Yet another summary of online marketing methods

by altspace⁽¹⁾
http://www.sciprint.org

Yet another summary of online marketing methods While so far I often used only few online marketing tools (including meta-tag improvement, submit to search engine, and monitor searchengine rank automatically), internet marketing itself belongs to the most rapid developing subjects in marketing issues. Some experts argue that it could redefine the meaning of 'marketing'. Despite such a lack of good experience in online marketing state-of-the-art, I've tried to summarize here what's been around throughout these years. Because I'm not an online marketing specialist myself, therefore this summary could be regarded as 'techie viewpoint' on internet marketing. Hopefully, a few of methods described here will be found useful, at least to a few newbies.

Internet Marketing Objectives: 1 There are few different definitions of internet marketing objectives, but the simplest could be summarized as follows:

a. Acquire ==> customer acquisition. This consists of various methods in particular to achieve solid customer base in the segmented market. In online marketing, this objective could be achieved using various ways, including search engine optimization (SEO), banner linking program, email marketing software etc.

b. Retention ==> customer retention. This is intended to build customer loyalty, and goes beyond customer service which is merely standard way to do business. Without customer service, customers will go to competitors (which are only a next click away ). Customer loyalty could be simply defined as the right chemistry which will keep them return to your site. Some ways to do this in online way, is to find out the 20:80 pattern (Pareto principle): either 20% the best sold-content, 20% of the best customer (highest sale maker), 20% the best content provider etc. Then find out how to keep these top 20% in each category loyal to your site. Some marketing experts call it ' database marketing ', which implies that to sort these 20% from each category we need to keep tracking all sales record and find out the pattern ( pattern discovery ). Customer retention program could include: special gifts (to make them know we appreciate their loyalty), discount of airfare trip (if they like travelling), discount to attend a concert (if they like music) etc.

c. Expand ==> expand customer base. The next phase to do is to expand customer base. In online ways, this could mean more intensive marketing campaign, or to re-segmentize the market (again via Pareto principle) and refocus content to this segment. For instance, using database marketing, we could find user pattern, and find out what age range is actually more willing to get mobile content, and which kind of content deserves better attention etc. An example of such content segmentation report will be discussed in subsequent section.

Methods to achieve objectives: According to Al Ries, 2 advertising is only useful to support established brand (like Coca-Cola), not to build a new one. Therefore, to avoid mis-allocated resources (at initial stage), the following methods could be used differently in different online brand building stages. An example is given in Table 1, where each phase implies different priority of online marketing concept. Of course, how these concepts could be implemented will be largely affected by what are available marketing method options (look at your budget first, of course), and also which market segment you are aiming at. Another point is to consider is whether you are gorilla in your industry, a startup, or merely an established brick-organization trying to find leverage into your 'click' market. Example is whether you are like 'Dell' which is offering products purely online, or like Compaq which is more conventional but eager to getting its foot wet into the 'click market'.

Year 1

Year 3

70.00%

38.00%

Publication

13.00%

29.00%

Advertising

44.00%

58.00%

A few online technologies to achieve online marketing objectives:

Beyond hypes and buzz-words, there are only few realistic methods to do online marketing, a few of them are listed here (but not complete, of course):

Meta-tag description : improve your homepage in order to make it more suitable to search engines. This includes writing special scripts to make it easier for the search-engine to crawl (i.e make it search-engine friendly).

Submit to Search-engine : we can use various different tools to submit to searchengines. The best tools will ensure to keep monitoring the placement in searchengines, and report back to us how good our site ranks in these searchengines. Example of good adviser for search-engine placement: http://www.ineedhits.com/submission/GBoost.aspx?source=ientry

Search engine optimization (SEO) . Retain position within the best 10 in more than five best search engines. 3 If you're not sure what to do with search- engine, perhaps you're better off find a third-party service to do so, like NeedHitsNow.com, or www.site-reference.com . Normally, a good position in best search-engines, like google.com will ensure massive visitor stream.

Banner linking with the other mobile service providers/operators sites. For instance, in Europe, this would mean to put banner in Vodafone site, etc. It is known that banner is not used extensively anymore, so people begin to use media/videostreaming to advertise instead of using classic banners.

Cross-reference . Another way, which is sometimes more effective, is to put crosslinking with other top sites, like Amazon etc. There are special procedures for each this 'hitmaking' sites but basically they are open for cross-reference.

Use third-party service to do banner posting to massive sites : example https://secure.mysiteinc.com/cgi-bin/secureforms/bannersgomlm/4million/form.cgi?dist=spn

Email marketing is another method, but only if we're sure the database list is not categorized as spamming-list. Unless we could find a solid prospect database (from associate company, or from existing customer etc.), we could also find database from third-party service, with segmented market. But we should be sure that the email list provided is suitable to our market nieche. Example of email list provider:

http://mip.usadata.com/usapub/search/newsletter.asp?ovchn=INH&ovcpn=Newletter&ovcrn=WomensBizNews&ovtac=EMAIL

Enable massive email marketing to the existing users (members) could be very effective. By introducing special services to (premium) user account with special fee service per month, generating new members will be easier for the existing member, and customer based will grow significantly likewise. If we do email marketing by your own team, perhaps you could reach 1000 prospect, but if you're offering the user to 'capitalize' their social-network, perhaps they can reach multiple-fold prospect emails. The problem is to find a good tool to enable users to do so (massive emails), would be better if he/she can send massive emails with already included video-clip etc., so he/she could just send to to their peers.

Partnerships in delivering (online) leisure services to leading mobile service providers, via join-branding.

Increase presence in known (online) media to youngsters. This could be useful for getting more 'brand awareness'. An alternative way to do so is to make review on other sites, blogsites etc. Example article: http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050705ReviewsBuildTrafficandReputation.html

Periodic regional campaign (online) to specific towns: join with cultural centers, special events, music programs etc.

Newsletter advertising 4 : put text ads in most popular search-engines.

Sapere aude: this wording comes from Kant, meaning 'think yourself'. Be creative , because there are plentitude of other online methods which are not yet discovered.

After defining these methods, the next step is to make a priority table for each phase, which is similar to Table 1, but this time to describe which methods to be used in each phase and to how extent it should implemented (moderate, intensive, etc.).

So, what do you think, friends?

VC

email: vxianto@yahoo.com

1 st version: Aug. 5 th , 2005. 2 nd version: Sept. 8 th 2005.

Endnote:

1 For another article on internet marketing, see: http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050705MagneticMarketingGettingClientstoCometoYou.html

2 Al Ries, 22 immutable laws of internet branding, (2001).

3 http://www.ineedhits.com/advertising/online-advertising.aspx

4 http://www.ineedhits.com/advertising/online-advertising.aspx

Article submitted Wednesday, September 14, 2005 & read 362 times.

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