Chapter 1: What is Online Marketing? — Building the Right Mental Model
1. Redefining: Marketing is Not “Selling”
For many, the first impression of Online Marketing is an ad on Facebook, a pre-roll on YouTube, or a sponsored link at the top of Google results.
If you equate marketing with “buying ads,” it’s like equating “building a house” with “buying bricks.” Bricks are materials, but without architectural blueprints and structural design, you get a pile of rubble, not a home.
The essence of Online Marketing is: building and maintaining relationships with a target audience in the digital world through an exchange of value.
It’s not just about “making someone buy your product”; it’s about:
- Who has this need?
- Why should they choose you over others?
- Where can you find them at the lowest cost?
- How do you turn them from strangers into trusting customers?
2. Fundamental Difference: Traditional Ads vs. Online Marketing
To understand online marketing, we must look at how it differs fundamentally from traditional ads (TV, newspapers, billboards).
A. From “Broadcasting” to “Conversation”
Traditional ads are like a giant megaphone. You put up a billboard on a highway, and whether the passerby is a student, a retiree, or a business owner, you are shouting the same message at everyone. This is Broadcasting.
Online marketing is more like thousands of parallel private conversations. Through data, you can show a running shoe ad only to someone “searching for running shoes,” and offer a 10% discount code to someone who “added shoes to their cart but didn’t check out.”
B. From “Guessing” to “Tracking”
There is a famous quote in traditional marketing: “I know half my advertising budget is wasted; I just don’t know which half.”
In Online Marketing, every cent leaves a trail.
- Traditional: You run a TV ad, sales go up, but you can’t be sure if it was the ad or just better weather.
- Online: You see which ad they clicked, how long they stayed, and what they eventually bought. You can precisely calculate: for every $1 invested, how many dollars were returned.
3. Core Logic: Traffic, Attention, and Conversion
To master online marketing, you must understand the progression of these three terms:
Traffic — “People walking by”
Traffic is like foot traffic on a commercial street. On the internet, traffic is the foundation, but traffic itself isn’t inherently valuable.
Attention — “People stopping to look”
Only a tiny fraction of traffic turns into Attention. In this age of information overload, attention is the scarcest resource. If you can’t catch a user’s eye within 0.5 seconds of them scrolling their screen, no amount of traffic matters.
Conversion — “People staying to pay”
This is the ultimate goal. Conversion isn’t always “paying money”; it can be “leaving an email,” “downloading an app,” or “clicking for a consultation.” Marketing without conversion is just an expensive firework show.
4. Warning: Why “Spending Money on Ads ≠ Knowing Marketing”
Many beginners (and even business owners) believe that if they just top up their Google or Meta accounts, orders will roll in. This is the “Faucet Illusion.”
If your marketing logic is flawed (uncompetitive product, uninspiring copy, wrong audience), running ads will only accelerate your failure—you are using real money to amplify your mistakes.
Marketing is a “Lever”:
- If your business base is 1, marketing can turn it into 10 or 100.
- If your business base is 0, marketing multiplied by 100 is still 0.
5. Summary: Mental Model Reset
Before diving into terminology and platforms, remember these three points:
- Marketing is both Science and Art: Science in data analysis, Art in human insight.
- Data is Feedback, not the Destination: We look at numbers to understand human behavior.
- The User Journey is more important than the Ad Placement: Think about what the user was doing before they saw you, and what they want to do after.
6. Brand in Action: Airbnb’s “Return to Brand” Strategy
Background: Before 2020, Airbnb, like most tech companies, spent heavily on Google search ads. If you searched for “London Hotels,” Airbnb paid a premium to be #1.
The Pivot: In 2021, CEO Brian Chesky announced a shocking move: permanently slashing their performance marketing budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Why? Chesky realized that if Airbnb relied solely on buying traffic from Google, it was merely a “tenant” of Google. Once you stop paying rent, the traffic vanishes.
- Mental Model Reset: He shifted the budget from “buying traffic” to “building the brand.” They created emotionally resonant films (like Made Possible by Hosts) telling stories of real human connections.
- Result: Despite cutting massive ad spend, Airbnb’s traffic didn’t collapse. Instead, 90% of their traffic became “Direct” or “Brand Search.”
Deep Dive: This proves our first chapter’s mental model: The highest level of marketing is making users search for your name (Brand), not your industry (Traffic). Airbnb proved that when you treat marketing as “building relationships” rather than “buying clicks,” you earn true business premium.
Next Chapter: We will break down the Core Logic and Loop of Online Marketing. Why do some ads look effective (high clicks) but the business doesn’t improve? We will introduce the Marketing Funnel and see where the money is actually being lost.