November 19th 2008
Like a bunch of eager bunnies, Internet advertising has split, combined, and multiplied into a bewildering array of approaches to advertising on the Web. Using abbreviations such as CPM, CPC, CPA, CPT, and CPS make the novice Net advertiser’s eyes glaze over when he sees this alphabet soup of Net advertising jargon. If this is you, don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. Continue Reading »
November 19th 2008
The first step in designing your ad campaign is to define your customer. You need to be very specific about the age, gender, marital status, geographic location, religion, political affiliation, occupation, educational level, and so on so that you can buy the proper ad placement. Continue Reading »
March 15th 2008
You can also use the Internet and commercial online services to launch your BBS. For example, you can put the connection software for your BBS on a Web site. If someone is interested in joining the BBS, they download the software from your site and install it on their computer. This saves you the trouble and cost of mailing a disk to new subscribers.
In general, the proactive approach is the best way to get a BBS started. If you want people to connect electronically to your company, go to their home or office and set up the system on their computer. You need to be proactive because many people do not have the motivation or the inclination to install new capabilities on their computer. But once the software is set up, they will use the BBS to communicate with your company. So get out there and be proactive.
Following the successful launch of your program, keep it exciting and vibrant by constantly changing the content, and look for new opportunities. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is an ongoing interactive process. Continue Reading »
March 15th 2008
Web site display advertising: You can place an interactive display ad on one of the popular Web sites. For example, you can place an advertisement on the Yahoo search engine. When people access Yahoo, they see your ad. If they want to see your site, they simply click on the ad. The cost of running a Web ad can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands. It all depends on the amount of traffic generated by the host site. As I’ve contended a few times, I believe this kind of online advertising should be billed based solely on results. In this case, you should only pay for the number of visits you receive from the host site. If you don’t get any visits, you pay nothing; if you get thousands of visits, you pay more. If you can, negotiate this kind of results-only program.
Web site links and pointers: To generate traffic on your Web site, you want people to discover your existence on other sites. For example, if you have a site about fishing supplies, you want to be listed on all major sites frequented by anglers. Continue Reading »
March 15th 2008
Because it’s so easy to capture, store, process, and redistribute digital information, it is becoming almost impossible to police trademarkand copyright infractions on the Internet. Consider for example, the problem of the Digital Fan.
The digital fan: Let’s say you own a major rollerblade hockey team, the Hanover Hippos. Your team has won the world championships three times in a row, and made you millions of dollars selling merchandise and information about the Hippos. You’ve created your official Hippo Home Page, and receive more than a million hits a week. But something is amiss. Many of your fans are starting to set up their own online fan clubs. They’re plastering the Hippo logo all over their pages and posting statistics and player profiles downloaded from your site. As well, fans of your archrivals, the Neustadt Nimrods, have set up anti-Hippo sites filled with lewd images which they have made by digitally altering your logo. Continue Reading »
March 14th 2008
Your digital marketing program is like the Saturn V rocket which launched Neil Armstrong and his crew to the moon. The tremendous power needed to launch the rocket consumed most of its fuel in the first few minutes. But once the spacecraft was on its way, only minor adjustments were needed. So it is with your digital marketing program. It’s like a rocket — it has three distinct stages and needs you to send it skyward with a blast. The stages are:
Let’s take a look at each of these stages.
When you’re ready for liftoff, you can generate initial awareness of your promotion using both digital and mass-media marketing tools. The appropriate mix of these tools depends on the technical capabilities of your audience and the type of promotion you’re launching. Continue Reading »
February 4th 2008
According to research company Forrester (www.forrester.com), two-thirds of e-Shopping transactions are aborted after the shopper has already placed goods in the shopping basket, and nine out of ten buyers do not make a repeat purchase. e-Retailers need to make the purchasing process reliable, easy to use and efficient, removing the reasons for abandoning purchases. Human contact needs to be available to sort out problems — at least by email, but preferably also with a phone option. A software device such as HyPhone from Byzantium allows ‘phone- through’ without dropping the Internet connection (www.byzantium.com during office hours for a live demonstration). Continue Reading »
February 4th 2008
Once a strategy has been chosen, the next step is to ensure that implementation takes place as smoothly as possible. A number of key questions need to be addressed:
February 4th 2008
A basic part of managing lists involves facilitating subscriptions entry of customer profile details and also unsubscribe. This facility will typically be set up to occur automatically via the web site. It should also enable adding e-mail and other profile details collected offline, such as by phone and events. You should assess the package to see whether it enables you to import these details readily from other packages such as Excel. This is a basic capability, and most packages will enable you to tailor profile fields you add into the database.
You will need to decide whether to collect e-mail addresses and profile data via your web- site content management system or customer database management system, or through a data collection module which is part of your e-mail package. Continue Reading »
February 1st 2008
The target audience for this newsletter is marketing professionals and students. When it was first launched in autumn 2001 it was e-mailed to Chartered Institute of Marketing members (www.cim.co.uk), plus a proactive list of marketing professionals and an AP list of subscribers to the Marketing Managers’ Yearbook (around 15 000 in total).
The execution involved a first mailing to the full list. A reminder was e-mailed a fortnight later to those who had not subscribed. Continue Reading »
