with this structural change there is taking place another phenomenon that could turn out to be paradoxical; Internet tends to divide the tasks, what sometimes goes so far as to fragment the decisions and managerial approaches.

One of the clearest examples is had by us in the operative marketing, to which increasingly he is identified by his communication function. The product strategy depends now, to a great extent, on the decisions of the person in charge of contents. Internet is not an end, it is a way, a technology that allows to do things that might not be done otherwise or to an impossible cost for other means.

B) But: what investment is needed to be of active form in the network?

Today it is essential to be present of professional form in Internet, therefore it is necessary to think more about solutions that only in commercial applications. Before investing in the network, it is necessary to realize very well for what he expects from it and especially to assign the precise human resources to keep her updated in contents and consultations. In Internet there is very important the time of answer, a web page, before a commercial shop window, it is an image tool and fidelización.

First of all it has to be begun by the starting of a web entirely updated, to be incorporating applications that improve the commercial processes in order to demonstrate the extra cost that offers the network as complement to the real world. It is a question, finally, of giving sufficient motives for changing habits of consultation and consumption. It is necessary to think that the used resources owe to go to create the bases of confidence that needs the network to turn into a strategic ally, for it, the costs of having a positive presence in Internet are relatively low if we compare them with the multiple benefits that they contribute.

C) The approach in Internet must not limit itself

One of the Home problems for which many managers and professionals of marketing cannot go so far as to accept the new rules that Internet mark is for not understanding or for not wanting to understand what the North American Walid Mougayar defined as «five Internet faces». The network is, simultaneously, mass communication media, a market, an environment of applications, an environment of deals and, of course, a network. It is all that, but at the same time and never separately. For it, the vision that has to be had is global and strategic opposite to the limitations that the market and managers' certain minds try to impose on us.

D) Markets versus metabought

Internet has allowed the evolution from a products market a clients' market, this tool of analysis that began in Internet has been discovered like a strategy much hit in the analyses of the traditional companies, since the percentage of a client does not value for market share but for a big variety of products or services that a client can acquire of this company, that is to say, client's quota.

The network, in his continuous and not so tidy growth, has derived in a paradoxical situation: on the one hand there exists a very dispersed offer – of products and concrete services – and simultaneously a generic offer – the so called universal portals–.

The consumer needs time to be able to discriminate efficiently against the offer; on not having had it, or not having wanted to use it, it gives cause for the promotion of a type of intermediaries: intermediaries in a way of direct contacts?, that have come to be called «a packers of offers» or more sofisticadamente: infomediarios.

The infomediario presents, like Home extra cost, his capacity and skill to structure the offer that presents the network. Somehow they turn into a species of «the only windows» that include products and associate services and that give like turned out an offer specifies simultaneously that global. But perhaps the most interesting thing this skill is not so much of selecting, as the skill of identifying wide solutions based on the demand of the client. We have a clear example in dedicated to the trips.

A product or service always presents an environment of complementary solutions based in turn on other products or services. For example, the buy of a car involves the selection of the same one in a concessionaire; but further away, the potential client of this car is interested in solving the topic of his insurance, the financing of the buy, etc. All these complementary solutions that make a detour to the product or Home service shape the metamarket, concept that, in the fund, does not come but to be the potential market that originates in the mind of the consumer on having thought about a certain product or service.

E) The first detected error: the big numbers

Because this way it seemed that the managerial logic of Internet wanted it, to what it was giving priority there were the metric ones before the income and the benefits. Or at least in his beginnings. There was no company «point com» that was boasting of having a promising future and that, simultaneously, did not have a contradictory results account if it looks with the magnifying glass of the traditional analyst. To lose money in the origins was, almost always, synonymous of «being invest the suitable resources volume». An example between the outstanding figures: Amaz¾n.com it was the modality of electronic commerce that, the more it was selling, the more it was losing and, the the more it was losing, the the more it was costing. The only users, the seen pages and the registered users were the «card of presentation» of the companies in Internet and a measurement of his future potential. The reality of the market has demonstrated that the investor in Internet has to be faced towards the traditional vision of the business.

F) Targets of the marketing in Internet

Internet can help to change the results of a company, managing new clients, discovering business opportunities, knowing better to the competition, or simply doing that his clients are more satisfied. But let's speak about some of the opportunities that the network raises for all kinds of business, and that we cannot allow to spend ahead of our company without giving him any type of orientation, since the companies can use Internet for:

• To announce the company.

Internet be not more not less than another advertizing support in which to throw our services, with the extra cost of being able to segment very well our communication, with the consequent saving in campaign costs if we compare it with other massive means. Also the publicity on line can measure itself to many precision, knowing at all times what actions are the most profitable, in order to make use better of our budget.

• Posicionar the company.

One of the most innovative possibilities that Internet offers to the companies is the possibility of throwing his offer across searchers, with a model that bears the payment for the visits that have been generated to our web or for providing it with the precise contents and information to improve the position in searchers of the company.

• To meet better the clients.

The company website is the best communication vehicle with the clients. Not only for being a shop window of the same one, but especially because it makes the dialogue and the communication possible with each of the clients, individually. It is very frequent that the companies offer services under subscription, having the user to refill a brief form in which it can be identified, creating for the publisher the user's called profiles, which suppose a valuable information for the company at the time of meeting better the public for which the company is attractive.

• To make faithful clients.

As we can make use of all the information that the visitors of our web generate, we will be able to give them better services on having attended to his requests of a way as personalized as possible. This way it is much more probable that our clients remain more satisfied and remain with us a lot of more time, and even that they recommend us to other clients of characteristics similar to theirs.

• Markets investigation.

There exist numerous services that resort to Internet to do market researches that help the businessman to define better his offer. For example, the surveys achievement on line on users' panels bears not only one big cost saving compared to the traditional surveys, but the results are obtained in a rapid and agile way.

• To promote our presence in the network.

It is the last target of our activity, for it we have indicated some of the basic but fundamental applications that we will have to realize on having established our marketing plan. Any investment of resources that we should realize in Internet is required that the companies should mark certain targets to the web in terms of ROI (I return on the investment).