Every now and then I’ll get myself into a new situation. Occasionally in new situations, the way things turn out line up pretty well with what you expected. More often than not, there are - shall we say - some minor differences between what I imagined and what is reality. Sometimes that’s positive, sometimes not.

Marriage, fatherhood, and moving overseas are three great examples of huge differences between expectations and reality. I’m about to add another item to my list:

Internet Marketing.

Being a member of the ProspectMX team is my first jaunt into the internet marketing world. I come from a consulting / coaching / training background with a healthy dose of retail. Now that I’ve been in the internet marketing world for a few months, I have developed some keen observations on what internet marketing actually entails vs. what I originally assumed it would be.

Seeing as how many of our clients are sticking their feet into the waters of internet marketing for the first time, I believe my observations can be very beneficial for anyone questioning what this industry is all about and how it fits into their marketing objectives.

I was looking for a quickly changing, fast moving environment when my job hunt led me to ProspectMX. Slow growth and stability? Bah! Not for me. Well, I certainly found what I was looking for. It seems that things are changing all the time in this industry. Even aside from all the other issues that are part of the changing landscape in this industry, working with Google (and their game playing) keeps things interesting.

Naturally I expected a bit of a techie flavor when I started. This is internet marketing, after all. But I certainly underestimated the amount of geekiness required to excel in this field. There really is a high amount of technical expertise required to do internet marketing well.

I underestimated the level to which you are able to track the results of your marketing efforts. Many have heard the famous quote that is attributed to a variety of people:

“Half of my marketing works. I just don’t know which half.”

One of the beauties of internet marketing is the ability to easily track results. In fact, there is the danger of having too much data. The biggest challenge for tracking results with internet marketing is not the lack of data readily available… it’s paring down the massive amounts of data and identifying the key pieces that are relevant for a business.

This item is not specific to internet marketing, but it’s an important part of what I’ve noticed moving into this new company and industry. I was (and still am!) surprised by the skill and knowledge level of my teammates in their specific areas of expertise. It’s enjoyable to learn new things from people who are intelligent and competent.

One of the things that attracted me to marketing, in general, is the opportunity to be creative and forward looking. But I assumed that creativity would be less important in internet marketing. After all, how much original thinking is required to help a client’s website rank higher in the search engine results?

As it turns out, a lot. We’re always kicking around ideas for doing different things or doing things in a different way.

Lastly, I underestimated how much I would enjoy not having to dress up each day.