Online Marketing Basics
Almost everyone has had some type of marketing experience in his or her life, be it
long-standing professional involvement or memories of a childhood lemonade stand. Whether
you are an old hand or just getting started, this chapter will lay the groundwork for the topics
covered in the rest of the book. We will start with some marketingbasics and then look at
how to blend basic marketing techniques with the culture of the Internet today and tomorrow.
Online Marketing Is Direct Marketing
Online marketing, or marketing on the Internet, is the pursuit of profit utilizing the Internet as
the medium. The product or service that you want to use to pursue that profit is up to you.
You may be a butcher, a baker, or a cowboy. It doesnt matter, as long as you have
something you can exchange for money.
In thinking about how to best describe Internet marketing, I began by focusing on the
similarities and differences between Internet marketing and other more traditional marketing
environments. As it turns out, the Internet is most similar to direct mail marketing. There are
several reasons for this. First, direct mail has to do with selling by sending people information.
The Internet provides an expanding universe of information delivery possibilities. Second, in
direct mail marketing, you attempt to find and identify people who are most likely to want
your product or service. You need to locate prospects and turn them into customers. You
must do the same thing when marketing over the Internet. Third, in direct mail marketing, you
need to sell your prospects from a great distance. You might be mailing your initial brochures
or sales letters to 100,000 people all over the country. When marketing over the Internet, you
deal in the same kinds of numbers but the average distance has increased in general because
the Internet is global, not national. Given that Internet marketing is much like direct mail
marketing, lets review some basic direct mail marketing concepts that apply directly to
Internet marketing. One thing you will always need to do is think creatively as NASA does as
shown in Figure 2.1, which shows their Home Page on the World Wide Web.
Direct Marketing Basics
You may have already been introduced to the following way to remember the key points of
direct mail marketing. It s an acronym, AIDA. It stands for:
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
In any marketing approach, first you have to get their attention. Then, you must create an
interest in your product. Then, you must build desire for your product in the prospect. Finally,
you must ask the prospect to take an action. He or she must fill out a form, call an 800
number, send in the couponany action will doso that there is a commitment to purchase by the
prospect.
If you watch TV commercials, or read magazine ads long enough, you start to see this
pattern repeated over and over. I just saw a beer commercial that used this formula exactly.
The beer company got my attention by showing a pretty girl in the scene. Then they got my
interest by showing me a close-up view of a chilled glass of golden liquid bubbling
refreshment. Then they built the desire by showing me images of a desert and how thirsty the
actor was. I became very thirsty, too. Then they reminded me that I could go to the
refrigerator and get myself one of theirproducts, or if I did not have one in the refrigerator, I
could get one at a local market. Many thousands of people take that action every day,
(perhaps not in direct response to this advertising, but it certainly helps to remind all the beer
drinkers, or they would have stopped advertising this way long ago).
Automobile commercials are another good example of this formula. You can bet that the
ones that do not are not pulling as much new business in as the ones who do follow this
formula. I can think of several times when I have seen a commercial that goes on for some
time showing pretty pictures, not telling me what the product is. I think these are commercials
that are done by advertising agencies to impress everyone with the talent at that agency, but Ill
wager these commercials do little or nothing to sell product. When commercials hit the
formula, they sell product again and again.
Why does the formula work? Well, the answer is related to human nature. Most of us are
not walking around all day thinking about your product, so you have to grab our attention
away from whatever we are involved in at the time. Next, you have to make a statement,
show a picture that will get our interest or else you are likely to lose it. Next, you use all your
resources to build the desire for the product. Interested people are not necessarily buyers, but
people who truly desire your product may become buyers in the immediate future. Then,
finally, you ask them to buy.
The AIDA formula is the main reason that you see headlines in newspapers. The publisher
is trying to get your attention. The bigger the headlines and the more shocking, the more
newspapers they will sell. They have known this for years. The rise of the tabloid press came
as a result of their attention-grabbing headlines like, Elvis Found Sleeping on Park Bench with
Alien from Mars. Dont laugh! They sell millions of newspapers every day with headlines just
like that.
You start to build desire by working with the interest in the product. Since you dont know
if anyone youre talking to is really interested, you merely assume the interest. Those who have
an Interest will hang on every word, and those who have no interest will disconnect. If you
can start with a known assumption that works all the time, you have a head start.
Lets say you know that everyone who buys your cars was first interested in them by
learning in the newspapers and TV stories that your car could get 100 miles per gallon. You
start with this point of interest. Then, you move on to other points you know should also
interest the buyer such as the leather seats, the environmental controls, or the hood ornament.
Whatever it is that you do should pique or build their interest in your product. You keep doing
this in order to build the desire to buy.
You probably know that people buy to satisfy their desires, but what you may not realize
quickly is that desire is an emotion. Therefore, we have to get emotionally involved with a
product before we make the conscious decision to buy it. Building desire for a product is a
very mysterious, magical kind of thing. I have tried to explain this many times, and I come up
short every time.
Its just like sex! The closest analogy anyone has ever used is the one about a physical
relationship with another person. Somehow, if were destined to be together, the desire builds
in each person. Some of this desire is based on pheromones, or chemicals that our bodies
generate and that we sense subconsciously. This is whats known as chemistry. People often
say they fell in love, got married, or formed a relationship because the chemistry was justright.
Theyre really talking about this pheromone stuff.
The same goes for building desire for our products. We either make the case for desire or
we dont. The Honda car company makes the case very well for Hondas, and this is why
Honda has been the top-selling car in America for decades. American car makers are now
catching on to building desire and are slowly gaining back the number one spot. The
Studebaker car company did it for awhile, but long ago, they lost the magic somewhere along
the line and there are no Studebakers in production any more. Its difficult to put your finger on
it, but you know how to build desire or you dont.
Its not just detailing the interesting points of the product or showing pictures or giving test
drives, or Studebaker would still be in business. To get the desire to the right level, you have
to coax and tease and make allusions to the better life-style your product will bring. Its selling
the benefits and not the features. Its everything else that you have ever heard about selling and
more. The car companies, the tobacco companies, the beer makersall found out long ago that
you have to make the buyer believe that buying your product is going to lead to a better way
of life. For better or worse, this is marketing.
Were not naive enough any more to believe that smoking is going to lead to a better life,
so American tobacco producers have to look to other markets, such as Asia and Europe,
where smoking is still fashionable to keep their profits coming in. With all the traffic and smog
that cars bring with them, were almost ready to throw over the love affair with the car. Were
not quite there yet, because we all need a car to get around. The day will come, however,
when an alternative vehicle will hit the roads that does not cause pollution and is able to
reduce traffic. Then, the traditional gasoline powered car manufacturers will be forced to find
other ways of selling us their cars.
What greater proof can I offer that buying is an emotion. It is not by accident that we
speak about an addiction to cigarette smoking and the love affairs with our cars. Desire is
what gets us into so much pleasure or pain in life. Be careful what you wish for, you may get
it!
As soon as you have grabbed their attention, built up the interest, and produced a real
desire, get them to take an action. Whether its picking up the phone, coming into a
showroom, going to the store, or sending in a form, some action is now required. Desire alone
doesnt get it. This action is what distinguishes the difference between a warm body and a new
customer.
If you have ever had any success with direct mail, you know that these concepts work,
that only these concepts work, unless you have a very unique product or service that must be
sold differently, and that there are exceptions to every rule. Nike doesnt need to do any real
marketing of their athletic shoes any longer because they have become part of the American
way of life. Shaquille ONeal wears them, or is it Michael Jordan? The only way we can really
distinguish Nike from their competitors nowadays is by which athlete endorses them. I can
never remember who is who, nor do I really care. The kids who buy the shoes know the
difference, and thats all that matters to the respective marketing directors.
Sooner or later you ask for the order. You make them take some action. They will either
do what you want or they will not, based on everything that you did before. If you grabbed
enough attention, you have the people looking at the rest. If you are able to show why they
should have an interest, they will continue to follow your plan. Then,finally, if you do enough
of all this to really build their desire, they will be right with you when you ask for them to fill
out an order form or questionnaire. This is the general way to begin to plan your marketing
materials, whether you are creating an infomercial, a brochure, or a newsletter.
The Flavor of Internet Marketing
In the rest of this book, well be showing you how to grab their attention, pique their interest,
build their desire, and get them to take an action that will make them a customer of yours. But
well be doing it all with new and creative tools, faster mechanisms, far less costly materials.
Well be doing it on the Internet. Lets start by considering the nature of marketing on the
Internet.
Online Marketing Defined
Online marketing, or marketing on the Internet, is the pursuit of profit utilizing the Internet as
the medium. The product or service that you want to use to pursue that profit is up to you.
You may be a butcher, a baker, or a cowboy. It doesnt matter as long as you have something
you can exchange for money. Exchanging your product or service for money on the Internet is
easier than anyplace else you might care to market. Marketing on the Internet is also a faster
process overall because you dont have so many impedimentssuch as having to deal with
printing, envelope stuffing, the post office, bulk mailing, and so on. Finally, when done
correctly marketing over the Internet can be more cost effective than more traditional
marketing means, and you will not have to wait long weeks, months, or years to find out if
your efforts are going to hit paydirt.
Cool Tools
On the Internet, you can use hypertext, video, sound, graphics, text, animation to make your
point. Piquing interest and building desire may be easier on the Internet because you can build
what I call virtual experiences of your product. Since the combination of the Internet and the
personal computer is a very interactive experience, you can build into your display all manner
of interesting things allowing for the prospect to uncover and discover even the subtlest
feature of your product. You can actually let them dissect it if you want or need to. This
process of interactivity with your information is the most intriguing part of this new marketing
medium, and there will be many very creative people who are able to invent ways of making
this one of the most amazing aspects of our society.
For example, if I were in the automotive business, I would place video and, of course, still
photos of my latest car models, but more than that, I would show off the new features such as
antilock brakes by having a simple animation showing the new stopping power of these
brakes, or I might demonstrate the stereo system by having the prospect see a replica of the
stereo system on which he or she can turn the dials and press the buttons and hear music, an
experience that is part of my selling processthe more, the better. Not only does this give my
prospect the ability to kick the tires, but he or she is able to look into the luggage
compartment, pop open the glove compartment, or even watch a visual demonstration of how
a new fuel injector sends more power to the engine. You are limited on the Internet only by
your imagination. Its a hands-on interaction that helps to build desire and can lead to a desired
action.
Having the prospect take the desired action is also easier to do on the Internet than in
other media. If you were to advertise on radio, you would have a real problem trying to get
the listener to take an action toward buyingyour product because most radio listeners are in
their car driving to or from work at the time and both hands are very busy. Even if you
advertise on TV, although you have your prospects at home, they are relaxing on the sofa or
easy chair and not likely to get up and make a phone call just for you. When you are
marketing on the Internet, you are likely reaching prospects who are already in a working
mood or a business frame of mind. Whether they are using their computer at home or at the
office, you have your prospects in the right frame of mind and the action. Further, taking the
desired action is very convenient if that action involves, say, filling out an online form. After
filling in with all the personal information that you need, the customer merely clicks on a button
and the form is E-mailed to you at the speed of light. There is no post office to act as a
middleman here. You dont have to wait two or three days, or even a week, to get notification
of the prospects interest in your product or service. The notification is sent to you, perhaps
even while the prospect is still looking over your offer. Of course, the prospects response
might or might not lead to a sale. At this point, your sales staff must be trained to know how
to handle these online responses effectively.
Information is the Watchword
Remember, its called the information superhighway, not the advertising superhighway,
because it deals mostly with information. If you happen to be selling information, you definitely
should use the Internet to pursue a profitits a natural. If you carry hard goods, such as cars,
trucks, clothing, computers, and so on, you can still use the Internet either to build recognition
of your company or to actually sell directly to the consumer. However, keep in mind that on
the Internet, you are expected to provide some information of value for free, even if your sole
objective is to sell something. If you dont provide the users with some information of value,
you will be perceived poorly by the Internet community, and this will limit the effectiveness of
your marketing efforts. The combination of information and interactivity will lead to sales.
With some creative ideas and thoughtful planning, you will find a way to provide the
Internet community with information they value (give to the Net) while at the same time
marketing your product or service (take from the Net). We will show you, step by step, how
to do exactly that.
A More Level Playing Field
The beauty of this information revolution or the communications revolution, whatever you
want to call it, is that it empowers each of us to be as significant or as powerful as a J.C.
Penneys, a Sears, Roebuck, or even an IBM. Since there is no physical location to the
Internet, you dont need any fancy storefronts or slick packaging. We are all equal in the
starting gates when it comes to the design and conception of our ideas. The look and feel of
our product can be as nice as that of any other product offered on the Internet. Whether you
spend a million dollars or only a small fraction of that budget, products marketed over the
Internet can be presented with the same level of professionalism and flash. Through the power
of todays low-cost desktop computers, you can create truly beautiful presentations for the
Internet community that effectively communicate everything you want to communicate about
your products or services. These tools can make your Internet marketing efforts as effective
as those of the largest corporations, even if you are a small business.
You can even demonstrate your products to millions of people all over the world in an
online, automated fashion without ever leaving your office. You dont need a huge budget,
fancy clothes, a limousine, an entourage, or a New York-based PR firm to give your products
or services the same look and feel as a product developed by IBM or Sears.
For an example of how the Internet can level the playing field, consider the look and feel
of advertisements presented by Prodigy, an online service put together by IBM and Sears,
Roebuck. This year, Prodigy will finally show a nominal profit after posting losses totaling
nearly one billion dollars! IBM and Sears together have invested more than a billion dollars to
create this online environment, which is full of product advertisements, and Prodigy sports
some very high-class advertisers today. They have many of the top-flight magazines such as
Time, Newsweek, and Business Week within their domain, yet none of these very
well-heeled national magazines has yet to publish a singlephotograph over Prodigy.
On the Internet, I know college kids who put their résumés with photographs out for the
entire Internet population to view. Many of them have actually been offered great jobs or
started new companies. The point is, the look and feel of your marketing approach on the
Internet can now be at least as good as anything the major players are able to produceeven
better, if you have some creative staff.
What other advertising medium can offer you the same pizzazz and access as that
available to the largest companies in the world at a price you can afford? If you want to
compete with Coca Cola or Pepsi to attract attention on television, be prepared to spend
upward of a million dollars a minute! Yet, on the Internet Coke and Pepsi cant do anything
any better than you or I no matter how much money they spend. This is the even playing field
we have all been waiting for and must be foremost in your mind when planning your marketing
strategy. No longer are consumers forced to buy one of two different brands because of a
lack of shelf space where people shop. There are no shelves on the Internet, so no
preselection by the distribution channels is necessary. All channels are open. Everyone is
equal. Solutions to consumer needs can now be offered by millions of players instead of a
handful of powerhouse companies. Can you compete with the large corporations in the world
even if you are not one of them? On the Internet, the answer is a resounding, Yes, I can! In
fact, the Internet will cause competition to escalate to new levels because the entrepreneur will
love this new frontier and will be enabled to compete like never before. The entrepreneur can
move faster and make decisions easier than the big corporations run by many faceless
committees. Perhaps a more compelling question is, Can large corporations effectively
compete with the smaller more responsive, energetic, and creative companies appearing on
the Internet daily?
That is the nature of Internet marketing today. However, the situation could change
suddenly in the future with government regulations and bureaucracy now in the hearing stages
in Congress. The next Congress could do something that would inhibit all this freedom on the
Internet, but I doubt it. Start writing those letters. Tell them to leave well enough alone, to
keep their hands off this last bastion of freedom!.
The Internet in Transition
The Internet holds bad news for those unable or unwilling to keep step with the fast changes
currently being driven by the fast-paced and flexible Internet environment. For example,
todays graphics-based marketing message will need to become a multimedia message
complete with video, animation, and high-fidelity sound on tomorrows Internet. We have to
be prepared to be multimedia producers because this is the direction the technology is taking
us. AT&T has announced plans to bring Internet connections to every home in America. This
breakthrough will doubtless be followed by all the other long distance service providers, or at
least most of them. The reason? All communications companies are scrambling to get their
share of the communications dollars. The Internet traffic will provide a large percentage of it,
no doubt, and they can taste it.
Several conferences have been held recently in which products are discussed that may
take the Internet communications revolution all the way to your cable TV converter box.
Dubbed the set top box, this technology is being explored as a way to make your desktop
computer communicate with all the other computers on the Internet via the cable TV
converter box now in about 70% of American households. The challenge for all of us will be
to gain as much momentum as we can while the Internet transitions from mostly E-mail to
mostly video and perhaps even virtual reality. We continue to see the Internet using mostly
E-mail services. Perhaps they are experimenting with FTP or file transfer and learning how to
do Gopher searches and perhaps even directory searches. There are still millions of Internet
users who arent even aware that there is so much more beneath the surface. If you use E-mail
at work, your network administrator or computer department chief may be blocking the most
creative parts of the Internet from your use because your job description does not include any
real marketing duties. Even in many corporations, the Marketing Department itself may be just
learning about their Gopher server, or are only now thinking about installing one. It may be
months later when most companies make the transition to World Wide Web. This pace of
change rapidly continues.
The World Wide Web is the fastest-growing segment of the Internet and is the most
graphical of all the Internets services. In my humble opinion, the World Wide Web is where
you want to concentrate your efforts because it will work more and more like TV, with its
ease of use, and more and more like Windows, with its fun and simple mouse clicking and
hypertext interaction. At the present time, however, most of us Internauts are still struggling to
learn how to view newsgroups and send E-mail. This is changing rapidly, but it still requires
the Internet marketer to know how to use all of the Internets segments to promote and push
his overall strategy.
So, the Internet is in a transition itself. Competition among the online services, competition
among the phone companies, even competition among the bulletin board providers, provides
us with the major thrust in this transitional phase. And this transition is happening so fast that
you need to get involved with online marketing right now or riskhaving to play catch-up with
your competitors.
My Six Rules of Netiquette
One of the basic facts about the Internet is that it was started by scientists and educators for
the transmission of scientific and educational information. It was not intended to be used for
commercial purposes. You have to realize that there are people on the Internet who dont
want it to turn commercial, and these people mostly are involved with the newsgroups. When
you invade the newsgroup part of the Internet, youre invading an area of cyberspace that
people avidly guard against commercialism. The people who maintain the newsgroups have
come up with certain rules about who should use the newsgroups and why, and you must
honor them, or else you will get flamed. Flaming means that hundreds or thousands of people
in the newsgroup are told about your infractions and they send you mailbombsuseless,
meaningless mail that will clog up your mailbox. Worse, they can complain to your Internet
provider and have your account disconnected.
There is no court of appeals. There are only those who write the rules, and they can be
very tough and deserving of your respect. If somebody in a newsgroup replies to one of your
postings and tells you to cease and desist and gives you a reasonable argument for doing so,
heed the words carefully and re-examine this book for techniques on how to survive in the
newsgroups with greater harmony.
You can make a living by doing things right and without offending anyone or any group on
the Internet, so you need to pay attention to the next section and learn how to avoid problems
on the Internet.
Remember, there is no one to enforce the rules except the members of the Internet. Its
not like the CIA is going to come down on you for breaking them even though they do have
an Internet Home Page, as shown in Figure 2.2.
Lets review some basic Internet manners or Netiquette. When I first heard the term
Netiquette, I thought it was something devised for all the Emily Posts and Miss Mannerses out
there. Im the type of person who likes to test the limits and the boundaries of anything new to
see what I can do. If you are like me, you will want to listen. You want to read the six rules of
Netiquette that I learned as a result of ignoring them and testing the limits. I was burned, and
my ignorance cost me a good deal of time and energy. Therefore, I mention it to you here as a
very important warning. Take Netiquette seriously. Learn all about why certain key players,
mostly Sysops (short for systems operators), want you to do things their way. I believe we
have worked out some master strategies in this book that satisfy most of these requirements
and yet allow you to get your marketing job done.
Here are my six rules of Netiquette, which you should never disobey:
- Never reveal any company or personal secrets. This sounds a little obvious, but I
recently read a message in a marketing newsgroup where an entrepreneur is
complaining that his location is not getting any responses. Now, the whole world
knows that his location and his abilities are inferior. This is tantamount to buying a TV
commercial during the Super Bowl and telling the world that your products are
poisonous, unhealthy, fattening. This fellow committed marketing suicide, and he
doesnt even realize he alone is responsible. Also, your competitors are probably
reading your postings, and if you give hints on how your product is made or produced,
you could be breaching your own security. Again, this sounds obvious, but I see
people break this rule every day on the Internet, and I have gained lots of strategic
advantage over my competitors, just by reading.
- Dont pretend to be too smart. The newsgroup members who joined up before you and
learned a few tricks now think that they are smarter than you as a new subscriber.
There is a certain kind of orientation period you have to go through before coming off
like an expert. Therefore, wait a few weeks or months after getting onto the Internet
before you try to claim that you are an expert at anything. During the first few months,
you are a neophyte and you want to be asking questions. Never make blatant
statements of any kind until you are absolutely sure of your remarks. If you start an
argument, you waste your own time and the bandwidth of the Internet on meaningless
dribble.
- Never rub anyone the wrong way. Dont get anyone mad at you on the Internet. If you
sense hostility of any kind coming from a newsgroup subscriber, back off. Relax, take
a day or two to calm down before replying or better yet, ignore it. Always be polite.
Dont say or do anything inflammatory. If you step on someones toes in any way,
merely apologize like a gentleman or a lady. Remember, the Internet is interconnected
in many ways and a bad reputation can cast enough doubt about you and your
products to ruin your chances of success. Dont self-destruct by getting into arguments
on the net. I have seen enough stupid arguments (and have been part of some) to
realize what a stupid waste of time it is. (There are people who love to argue; dont
take the bait.)
- If you do get flamed in any group for something youve done accidentally, apologize
immediately and stay aloof so that the controversy can die down and they have
forgotten who you are or dont care any longer. If you dosomething out of ignorance,
plead your ignorance to the group and ask forgiveness. Now, you should see the
better part of human nature come forth and the same people who were going to flame
you will try to help you by pointing out to you where to find things and how to do
things. Always pay attention to their advice90% of the time, its accurate and it will help
you.
Always look around for friends, associates, and people with related ideas, problems,
and so on. You would want to do this anyway in any marketing strategy, but on the
Internet its very smart to have colleagues, cohorts, and people you can count on to
support you so that you can learn more and test your ideas by asking them. You make
friends and avoid enemies simply by asking questions when you first arrive on the
Internet. The more questions you ask, the more you will learn and the more friends
youll make. Go blundering around without any assurances that youre doing the right
thing and youll make only enemies. Again, this can cost you lots of time, and time is
money.
- Most important, never post any blatant advertising in newsgroups, except the
appropriate newsgroup that allows advertising. Use the third-party technique of a
satisfied customer talking about your products or services in a positive way. If you
have a satisfied customer, ask for a testimonial in the appropriate newsgroup.
Newsgroups should be treated today as groups of people getting together to learn
more about a particular subject. They dont want to waste their time with blatant
advertising. However, they dont mind hearing about your products and services, if its
related to the group interests, and if it comes in the form of one group member telling
another. This is the meaning of news in the newsgroups as best I can gather. Its not
that they are all posting news items such as those Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw would
deliver. But news about a product or service that relates to the subject of the
newsgroup in question is accepted as news, most of the time!
If you try to post this news yourself, it might easily be construed as advertising and
self-promotion. If you post it in the form of a press release or a testimonial or answer a
question someone in the group has put forth with information about your product or
service, this is acceptable.
- Never use CAPITAL LETTERS. They dont like that. They regard it as YELLING!
Personally, I like using caps to emphasize some of my words, but do it in a newsgroup
and youll get some criticism for it. Dont look for trouble. Go the easy way, use
lowercase.
