What is the difference between Online Marketing and eCommerce?

As I was preparing my presentation for EyeForTravel Asia Distribution Summit in March, I had an epiphany ("a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.")

Simple question:

What is the difference between Online Marketing and eCommerce?

This is a very simple question, but confounds most people. When I give people my business card with the title "Director, eCommerce", I often get questions like "what does ecommerce do?", "so you look after the online marketing?" or "So you are like a webmaster right?".

Simple SAT answer:

Online Marketing is to eCommerce LIKE Marketing is to Sales! (DING! the light goes on.)

I know, I know.. there are those of you out there cringing. Yes there is a huge gray overlapping area between Online Marketing and eCommerce, but ask yourselves:

What are the core objectives of Online Marketing and eCommerce?

Online Marketing is about representing your brand out there in all relevant media. This includes brand advertising in mainstream websites as well as web 2.0 sites, SecondLife, blogs, viral marketing campaigns, email marketing campaigns, etc. etc. The primary KPI for Online Marketing are the impressions, opens, and the click-through-rates (CTR) - eyeballs you attract to your site or microsite. This is not unlike "traditional" Marketing, even if you include reputation management (i.e. PR) into this mix.

eCommerce is about the money. It is the virtual storefront. It is the keyword group on the PPC campaign that generate the best Return-on-ad-spend(ROAS). And by Return, I mean DOLLARS (US$ or otherwise, cash or credit). It is about "Show me the eMoney!". So yes, eCommerce looks after the actual site, but from a platform, security, and usability perspective as it relates to getting that user to BUY BUY BUY. If we - eCommerce people - thought that it would generate the highest revenue, our website would just be a white page with a booking engine. The primary KPI for eCommerce is revenue, period (or "full stop"). So when we look at a PPC campaign or affiliate marketing proposal or Facebook app, we try to figure the $$$ that we think we can get from it.

Online Marketing looks from the advertising and branding perspective and tries to figure out what kind of eyeballs we can attract and how many of those eyeballs will book - maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later.

eCommerce looks from the shopkeeper perspective and asks "Who is going to buy today? right now! Where do I find them? What do I have to do to get people into my store? What do I have to do to make them book? What features, functionality and what price will they accept?"

In "traditional" Sales & Marketing, the teams play on different playing fields. Marketing has it media plans, advertising budgets and printed materials, and Sales has their customer relationships, sales calls, salesforce.com, and tradeshows. They occasionally cross path at tradeshows and brochure development. However, in the online world, there is one huge confusing marketplace that includes both Online Marketing and eCommerce. The divisions are blurred and the point at which marketing converts to a sales is also not very clear.

Yes there is a huge gray area, and it is an over-simplification by saying "Online Marketing is to eCommerce LIKE Marketing is to Sales". But if we understand this fundamental difference, then Online Marketer and eCommerce Managers can begin to work together to formulate strategy. One that will - in the short-, medium-, to long-term - optimize ...
... um...
... revenue.

MUWHAHAHA.... MUWHAHAHA......!

PS: Just some wikipedia definition on: online marketing and ecommerce