The telecoms giant Sony Ericsson is investing heavily in on-line marketing according to New Media Age.

Sony Ericsson is to spend close to one third of its total marketing budget on-line in a doubling of its 15% on-line marketing budget in the run up to the important Christmas trading period.

This follows a trend from other retailers investing heavily in there internet brands, the Return On Investment (ROI) from internet related marketing is often considered to be among the best available to marketing divisions, using viral marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), social networking and the host of other opportunities a web based marketing strategy offers.

Cathy Davies, Sony Ericsson’s director of global marketing, said the company was deepening its commitment to digital as it looked to capitalise on the increasing amount of time consumers spend online.
“Through our digital strategy we’re really trying to communicate, not just tell people to buy our phones,” she said. “We want to give them value.”

Sony Ericsson is using the forth coming James Bond film Quantum of Solace as a hook to promote its Sony Ericsson C902 handset via the Internet in 42 countries from Monday.

The promotion will include an interactive movie that allows users to use the phone to act as a secret agent.
“From our point of view, Bond is the hottest film property on the planet, so we’ve been working on this push for around 14 months,” said Davies. “Digital can offer the full Bond experience and allows us to bring it to life, which is something you can’t do with other media.”

So the credit crunch is hitting and no one has any money right ……. Wrong

The internet and on-line marketing is a great business to be in, you are working internationally and so if the economy of one country or region you work in encounters problems then the other markets your products sell in can make up the difference.

Another reason the internet is a place for business when times are tough is that people love a bargain and they often use the search engines to search for items at less than high street costs, because you do not have the same overheads as a shop your prices on-line are often cheaper.

With the high price of fuel people are less inclined to travel to out of town stores to shop, instead they turn on the computer and search the on-line stores for the items they need, and as long as the prices are reasonable when delivery is added they purchase on-line too.

People care less about where the store is located than they traditionally have, it does not matter that you are not in the same county or even country in many cases, as long as the goods are delivered in working order and on time and of course at the right price.

So when you worry about the credit crunch remember the internet is international and the opportunities it provides can be as close to recession proof as any business gets.

Getting on the first page of the search engines can be quite a task, you need to consider several things before you start trying to rank well.

These include

• What keywords do you need to rank well for?
• How much traffic does that search get from the search engines?
• What is the level of competition?
• Are these buying or research terms?

Once you have answers to these questions then you can concentrate on the SEO or search engine optimisation for the terms you are looking to target.

The Search engine optimisation is designed to let the search engines such as Google, Yahoo & MSN know what your web page is about, in the same way someone reading the title of a report would know what it is about.

The standard definition often used when people explain what is meant by SEO is often something like

“Getting a web site found in the search engines.”

This is fairly accurate but only scrapes the service, SEO not only helps your site be found in the search engines but if done properly will increase the number of visitors you get and also increase the sales you make on your site.

Think about the way you and those you know use the internet, you don’t always type in the name of the site you are looking for, sometimes you do not know it other times you want to see what other sites are offering a similar service.
When you do this you tend to use the search engines, the most well known of these is Google, you type in a word or phrase and the search engine delivers back to you the results, now if your site is not in the top 10 you will not be on the first page of results.

If you are not on the first page of results you are much less likely to be found by potential visitors and customers, using search engine optimisation correctly can help you gain these top positions in the search engines.