B-to-C Online Customer Acquisition: Ten Steps to Success

The webinar on advertising and marketing on the internet called B-to-C Online Customer Acquisition: Ten Steps to Success from the American Marketing Association was recorded on January 30^th 2006. The presenters Mike Chapman outlines in his presentation ten critical steps for finding new consumers on the internet, establishing a strong relationship with them and satisfying their needs. These steps are necessary since the power shifted more and more towards the consumer due to technological advances and increasingly technology savvy customers.

The ten steps mentioned in the presentation are:

1. Recognize the challenge

Emarketers are facing the challenge that their messages sent in emails do not reach their target.

2. Get permission

Emarketers need to get permission from their customers to receive information, since customers are trying to control their personal and private information.

3. Cast many lines

Emarketers should not limit their ways to find customers, since the internet allows for multiple ways to find customers.

4. Relevance

Emarketers should personalize their messages, since customers see personalized messages as relevant messages and customers are more likely to respond to messages with relevant information.

5. Capture right amount of Information

Emarketers should get to know their targeted consumers and gather the right information from them. By gathering the right information, marketers have to be careful not to ask to many personal questions.

6. Pay attention to privacy concerns and trust

Emarketers should let their customers know in what ways the gathered information will be used.

7. Convert “Prospects” into “Customers”
8. Keep it clean

Emarketers should use and maintain an in-house list, since they include data of the company’s returning and potential customers.

9. Measure to measure

Emarketers should measure the effectiveness of their implemented strategies.

10. Don’t stop now

Emarketers should continue and even deepen the relationship with the customer.

Jere Doyle explained in his presentation the five factors for successful and effective customer acquisition on the internet.

The five factors include, selecting a reliable online marketing service provider, finding the right customers, gathering the right amount of data, cleansing data, and using multi-channel marketing to start a direct dialogue.

U.N. Enlists Internet Star for Antipoverty Pitch

LonelyGirl15

The article U.N. Enlists Internet Star for Antipoverty Pitch by Suzanne Vranica was published October 9, 2006 in the Wall Street Journal. The main focus of the article is on the growing use of online video-sharing sites as an important part of online advertising and the marketing mix. The article tackles this topic by talking about the launching of online videos as part of the United Nations’ ad campaign to promote an antipoverty event. The video ad features LonelyGirl15, an internet star created through the spread and increasing popularity of video-sharing sites such as YouTube. This campaign is one of many examples, demonstrating the increasing acceptance and importance of online video-sharing sites as a serious tool for online advertising. More and more marketers are beginning to discover this medium and starting to exploit it for their purposes. Marketing on such video-sharing sites can range from site sponsorship, banner ads or minivideos to advertising presented disguised in amateur videos or comments. Many companies launch competitions to produce ads with the goal to create awareness among the online video community and oftentimes to gain attention in other media, such as newspapers. The Wall Street Journal article is a great example to support this statement. The United Nations are gaining awareness for their cause through free publicity on the web as well as offline. With the acquisition of YouTube through Google it is expected that the use of online video-sharing sites as marketing tools will increase. Advertising on video-sharing sites allows marketers to promote their products to a young, very engaged crowd. This young crowd, which consists mostly of members of the Generation Y, is known for its skepticism towards mass advertising and difficult to market to. The Generation Y is very internet savvy and due to its large size of increasing importance for marketers and companies. Online advertising in forms of vlogs, blogs, interactive websites and video-sharing sites seems to be an excellent opportunity to reach this market segment and create brand loyalty in young years. A concept the United Nations seem to have understood.

Google Is in Talks to Buy YouTube As Rivals Also Eye Hot Web Property

The article Google Is in Talks to Buy YouTube As Rivals Also Eye Hot Web Property by Kevin J. Delaney was published October 6, 2006 in the Wall Street Journal. The article talks about another possible acquisition through web-search giant Google to increase its presence in Internet video advertising. According to the Wall Street Journal Google is in talks with YouTube to purchase the California based online-video company for roughly $1.6 billion. After Google’s competitor Yahoo announced interest in the social-networking site Facebook earlier last week, to gain market share in the highly lucrative online ad market, this clever move could put Google far ahead of its competition in terms of market reach. Yahoo itself showed interest in YouTube but its initial offer was turned down. YouTube is currently the market leader in terms of daily visits which averages around a 100 million video views per day or 46% of the market share. The deal between Google and YouTube would combine a massive online ad system with the top online-video site and would allow for a big-boost in Google’s online-video efforts. Google could integrate YouTube’s immense inventory of tagged video contents with its key-word approach and advertising customer base to become even more attractive to online advertisers. Advertising could not only be presented in paid search, sponsored links or banner ads but also through minimovies and webisodes. Minimovies are very short, cinema-like ads filmed specially for Internet showing, while webisodes could be animated cartoons, TV-like ads or music videos using Flash or other technologies. Besides the various possibilities of using different online marketing techniques, Google would also gain a highly engaged audience. Since TouTube’s movie clips are tagged according to their content or genre, viewers could receive selected advertising according to their preference or interest. Google will be way ahead of the online advertising game if they could really pull off the deal with YouTube compared to its biggest competitor Yahoo and increase the interest of online advertisers in its services. After the recent purchase of the exclusive rights to provide ads and search engine results on MySpace, Google is continuing its shopping tour through the World Wide Web. Websites such as YouTube and MySpace, are seen as the “front doors to the Internet where companies can grab users’ attention and market to them”. Hopefully these shopping trips will turn out to be profitable for Google and the online marketing industry and not turn out in another internet bust, other internet companies experienced in the past.

Yahoo Keeps Its Eyes on Facebook

The article Yahoo Keeps Its Eyes on Facebook by Catherine Holohan was published September 22, 2006 in the Technology section of the online version of BusinessWeek. The article talks about the possible acquisition of the social networking site Facebook by the online portal Yahoo and the effects of this action on Yahoo’s online ad marketing. Yahoo expects from this acquisition an opportunity to increase its ability to provide better targeted advertising to its customers. Targeted online advertising is advertising on the internet which can directly approach a specific segment of the market. This form of online marketing is becoming more and more popular and is expected to grow from $1.2 billion in 2006 to $2 billion in 2007. While online ad marketers have difficulties reaching a certain demographic section of the market through regular advertising efforts, such as paid searches and sponsored links, social networking sites provide exactly this kind of information for marketers. These sites are a marketers dream, they do not only provide specific and exact information about its users, but are also highly frequented by millions of potential customers. The audience of Facebook consists mainly of young college students, with whom, according to the text advertisers want to develop lasting relationships. This site would allow Yahoo to offer better opportunities for its customers to target specific demographic groups with their ads and to prevent its main competitor Google to gain more market share in this lucrative market. To reach this goal Yahoo was willing to pay over $1 billion for Facebook, before talks broke down between Yahoo and Facebook. Google on the other hand expanded its ability to place targeted ads massively after acquiring the exclusive right to serve search ads on MySpace, Facebook’s biggest rival. While Facebook is targeted mainly at college students and a younger audience, MySpace is used by more mature users, like former students, who migrated to MySpace from Facebook after graduation. It will be important for any future owner of Facebook to prevent its users from migrating to other sites to exploit the full potential of this network as a successful advertising medium. From a marketing and strategic point of view it would make sense for Yahoo to enter the social network market and expand its offers for highly targeted ads to remain competitive with rival Google. After experiencing delays in launching its new targeted audience advertising technology, failing in establishing its own social network yahoo 360 and loosing out on the bid for MySpace, Yahoo needs to act if it does not want to loose more market share in the extremely profitable online advertising industry.

Pop-Up Windows: A Nuisance or a Gold Mine?

The article Pop-Up Windows: A Nuisance or a Gold Mine? by Karon Thackston was published in 2006 in the Article Library section of Marketingsource.com. The author conducted an online experiment on the effectiveness of pop-up windows as a marketing tool after discovering the surprising results of a similar experiment conducted by Marketingexperiments.com. The surprising result was that using pop-up windows, despite their bad reputation, actually seem to work. Still in disbelief the author started to experiment with pop-up windows on her own website and soon came to the same results. The number of page views, which count how often a web page has been viewed by one visitor, increased tremendously, as well as the sales for the offered product. While the general public views pop-ups as an annoying and distracting appearance on the World Wide Web, it turns out that pop-ups, if used properly, can be an effective tool to increase internet traffic to your website or to generate interest in your product. The author defines several different techniques in her article to effectively utilize pop-up windows as a promotion tool. Pop-up windows should offer something to create interest among the viewers, for example an opportunity to win a prize or the chance to participate in a sweepstake. A pop-up which seems to be of interest for the visitor increases the likelihood of getting clicked on. Another factor for creating a successful pop-up campaign is having the pop-up to flash up when the visitor is leaving the site and not as soon as he is entering the page. This helps to minimize the risk of the pop-up to be too annoying for the user and the chance of being avoided. The author recommends to keep the message “short and sweet”, to gain more acceptance among the visitors. Marketers should also avoid using multiple pop-up windows at the same time or pop-ups on every page. According to the results of both experiments, pop-up windows can play a successful role in the marketing mix of online advertising and might work well for some companies. The definite problem of pop-up windows is the annoyance factors. Marketers have to be careful of how often and when they use pop-up windows so they will not scare visitors away from the website.

How to make your Ads Irresistible

(Picture)

The article How to make your Ads Irresistible by Raamakant S. was published September 1^st 2006 in the Internet Marketing section of SelfSeo.com. The article explains in great detail how marketers can break through the clutter when using email marketing or regular website ads. Email marketing, which usually uses permission or opt-in emails should not be confused with spam, which does not ask for permission and is short-term marketing strategy. Email marketing on the other hand tries to establish a long-term relationship with customers or at least a more meaningful relationship. However marketers have difficulties to catch the consumer’s attention for their email and eventually create interest in their product, considering the fact that the total annual email volume in the United States is rapidly growing and exceeding over 1.5 trillion messages per year. While advertisers using offline media can use different advertising approaches to get consumers attention, like humor, color, voice, etc. online promoters have limited abilities to do so. Online advertisers, especially email marketers only have a headline or subject line most of the time to create interest in the ad and in the product. The ad can be great but if the subject line does not grab the reader’s attention it will not be opened and seen. The author therefore gives 5 tips on how to improve your subject line to persuade consumers to continue reading the whole ad. Even though some of the tips might seem common sense, many marketers disregard them or do not combine them. According to the author formatting a text by using a genuine mix of both case letters in a professional look can grab some attention. The same is true for the usage of signal words such as “FREE”, “YOU” or “STOP”. Asking a question, concerning the interest or problems of the targeted market or emphasizing true facts in the right language and figures are also aids to break through the “world wide clutter” . The last tool the author mentions is the usage of real proofs, meaning marketers should support their claims or facts with testimonials or statistics. Most of these tools seem to be common sense and, as seen in the daily load of spam customers receive in their email account, very widely used. Maybe marketers should come up with new ideas for email marketing, since spam seriously damaged the reputation of email marketing and discouraged many internet users to even open any unknown email.

ESPN.com Drops Yahoo for Quigo

The article ESPN.com Drops Yahoo for Quigo by Gavin O’Malley was published September 7^th 2006 in the online edition of the AdvertisingAge. The article touches on one of the most important issues for marketing in the 21^st century: Internet Advertising and Search Engine Advertising. Internet Advertising, which is defined as paid, nonpersonal persuasive messages by identified sponsors, is a rapidly growing billion dollar business and for many marketing professionals the future of advertising. It is becoming more and more important for the marketing industry since it allows companies to promote their products directly to their target markets at reasonable costs and minimal wasted coverage. The article reports that Yahoo is losing its prized relationship with the sports network ESPN.com to its rival Quigo. This new deal will allow ESPN to sell their ad space, mostly banner ad space and sponsorship, directly to their clients and therefore give its clients more options. This deal will double Quigo’s ad impressions on the web and add another well-known client to Quigo’s network of highly reputable clients. Even though Yahoo seems to be unimpressed by the loss of this prized client, they should undertake some steps to become more competitive with some of the new ad technologies such as Quigo’s Ad Sonar technology. As the text states many advertisers are opting for solutions that allow them to deal directly with the website host organization instead of using traditional search and contextual ad networks such as Yahoo or Google. ESPN and other Quigo customers may have started a trend on how online advertising business will be conducted in the future, a trend which the current market leaders Yahoo and Google should observe closely if they do not want to loose more market share. The market for contextual text ads is huge and will continue to grow in the future. This market is way too big and too important to all companies involved in online marketing to let any trend or innovation slip by, even if you are a web giant like Yahoo.