Chapter 1

Introduction to the Internet and the Web-An Executive Summary

Continued from Page 1

Using the World Wide Web for Marketing

A business prints a variety of documents to help move a prospect through the sales cycle. Each document has its own purpose and life expectancy. Each document is crafted to achieve a specific goal.

A flier handed out at a trade show, an ad placed in a newspaper or magazine, and a direct mail piece are each designed to do one thing -- hook the reader into wanting more information. Your goal is to entice the recipient into a relationship that will culminate in the purchase of a product or service, perhaps on first contact.

The four-color, eight-page brochure gives prospects a taste of your quality, a picture of your product or people, and something they can show to the manager who approves the budget. If they like the brochure, they will want to know more.

Firms selling complex equipment or lengthy consulting services often use some sort of concepts and facilities guide. This document outlines the company's approach and provides detailed specifications. It lets the prospect fully understand what is being sold in order to make a more informed decision.

Finally, the product or service might be tested on a trial basis to ensure a good match and account for any unforeseen incompatibilities between buyer and seller.

What if all of these documents, all of these steps, all these interactions, could be managed online, interactively and untouched by human hands? What if your prospects could reach into your organization and take the information they want? What if they could educate themselves? Instant delivery of promotional materials to a worldwide, growing population of self-selected prospects?

What if they could place the order, track the shipping, answer the tough questions and get the help they need online?

This is the promise held out by the World Wide Web. This is what is making companies all over the world rush to implement back-office connections to their Web sites.

All that remains is to do it well. Doing it well depends entirely on your definition. Being successful at anything requires a means to measure that success. Without clear goals, you will never know if the end has been achieved. Each association, group, society, or business that sets out to create a presence on Web must first know why it wishes to invest the resources. Selecting reasonable, achievable, and measurable goals at the start is the only way to be sure your efforts have paid off at the finish line. Chapter 4: Using the World Wide Web for Marketing, provides some pointers in determining your Internet marketing goals -- the first step toward a successful Web site.

Customer Service

The best marketing ploy on the World Wide Web may well be a strong customer service offering. It doesn't need to be cool, hip, sexy or cutting edge. What people want is more value for their money. If your new garden tool is backed by a Web site full of tips, tricks and gardening traps, it has more value than the one that just comes with a price tag. If your site offers numerous ways to acquire your products, people are more likely to do so.

If you are successful at promoting and selling products and services on your Web site, you have to be prepared to manage the needs of your new customers. They come to the table with high expectations, having been taught the possibilities by all the other Web sites they frequent. Chapter 5: Customer Service First suggests numerous ways to support an electronic clientele.

The Keys to Successful Web Site Design

For people surfing the World Wide Web, viewing a corporate Web site is the electronic version of visiting the company. What does the building look like? Is there enough parking? Is the door so heavy it's impossible to open? Is there somebody to greet them in a professional manner? Are they treated as though they were expected and welcome?

Creating a Web site is similar to creating a demonstration diskette or an infomercial CD ROM. It requires the same care in copywriting and graphic design, with particular attention to the prospect's viewing experience.

The challenges to the Web site designer are threefold: providing adequate navigational tools, creating sufficient interactivity, and successfully soliciting feedback from those who take the time to visit.

Navigation

We have all experienced the frustration of dropping a book and watching our bookmark flutter to the floor. Finding your place in a book is an inconvenience. Due to the linear nature of bound pages, this task is annoying, but not difficult. Finding your place in an electronic medium is much harder and much more frustrating.

A software package I ordered arrived in a large box containing 12 pounds of documentation and no less than 20 diskettes for installation. Upset at the prospect of spending so much time loading plastic squares into a computer one by one, I sent the package back. Two days later, a small box arrived with the coveted CD ROM in it -- but no paper documentation. All the documentation had been digitized.

After installation, I tried valiantly to read through the online help screens to get acquainted with the software. After a diligent effort, I put the CD back in the box and exchanged it for the diskettes. Now I have a complete set of manuals to mark up, infuse with yellow stickies, and take on the train, bus, plane and into the bathroom.

Electronic information is difficult to navigate. Without proper signposts, it's very easy to become lost, turned around, and disgruntled. This makes electronic documentation for software difficult to use, and a poorly designed Web site a disaster. People will come, look, and tell their friends not to waste their time. They will never come back.

Chapter 6: The Useable Web-Be Kind to Your Users points out some of the rules of the road for keeping people from getting lost, getting frustrated, or just getting gone.

Interactivity

If you remember nothing else about building a successful Web site, remember this: Your Web site isn't something people read, it's something they do. Visiting your site is an activity. A Web site should interact with the visitor.

When prospects read your brochure, they receive information in a passive manner. It is often said that if you read something you are aware of it, if you see something you can understand it, and if you do something you can master it. Involve your viewers in the information you are providing.

An electronic page of text is read in a passive manner. A Web site that makes the viewer think and make choices, decide and take action, participate and learn, will be much more successful. It will engage the audience in the activity of learning about your products and services and the result will be longer participation (exposure to your message) and higher comprehension.

A growing number of organizations are taking these lessons to heart. Current studies in man/machine interface theory are reviewed in Chapter 7: Interactivity Goes With the Flow, and applied to the process of Web site design.

Feedback

The Internet isn't a broadcast medium. Although it is technically possible to send a message to millions of people at the same time, it is a cultural mistake and a business disaster of immense proportions.

Instead of being used as a broadcast tool, the Internet can be put to better advantage as a means of multidirectional communication. As long as you are going to the effort of creating a Web site to disseminate information, you should make the effort to solicit the opinions of the recipients.

The costs of customer surveys and focus groups are very high. Learning what your customers feel about your products is central to improving the product line. The Internet provides a wonderful mechanism for getting information back from the masses. Do it well, and they will tell you what they like and don't like, what they want and don't want, and what they will buy.

Techniques in use on the Internet today (and a few that will be soon enough) are discussed in Chapter 8: Feedback.

Value Added Marketing

The Internet was born and grew up nurtured by a gift economy. In the beginning, the Net was hard to use and the people on it were happy to help each other. Someone stranded on a desert isle is very happy to help a newcomer in any way, just for the company. The same was true online.

Programmers came up with nifty utilities to help accomplish specific tasks. They made these programs available to everybody on the Net and offered advice and support when needed. In return, they had access to other programmers' creations. Soon, scholars made their information freely available to any who cared to download it. In return, they had access to libraries and academic archives around the world.

The key secret to success on the Internet and the World Wide Web is to provide value-added marketing. Value-added marketing means offering something of value for free. It is proving your worth as a vendor. It is delivering exceptional service and valuable products before making the sale.

There are many examples of this type of marketing on the Web. The best approach for each company depends entirely on its products, services, and areas of expertise. Somewhere in your organization there is a unique body of information. That information is powerful enough to draw people to your Web site, where they will be exposed to your message, and compelled to tell their friends to visit as well.

What's new and what makes your site all the more interesting to the visitor is its ability to recognize that visitor. As we approach the year 2001, Web sites are able to say, "It's good to see you again... Dave." Personalization, customization, and one-to-one marketing are now part and parcel of life online. Getting comfortable with that idea, getting familiar with some examples and getting to understand the value it adds to your customer relationships is what Chapter 9: Value Added Marketing - It's Personal is all about.

Attracting Attention

A World Wide Web site is just like a toll-free telephone number. On one end are people hungry for information; on the other end are people trained to provide that information. It is a painless way for potential customers to reach you. It is also completely useless if they don't know you're offering something worth seeing.

When there were 1000 Web servers to choose from, it was possible to visit them. Now, instead of 500 cable channels to click through with our remote controls, we have millions of Web sites, each acting as their own channel. You will not attract attention just by being online. You will attract it in the same way you have always attracted attention: in print, in the mail, on TV, and so on. You can also attract attention online.

There are several ways to announce your Web value on the Internet itself. When you do, you will experience a rush of electronic visitors -- the curious who want to see what's out there. You will also be able to reach people you cannot reach via other media.

Your long-term customers will not come from the ranks of casually curious Web surfers. They will come from your steady efforts using old methods of communication to promote your new method of communication. Chapter 10: Attracting Attention, focuses on ways to get noticed online.

How Are We Doing?

With the time and effort you have put into your Web site... With the time and effort you are going to put into your Web site... With the blood, sweat, and tears you have shed getting upper management to give you more funding for your Web site... how do you know you've done a good job?

A magazine ad pulls in phone calls. A mailer returns business reply cards. A trade show generates business cards. All of these can be counted and the effectiveness of the promotion measured.

Measuring electronic visitors to a Web site seems simple at first. Automatic logs make a record of every request and every electronic document electronically sent in response. Some of these numbers are very helpful, but the most obvious are next to useless. I've heard hits defined as "how idiots track success."

Evaluating the number of times a particular document is requested is more informative. Calculating the amount of time people spend on each document can be illuminating. However, the most valuable measure of success, after tallying sales, is the number of written responses your Web site elicits. How much two-way communication can you inspire?

Chapter 11: Measuring Your Success, offers up a variety of metrics that will help you check your progress, maintain your self-respect, and show the boss you're headed in the right direction.

Hath Not Thy Rose a Thorn?

Maintaining a corporate Web site includes a few hazards. Some are minor, some considerable, and some will take years to alleviate. All of them should be taken seriously. Several of the most important issues are covered in Chapter 12: A Few Thorny Issues.

That chapter takes a swing at determining if your customers are online. They are. It discusses the very real issue of Web site security. It raises the specter of channel conflict, the problem with global pricing, the fear of international trade law and culture, and the concern over intellectual property.

And you thought the Web was a happy place.

Getting Started

Knowing everything in this book is great. Memorizing it word-for-word would be a nifty accomplishment. But taking that next step; that's a neat trick.

Chapter 13 gives you a map, a compass, and a flashlight. You still have to pick your own destination, but at least you'll have a guide that will point you in the right direction. The rest is up to you. Chances are you've tackled one or two of these points already. Time to revisit them.

Looking Toward the Future

The Internet is changing faster than any medium we have experienced to date. The potential to make money selling tools to make it better, faster, and cheaper has drawn thousands of companies to the race and caused more than a few to go public. The result is that it is hard to predict what will happen when browsers disappear because all applications can surf the Web. It is difficult to guess how the commoditization of goods and services will be handled in five years.

At this point, however, everybody agrees that interactive, online, many-to-many communication is here. It is being used for advertising, marketing, sales, and customer service. Those who embrace it as a new way of doing business will be more likely to stay up to date and continue to take advantage of it in the long run.

The entry barriers to this marketing technique were surprisingly low for several years and those days are gone. The learning curve is steep, and is sure to become precipitous. Now is the time to learn, implement, and benefit from marketing on the Internet. What the future holds is up for speculation in Chapter 14 and is in your hands.

Like what you read? Click here to buy the book

Back to World Wide Web Marketing