How does your marketing plan change when a door to the Internet
is opened? It�s estimated that over 20 million people are connected
to the Internet. Sounds like a marketer�s dream, doesn�t it? You might
be able to reach most of them using electronic mail, but more importantly,
they may choose to reach your materials at your company�s online site.
This is one of the chief differences you�ll encounter when you begin
marketing over the Internet. Your customers self-select and present
themselves at your electronic doorway.
This is an unprecedented opportunity to not only communicate your
message, but also to mine the customer�s thoughts and needs in a
two-way conversation. Typically, your Internet presence will be a
computer address on the World Wide Web. It may include electronic
mail press releases or may engage your customer with interactive Web
pages, accessible by a graphical browser such as Netscape. Your
Internet marketing materials may contain text with many variations,
as well as full-color graphics, sound and video. Online forms may be used
to collect demographic and other data, submitted directly from the user.
You�ll need to think differently about presenting your message in
multimedia format, for a global audience.
There are many obvious benefits to marketing over the Internet and
World Wide Web.
- information can be updated instantly.
- distribution of your materials is cost-effective, whether they are
distributed to the customers down the street or worldwide.
- information is available at your customer�s convenience, not just
during regular business hours.
- important information can be collected from users. Electronic forms
capabilities allow surveys, suggestions, orders and other information to be transmitted with ease between your customers and your firm.
- you can monitor activity to see who is coming in and when, as well
as what information pages were viewed and which were ignored.
The ability to include multimedia information in your marketing
messages may be alluring, but it is not enough to keep customers
coming to your site.Many marketing experts find that content is the
key to success on the Internet. They often put other value-added
information at their sites, such as a searchable database of popular
movies, or a downloadable archive of popular software. They may also
have contests, or drawings, often on a weekly basis. You�ll need to
think about providing thoughtful content, not just advertising hype,
to attract the users you want.
And don�t forget that you have to market your Web site. People locate
content through web indexes such as Lycos, Webcrawler and Yahoo. You
should announce your Web to these and many other indexing services, so
that its content will be gathered and indexed. Also, promote your site
and your products on carefully selected discussion groups, newsgroups
and other appropriate places on the Internet. You can start by
announcing to 15 different indexing and announcement services at once.
When doing this, however, you need to take care to avoid unwanted
"spamming" of individuals, groups and locations in the thousands. This
is considered an unpardonable breach of netiquette. The Blacklist of
Internet Advertisers "is intended to curb inappropriate advertising on
usenet newsgroups and via junk e-mail. It works by describing offenders
and their offensive behavior, expecting that people who read it will
punish the offenders in one way or another." To avoid being listed
there, read Strangelove�s Advertising on the Internet: Frequently Asked
Questions and Answers.
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MARKETING ON THE INTERNET