Peer Review

Internet Marketing: A Highly Practical Guide to Every Aspect of Internet Marketing

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Overview:: This textbook focuses on a specific internet marketing tools, including the basics of internet marketing, websites as effective foundation for holistic marketing, writing effective online copy, successful email marketing campaigns, online advertising, search engine optimisation, social media, measurability and performance indicators, mobile marketing, and developing a holistic plan for success.
Type of Material:: Open Textbook
Recommended Uses:: This book could easily serve as support or additional reading material for several marketing courses that include units specifically addressing online marketing.
Technical Requirements:: PDF reader
Identify Major Learning Goals:: - The student will learn concepts, strategies, and tools to gain an knowledge for marketing in the electronic venue. - The the reader will develop his/her own plan.
Target Student Population:: College-aged students and beyond. The content is definitely suited to an Internet Marketing or Integrated Marketing Communications course, but can be used as support material in other classes.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Principles or basic marketing course.

Rating:
Strengths:: The information is provided in a free textbook, and is decently thorough for this opportunity. - - The ten chapter content includes: definition, origins and trends of the internet, web design, copywriting, email marketing, online advertising, SEO, social media and viral marketing, web analytics, mobile marketing, and strategy. Each chapter includes examples, graphics, a summary, and reference page. - The content is easily readable, and provides practical tips for using each topical area. - Illustrations and graphics are of good quality. - The information provided appears to be well-documented/researched, and overall the quality is high.
Concerns:: - Although the majority of the content is universal, the text states that it is written “with a specific focus on the South African landscape.” This is obvious in several chapters where that country’s statistics or situations are referenced, and may prevent an entire reliance on this as the sole textbook in a course. - There is no table of contents, so being able to determine the scope and sequence of the content requires one to page through the entire book.

Rating:
Strengths:: - This textbook could easily be a primary or secondary support to a course, as it provides a very nice overview of internet marketing concepts. - Students are progressively introduced to the content, and each chapter’s topic is well-discussed with photos/graphics and examples. - A key feature of each chapter is the advice provided for both “what to do” and “what not to do,” so students are able to learn both the concept in theory and in practice. - There are many examples and guides provided for each topic. In fact, it appears the authors have presented a nice "checksheet" approach for tasks relevant to each chapter's content.
Concerns:: - Although the examples and statistics are helpful and recognizable, they are somewhat outdated. - While the content does provide a summary, it does not have chapter-ending questions or activities for reflection. - An instructor would therefore need to craft separate assignments to use in conjunction with the information. - No learning objectives are provided, and no review questions are included

Rating:
Strengths:: - No sign-in or other criteria is required to download the text, so a student can begin reading almost immediately. - Since it is a download, the text file lends itself to portability across multiple devices. - The graphics used tends to break the written content and are both effective and engaging in grasping the topics. - The design, presentation, and illustrations are of good quality.
Concerns:: - Although the information is well organized within and across each chapters, the text does not have a table of contents and therefore quickly finding information is inhibited. - A textbook is not typically designed for any activity, but the absence of any reflective activity to reinforce the concepts is a noticeable difference.

Other Issues and Comments:: This topic becomes out-of-date very quickly, and I suspect as of today, some of the data provided is not current. In addition, please note the link provided here takes an extremely long time to respond and provide access to the pdf document. I then waited a long time for the site to respond when I tried to access (clicked on the) pdf document. One must be patient, and at times the connection may time out.
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