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Advice on Developing Effective Internet Marketing Strategies
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Business New Haven
11/2/1998
By: Clement L. Russo
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BNH interviews Drew Henderson, president of Akces Media of Bethel, which provides e-commerce consulting services and business solutions utilizing Internet, intranet, and extranet technologies.
What impact has the Internet had on how companies build awareness of their products and services?
It depends on the product or service being sold. Cement companies and flower shops, for example, have little interest in marketing online, because the Internet has not proven to be useful on a localized basis. But other companies, like those in the computer industry, have totally embraced the Internet as a marketing tool. AMP Inc., a Pennsylvania company that makes connectors for circuit boards, used to sell its entire product line - some 20,000 items - through paper catalogues. They recently purchased a software company to help them build a special type of search engine, and now their customers can only buy their products online.
How do businesses that
sell online target potential
customers?
Wholesale businesses tend not to use the Internet to target new customers, because they have a captive audience that doesn't change very much. But it's different for retailers, who basically sell to anyone who searches them out. For them, banner advertising - where you purchase ad space from a search engine or Web site - is probably the most common Internet marketing method. Some search engines will also allow you to purchase key words - your banner pops up when the key word is entered - or sell “run-of-the-site” advertising, where different banners pop up on a rotational basis as people browse through the site.
What differentiates the online customer, and how do companies take these differences into account?
Internet users are more sophisticated in their need for information and tend to make more rational purchasing decisions. That means that companies should invest in developing robust content for their online marketing materials, and even provide tools to help customers select the right product. Some companies build Web sites that are basically online brochures, but they're missing the point. It's not a matter of putting up a billboard on the information highway and hoping that somebody drives by. You have to take into account the special information requirements of this audience, and not rely simply on sales hype.
What are some marketing mistakes that companies make when they begin to sell online?
A lot of companies believe that registering their Web site with a search engine is the way to market on the Internet. But search engines are becoming less and less effective as marketing tools, because the Internet is growing fast and there's so much more for them to search through. Another common mistake companies make is simply to transfer to the Internet what they've been doing in print for years, which fails to take into account the unique advantages of marketing on the Internet: the ability to interact with customers, provide detailed information about your product or service, and actually conduct a sales transaction.
What important marketing lessons have we learned so far with the Internet?
Once this gold-rush mentality that surrounds the Internet passes, I think we'll come to see that we can't abandon our classical methods for marketing products. The Internet is not a marketing panacea, but it can be a significant enhancement to a comprehensive marketing plan. One of the benefits of using it is that it's a fairly simple and cheap way to convey a great deal of information. So a good marketing plan should focus on figuring out ways to draw people to your Web site, provide them with lots of information once they get there, and then give them the opportunity to make a purchase should they feel the impulse to buy.
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