Internet technology and Marketing
With the advent of Web 2.0, Customer engagement with the help of internet based platform has become pertinent. Earlier with web 1.0, the customer engagement was not interactive enough to make an impact. Now with better graphics, usability, flexibility, inter operability and speed, web 2.0 features has drastically improving and breakthrough achievements are being made in the field of the internet technology. Marketers & technologists, who were earlier very skeptical of using the power of internet to market their products and services, are being more assertive in their approach to focus on internet marketing as an important part of their marketing plan.
Use of Internet marketing tools and techniques in marketing the products is quite a new concept and there are lot of challenges that this field is also facing as most of other technologies face while evolving.
No one is undermining the impact of internet marketing technologies in marketing field, but marketers are not sure on which tools and technique to focus on to get the maximum ROI on the internet marketing investments. The structured approach in internet marketing is still evolving.
What do researcher's point out ?
In another research, On the basis of an analysis of survey data from 381 manufacturing firms involved in exporting, the authors V. Kanti Prasad, K. Ramamurthy and G.M. Naidu, find that firms' integration ofInternet technology into marketing activities generally leverages the influence of market orientation on the firms' marketing competencies (compared with competitors), which in turn have a positive impact on their export performance.
It has also been found out in IPA Bellwether survey in USA that the 76% growth has continued to outpace all other forms of advertising and marketing for industry professionals. In 2004, Internet marketing accounts for approximately 3% of total marketing expenditure and around 18 % companies revised their Internet marketing budgets upwards well ahead of any other media or marketing activity covered.
This has been confirmed by an Outsell Inc. Survey which states that “spending on online advertising is en croaching on budgets allocated to traditional forms of advertising.” EMarketer predicts that the share of total US media/marketing spending which will go to the Internet in 2008 will be 9.3% or $27.5 billion compared with 6% or $16.9 billion in 2006. In comparison, print spending is anticipated to grow just 3.3% and TV/radio 2.4%, as per the Outsell Inc.
Forrester Research’s “Forrester Wave: Interactive Marketing Agencies” report also supports the “new media” marketing trend: “Increasingly marketers are realizing that (offline and online) has to be integrated.”
The famous 4P model of Marketing which includes Price, Product, Promotion and Place as the foundation of any marketing plan, now needs to be updated with the emergence of internet to include the fifth P, Platform (Internet platform) suggesting for another basic element of marketing.
The “P” most affected by the Internet technology is the “promotion” because here a wide range of Internet marketing tools and techniques have emerged. The digital marketing include e-mail marketing, Banner advertising, cost per click campaigns, video marketing, affiliate marketing, Web analytics, paid inclusion, link building, Blogging, viral marketing, Web press releases, search engine marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) as the major marketing tools and techniques, few of which will be discussed in the next section.
Moreover, search engines have become an increasingly vital part of the overall experience of the American Internet users. The most recent findings of the Pew Internet and America life tracking surveys highlights that about 60 million American adults are using search en gines on a typical day.
Therefore, today’s marketer needs to understand the purpose and effect of their company’s website. A marketing plan should not only focus on print, radio and TV, but also include Interactive with digital media. The plan should be embedded with techniques to attract a potential client to the company website and should result into the consumer behaviour as desired by the company. Thus, the variables affecting the potential customer’s online entry point and exit point on the website must be ana lyzed and should result in more customer focused internet marketing plan.
Internet marketing tools and techniques
The above discussion on the internet technology as a marketing tool leaves no scope to ignore the usage of internet in a company’s marketing plan. More and more companies are realising this and incorporating the internet tools to enhance the consumer experience.
The recent engagement of Pepsi with the Twitter (a famous social networking platform) to engage customers is a step forward in this direction. Even USA President Barrack Obama’s campaign used internet extensively. Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising.
“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”
By using interactive Web 2.0 tools, Mr. Obama’s campaign changed the way politicians organized supporters, advertised to voters, defended against attacks from opposition and communicate with constituents.
The internet marketing campaigns uses various tools and techniques, the major ones are discussed here:
1. Website Development & Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Website development is the first basic step to be on the Internet platform. As most users which refers to any website, refer through the search engines. So, the key to enhanced visibility is Search engine optimization i.e. SEO. SEO is the process of creating elements within the website so that it could be found through non paid searches. Usage of Metadata, keyword rich text and fresh content are the way to do this.
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo index billions of web pages and rank them according to complex algorithms that assess a page’s accessibility, its relevance based on specific search terms or keywords, and importance indicated by the number of sites that link to it.
SEO experts use different techniques to achieve this, few are mentioned below:
- Creating the website using “search engine friendly” coding techniques that reduces the use of Flash and frames
- Using appropriate key words in the content to focus on target group.
- Incorporating keyword-rich content into a website’s domain name, meta tags,title tags, alt tags, headings and the overall content of web pages and ensuring that content is updated regularly.
- Registering the website address with search engines
- Developing a linking strategy with other websites (to and from) to grow quality of inbound links referring to the site
As a good SEO strategy, inbound links should be enhanced through the placement of text-based links. While linking to a particular website, one should be ready to offer the link to other party as well as it is always a reciprocal strategy. More details regarding the linking strategies can be referred from www.searchenginewatch.com.
Various types of advertisements can be used on the third party websites as well the search engines.
• Graphical banner ads, pop-ups and text based advertisements are online ads that are normally placed on third-party websites which links back to the website. These ads can are mainly setup for a fee, which uses different revenue models – pay-per-click, pay per- lead, pay-per-sale – or these ads can be placed as part of the reciprocal ad exchange.
• Paid advertising in search engines. Few search engines provides definite listing of a website for a fee. To understand the revenue model, let’s take example of Google which has a paid solution called Adwords which uses Pay per click model. Google allows advertisers to bid for “sponsored links” which are the paid listings on the top and the right side of Google's search results page. This technique is a quick, cost-effective way to get a website into search engines, without the long delay times associated with the “natural” ranking methods.
3. Publishing on Third-Party Websites.
Editorial article writing is also a cost effective way to augment the online presence. As in offline media, writing the editorials/articles boosts the credibility of the person associated and project one as an expert in a field. In online media also, writing articles for the e-magzines, e-newsletters boosts the confidence of the potential customer to use the website services. Important thing to be noted is that articles should end with a short note on the services offered, experience and obviously a link referring to the website in question.
Email marketing can consist of direct e-mailers and sales letters, personalized auto-responders, and/or email newsletters. This is a cost effective technique which can reach to the wider audiences but the challenge is that most of these mails falls under the category of spams and people don’t pay much attention to it. So, the idea is to use the technique when a sales discount is offered (which attracts customer) and the designing of the e-mailers should be catchy.
Self-Publishing Using Low-Cost Internet Tools
This is a type of email marketing technique which is more sophisticated. Self publishing tools are available to the small business organisations which offer services at a particular service charge for 1000 e-mailers.
These are entirely online solutions, designed for small business owners with very little
technical knowledge. They offer a database, where email addresses can be stored, a selection of HTML templates for email messages can be made, testing functions, and other services such as customized auto-responders with unsubscribe option.
The popular self publishing solution providers are listed below:
• Constant Contact – www.constantcontact.com
• MyMailOut.com – www.mymailout.com
• Topica – www.topica.com
• Microsoft – www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness
Ensuring High Delivery Rates
To ensure high delivery rates for the emails that have been sent, the key is that one should have permission to send the email. Otherwise, the emails can get stuck with the spam filters.
It has been often seen that HTML emails are more likely to get caught in these filters as compared to text emails. Hence a plain text email with a link to the online message is the most effective way to not get caught in spam filters. Email messages can be checked for their spam riskiness using the SpamCheck (http://spamcheck.sitesell.com) which checks an email’s subject lines and body copy for filter triggers. More details on email marketing can be referred from www.emailsherpa.com.
5. Social Media marketing
Social media marketing is a concept that is evolving and its effectiveness is now being understood by the marketers. Its a way to promote the products and services on the net using social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Orkut etc.
When people collaborate on such networks with their friends, products and services can be promoted on these platforms and the initial thrust provided by the marketers then can flourish into a phenomenon through word of mouth publicity among peers.
Many of the top corporates have thus registered their pressence on such social networking websites. Not only businesses, political parties have also been successful in leveraging this tool of new age marketing, Recent win of Obama is a case to prove this fact, which i have discussed earlier in this blog.
Twitter (Twiiter.com) is also a unique concept which has reinvented the social marketing wheel. The one liner messages shared among the peers and a group people can be analysed to understand the consumer behavior, which is important for any marketer.
6. Business Blogs
Blogs are the creative online journals, which can be used as an important part of the marketing strategy. Blogs provide an inherent marketing focus as they connect with the readers easily and forms a very good channel of communication, with absolutely very low or minimal costs. The most common websites which offer blogging features are:
• www.blogger.com
• www.bloglines.com
• www.spaces.msn.com
7. Podcasts
Podcasts is a unique concept of sharing the digital media files on the internet and thus making it available to the people who are interested. A podcatcher software (available for free, e.g. iTunes, Zune, Winamp) is required to receive the podcasts released by a publisher.
So, if someone visits a website and finds a lot of interesting podcasts audio/video files available and is interested in the future releases. One has to simply subscribe to that website and the podcatcher will automatically checks out for the any new release to the feeds one has subscribed. As soon as the new media file is released, podcatcher stores it on the personal computer of the subscriber.
The major advantage of this tool is that a person does not have to be present physically at the time of broadcast to watch or listen to that particular media file. This tool is of immense help to the marketers in this digital fast moving world where they can catch their audience easily and effectively.
8. Affiliate/Referral marketing
Affiliate marketing, also known as referral programs or partnership programs, involves the use of other partner websites for propagating a product or service for a payment for each sale, lead, action, or visitor.
Amazon.com has successfully used affiliate model to sell books online, to create brand awareness and generating volume traffic on its site.
Costs involved in the internet marketing strategies
The costs involved for internet marketing depends on the industry focused and the techniques used but for sure, the cost involved are very much less as compared with the traditional marketing techniques.
The internet marketing strategies can be outsourced to the specialist firms which bids projects on T&M and fixed rate basis. The average T&M rates in USA market are 25 to 30 $/hour. While designing the internet marketing plan, cost for the maintenance of the website and regular update should be included.
Role of offline marketing in driving traffic online
The offline marketing performs a very critical role in driving online. An effective offline campaign can be capitalised further with the help of proper use of online marketing strategies. Thus, offline marketing material should always contain website address and links, whether it is business card, brochure, published articles, print advertisements, sandwich boards or vehicles.
The proper integration of the offline marketing strategies with the online promotion techniques can help creating value for the customer and brand loyalty can be further increased as well as new customer acquisitions are possible.
Conclusion of the discussion
- Internet marketing is the future and there is a huge scope & opportunities for the internet marketing.
- Internet marketing is really effective and online tools and techniques, if properly used, can lead to the easy customer acquisition, enhanced customer relationship management and brand loyalty.
- Various forms of internet marketing strategies are used, of which major ones are – Email marketing, Search engine optimization, social media marketing, Search engine marketing, Blogs and affiliate marketing.
- Internet marketing is cost effective as compared to the traditional marketing techniques and can reach to far wider audiences.
- Internet marketing should be a necessary part of the overall marketing plan of a company. If supported by an effective offline marketing communication, results can be seen much faster and ROI would be excellent.
References:
1. Correlation between Internet and ICT, Web Site Development, and Internet Marketing: Perception of Marketers in Malaysia and Singapore, By chai lee, Journal of Internet Banking & Commerce, Aug 2007
2. The influence of Internet-Marketing Integration on Marketing Competencies and Export Performance, by V. Kanti Prasad, K. Ramamurthy, G. M. Naidu, Journal of International Marketing; 2001, Vol. 9
3. Internet marketing continues to grow faster than any other form, Yinka Adegoke, New Media Age; 10/21/2004
4. Internet marketing, the Business link, www.CanadaBusiness.ca/alberta
5. Ashay White_Paper_The Emergence of Internet Marketing
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