by Ralph Marston
rmarston@zilker.net
Success in marketing online is not based so much on specific techniques as it is on the understanding of certain key concepts. In order to market effectively on the Internet, it is critical that you understand the realities of this emerging marketplace. When you develop a fundamental understanding of what's going on here, you'll be able to determine how your particular business can best fit into the new paradigm.
The marketplace is dramatically changing because of widespread access to information. With the growing popularity of the Internet and online services, the basic communication model has changed. Mass media no longer dominates the dissemination of information. Consumers are empowered with the ability acquire and distribute information on their own terms. People are much better informed. Information moves very quickly and efficiently, nothing remains a secret for very long. These changes invalidate many of the assumptions upon which traditional marketing operates.
Information is no longer constrained by the physical considerations of place and time. It is now possible for all information to be everywhere at once. The implications for marketers are profound. Traditional marketing has been developed in a world where access to information was limited and controlled. Many of the assumptions, upon which mass marketing was perfected, no longer apply when information can flow so fast and freely as it can today.
Whenever a new medium comes along, initially people try to use the old techniques and adapt them to fit the new technology. Early television shows were little more than popular radio shows with pictures. But they didn't work very well. The medium came into its own once programming was developed specifically for television. When television came along, it was not radio with pictures, it was an entirely new medium. Cyberspace is not like anything that has ever come before. The difference between cyberspace and anything that has come before it is far greater that the difference between radio and television ever was.
In the old days, the days of newspapers printed with cold type, telephone company monopolies, the days when the only video was broadcast, when urgent documents were delivered by bicycle, it made sense to husband your communication resources. This is the outdated model on which most advertisers continue to operate. The idea was, if you're going to spend a lot of your resources to communicate with the market, then you better make sure you reach as many people as possible. The inevitable result of this thinking has been advertising with minimal information content that is produced to the "lowest common denominator." Meaningless hyperbole, lack of content and depth, over-generalizations, reliance on ambiguous imagery. After decades of exposure, consumers no longer respond to mass advertising. It's nothing new, just the same old meaningless hype.
Now the cost of communication is plummeting. The availability of communication bandwidth is exploding. For the effective advertiser, the strategy is shifting. Marketers can now make detailed, in-depth information available to anyone online. Most of it will be completely ignored by most people, while at the same time serving as a powerful, targeted presentation to the people who are interested. There is one very important caveat. Marketers must make their information available without making it intrusive.
And that is really the skill involved in marketing in this age of cheap communications. Knowing how to make material appealing to a specific target audience. You must learn to be compelling, convincing and credible. Forget about shouting trite little slogans. Forget about response rates. You have the opportunity to deliver effective, highly-targeted presentations by supplying detailed, meaningful information that is easily and widely accessible to consumers.
Think of marketing as a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is mass marketing, advertising in Time Magazine, on the Super Bowl, designed to reach as many people as possible. With mass marketing your goal is to repeatedly get your message in front of warm bodies. This kind of marketing is relatively inexpensive on a per-exposure basis. You pay tens of millions of dollars for ads on the Super Bowl, and you reach hundreds of millions of people. However, it's not particularly effective on an individual basis. You have to reach a lot of people for even a single sale to be made.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have one-on-one marketing, where the manufacturer directly markets to the end consumer. That has traditionally been very expensive on a per-exposure basis. The payoff is that one-on-one marketing is much more effective than anything else.
Cyberspace makes highly targeted, one-on-one marketing possible, with the reach and the economies of scale of mass marketing. Imagine the potential of that. In the traditional marketing spectrum, you had to chose between reaching a lot of people (mass marketing) and reaching the right people (target marketing). Cyberspace makes possible a powerful hybrid form of marketing - mass target marketing. How is this possible?
Cyberspace makes possible a continuing dialogue between marketer and market, and that is where the power of the medium lies. It also makes it easy for people to obtain information on demand.
If I'm interested in buying a sport utility vehicle, I might sit down and watch TV and see a few ads for sport utility vehicles - assuming that I'm watching the right shows. However, if I'm interested in buying a new scuba mask and snorkel, I might sit all day and watch TV and never see anything about scuba gear. If I wanted to, I could go buy a magazine about scuba diving, or look in the yellow pages under "Divers Equip & Supls". That's information on demand - I'm seeking out information on where I can find a good mask and snorkel.
The information superhighway facilitates information on demand in a way that puts the yellow pages to shame. In the yellow pages, I can find ads for dive shops that tell me their location, their phone number, their hours, and whether or not they offer compressed air or scuba lessons. That's about it.
On the Internet, it's a different story. I log in to a World Wide Web index, type in the keyword "scuba" and get back 36 listings - equipment reviews, dive condition reports, information on diving destinations, a "wreck database" of diveable shipwrecks, and on and on. Kind of makes the yellow pages pale by comparison. While I'm checking out reviews on masks and snorkels, I see something else that catches my interest - underwater casings for 8mm camcorders. Now, this is something that I never would have even thought about, and probably if I had gone to a dive shop here in Austin, I wouldn't have seen any. But, I think to myself, wouldn't it be nice to shoot some underwater video on my trip to the Caribbean. See how well this information on demand thing can work!!
People are becoming more and more accustomed to information on demand. In business, in entertainment, in their personal lives. Look at the rental video industry. We have movies on demand from the local video rental store - thousands of titles are available even in small towns.
Or look at the way that news is delivered. Not too long ago, if you wanted news on television you had to wait until 5:30 in the afternoon when the network news came on. Now, you simply tune in CNN or CNN Headline News and watch the news whenever you want to.
This is a trend that is going on in every area of our lives. Information on demand. Voice mail is a part of this, allowing you to talk to people when you have the time and allowing them to listen to what you say when they have the time. You can hold extensive conversations with people without ever talking "live" to them.
Cyberspace is the ultimate implementation of information on demand.
The whole philosophy of marketing is changing. Previously, marketing involved creating a demand for a specific product, product line or service. That approach is obsolete. Today marketers must interact with the market, determine what products and services are needed, and then supply enough information to the market about those products so that the products find their own market. It is the difference between talking people into something they don't really need or want, and simply finding the people who do need and want it. As a marketer, you must learn to shift your resources away from convincing people to buy, and toward educating, informing and connecting with the marketplace.
The information superhighway represents a tremendous opportunity for people who understand what it is and what it is not. If you just put your information out and expect people to see it and act on it, you'll be very disappointed.
Marketing in the online world is a dynamic, two-way activity. It requires a commitment to keep abreast of change and to constantly evaluate new developments. Online marketers who make an ongoing commitment to innovation, to providing detailed information, will prosper in this emerging marketplace.
This article is excerpted from Ralph Marston's report, "Strategies For A Wired Marketplace," which is available to Ultimate Solutions subscribers at a special discount. Phone 512-832-5435 or email rmarston@zilker.net for more information.