Strategic Internet Marketing Methods
61Strategic Internet Marketing
What Is Branding and Why You Should Do It
Developing a strategic Internet Marketing brand is the most concrete and long-lasting marketing tool. It’s consistent, repetitive and memorable. It’s communicated in many different ways throughout the life of a business. Done effectively, a brand creates a one-of-a-kind differentiation separating one business from another. Branding builds a relationship.
“When it comes to building a brand on the Internet, never have so many talked so little of what may be the Internet’s most stunning capability — strengthening the bond with customers and prospects,” state Larry Chiagouris and Brant Wansley in their article “Branding on the Internet” (American Marketing Association). Larry Chiagouris, PhD, is vice president of marketing at eCode.com, a company that uses proprietary software to extend the brand exposure of companies over the Internet. Brant Wansley is the director of client services for BrandMarketing Services Ltd., a marketing consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations develop effective brand strategies.
“In this new world of e-branding, the Internet has become more than a gimmick or a mere line item on the communications budget. It can now play a pivotal role in enhancing brand relationships and corporate reputations. It offers a huge advantage over traditional mass media. The speed people can move from awareness to action on the Internet is a true differentiator and challenge for e-marketers. This requires a new way of thinking about how to design Websites and related marketing communications. However as the author of The End of Marketing As We Know It, Sergio Zyman says, there is no difference between building an Internet brand and a traditional brand. In effect, the steps to bond prospects to brands are essentially the same. The difference, however, will be the speed a brand can transition prospects to customers.”
Strategic Internet Marketing
The Strategic Internet marketing methods that works for one business is not necessarily the right strategy for another.
Each campaign depends on a unique ratio and blend of customer demographics, services or products offered, business objectives, capabilities reputation. Our Internet marketing plan should be developed, tested, implemented, analyzed and revisited each year or as the business needs change and the Internet grows.
The following questions solidify target audience demographics. Businesses that understand their audience can take small steps in reverse – from the customer to the sale – developing the ideal path toward profits.
· What's the current economic environment?
· What opportunities and obstacles does the business face?
· What business objectives are desired?
· What does the business sell?
· Who are the customers?
· How computer and Internet-suave are the customers now and in one year?
· Why should customers buy the product or service with the business instead of its competitors?
· How is product or service communication managed with customers?
· Who does what, when?
· How is progress and success measured (ROI, cost-per-lead, cost-per-acquisition)?
· What internal trends are forthcoming (sales volume monthly and annually, revenue, profits, traffic and conversion, usability)?
· Who competes?
· Who are current customers (segmentation, attitudes and behavior)? Who are customers a year from now?
· What are the distribution channels (direct and indirect)?
· What is each customer experience (scenarios help to envision each step and expectation)?
While these are broad questions, each may be adapted to various industries and business models.
The Communications, Media & Technology Group (CMT) conducted an industry survey evaluating successful e-business companies to determine the e-business impact on the global competitive landscape. The companies analyzed include Amazon, AOL, Yahoo, Dell and Hotmail. Results, published in “Insights, Vol. 7, Issue 1” entitled Ten Success Factors in e-Business, reveal that:
· 92 percent of senior executives worldwide believe the Internet will transform or have a major impact on the global marketplace
· 61 percent believed the Internet would facilitate achieving strategic goals as technology offers opportunities for companies to improve customer service, gain global reach and reduce costs. 30 percent said the Internet demands a complete Strategic Internet Marketing change in order to align with competition.
· Worldwide CEOs felt companies would be forced to restructure as the Internet enables extended enterprise (89 percent), stimulates a more open and proactive corporate culture (88 percent) and encourages the transformation from traditional hierarchical organization to networks of changing teams.
The Internet’s importance in today’s business landscape is undeniable. Consumer perceptions of corporate online visibility and marketing efforts grow more critical each day. To meet this demand, however, the study concluded that many major corporations, while aware of changes needing to take place within the organization, struggled to follow-through with implementation. The key questions they recommended established businesses ask themselves are:
· Which business segments should get top priority for e-business?
· What are the biggest associated challenges and threats?
· Which business models are suitable and actionable?
· How should the new business be developed—out of the current organization or through a new, separate entity?
· Are the right people on board to do e-business?
· What partnerships and alliances are needed for a successful launch?
· What are the implications for business processes and IT infrastructure?
· Do we want to prevent, admit or foster the cannibalization of our established Strategic Internet Marketing business?
By analyzing major e-business companies and their marketing model, the study unveiled ten identifiable criteria for success along the customer life cycle in the new economy. The following list arranges each critical success factor
Strategic Internet Marketing - How It Can Help You.
Ten Factors For Strategic Internet Marketing Success
1. Vision and Top Management Commitment: a Prerequisite for Successful Strategy Development and Implementation
Successful e-business approaches are based on a clear vision, which is the starting point as well as the reference for development and implementation of strategic decisions. The vision requires full senior management support.
2. Strategic Alliances: Focus on Core Contributions
In the large number of alliances which are necessary to cover the whole value-chain in e-business, senior management must concentrate on those partners who already have a significant impact on their own business success and are thus of strategic importance.
3. Branding: Guide through the Data Jungle
In many highly competitive markets only the number 1 or number 2 brand can operate profitably in the long run. In such markets, the brand becomes a decisive competitive factor, due to its signaling function, its impact on the emotional purchasing experience, and its guarantee of quality and security in the virtual world. Yahoo! was one of the first companies to recognize the value of branding in the technology-driven i-world and is a prime example of the fact that not only established brands can move into the i-world, but that new brands can also be established successfully.
4. e-pricing: Competitive Advantage through Differentiation
The increasing market transparency of the online world can be countered by intelligent price management. e-business provides the chance to achieve extremely flexible and complex price determining systems as well as new approaches to price differentiation. This creates new possibilities for sustainable earnings; in the long run the only ones who can escape fierce price competition are those who have mastered the complex set of instruments.
5. Individualized Service Offerings: Value Added for the Customer
E-business enables companies not only to offer a large variety of products in mass markets, but, in addition, to personalize the sales environment and processes in such a way that they offer the customer decisive value added compared to the traditional buying process.
6. Process Design in e-business: Centered Around the Customer
Customer-orientation is the key to success in e-business. The implementation of customer-orientation requires end-to-end processes, which differ markedly from those in the real world. The process design must ensure a smooth interaction of software interfaces (Website) and of processes arranged upstream and downstream.
7. 1-to-1 Marketing: Personal Touch in Mass Marketing
E-business allows you to systematically attract customers in a mass market with the help of a product/ service suite tailored to individual needs. 1-to-1 marketing utilizes personal customer information for the benefit of both sides.
8. Community Building: Customer Retention through Networking
E-business provides the means for customers to network among themselves. Establishing a community which is functioning around one’s own brand generates enormous value-added. Moreover, the market position is very difficult to attack. So far, few established players have successfully encouraged a strong community.
9. HR-Strategy: Management of the No. 1 Bottleneck
For established companies, recruiting and retaining capable staff becomes bottleneck factor number 1 in the expansion of their e-business activities. Innovative people strategies are therefore a key to success. Looking at the example of Intel, it becomes clear how flat hierarchies, high team orientation, genuine delegation of responsibility and attractive incentive schemes can be integrated into a future-orientated corporate culture.
10. Strategic Use of IT: Core Capabilities in e-Business
Three dimensions drive the complexities of the essential IT infrastructure as well as the investment that will be necessary: the integration of the existing systems, the degree of coverage of the process chain, and the existing standardization throughout the company. In any case the IT architecture must be of a modular structure and scalable to allow rapid growth. The corporate IT organization must be flexible and aligned to the radical requirements of e-business. Hotmail who boldly claimed “to change the way people communicate” is today—supported by strategic use of IT—by far the biggest provider of free-of-charge e-mail on the World Wide Web.
As always, the particular industry and environment dictates the optimal blend of each strategy. While all ten steps should be addressed, how we weigh importance on each may vary. The study concludes: “A successful e-business model requires an integrated approach to build the capabilities needed to put the key success factors into practice.
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Strategic Internet Marketing - How You Can Start To Make Money Online
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Thanks for the kind comments Ker, glad you enjoyed it!
Cheers
Derek
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kblogs says:
5 months ago
This is excellent advice and an excellent hub. I'm going to bookmark this so I have it as reference. Thanks for posting it.
Cheers,
Ker