Given to the conference "Creating Growth through the Internet",4th November 1998, hosted by the Institute ofDirectors, London.
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In an interview broadcast a few years ago Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopfinsisted that the principles of warfare are ancient and unchanging, technologyis of a second order. A general's task is to understand how new weapons canenable these unchanging goals to be achieved in ways that were not possiblebeforehand. The same applies to marketing with the internet. Success is 90% aquestion of marketing, its strategy, its tactics and its administration.
The other 10%, technology, must however not be neglected. It is necessarythat the marketing department defines the objectives and how they are to bereached, but also it must keep itself informed of general developments in thetechnology, so that it can be aware of and make use of opportunities that advances in technology present. History shows that the greatest benefit from advances comes not so much from improvements in well established methods, but by revolutionary changes which are put into action by people and organisations who have no vested interest in the status quo ante. There is no a priori reason why the internet should be any exception to this rule.
The first part of these notes deals with general principles, the second with practical case studies showing how they are applied to real situations that such as a small firm making specialised industrial products and a micro business selling painting and other objets d'art to general consumers.
The first task of a marketer is to characterise the internet from the point of view of its users, its inherent properties and its appropriateness for the project under consideration.
They are grouped around common interests
They are geographically dispersed
This makes the internet ideal for specialist companies with a potential world wide customer base. Advertising can be highly targeted. The technical nature of the internet makes it possible to mailshot on an unheard of scale, so although hit rates may be very low, the cost per successful response is highly attractive. The lost cost of marketing and its reach opens up totally new opportunities for microbusinesses.
The internet is also ideal for linking the enemies of large companies. It is only necessary to quote McDonalds and the McLibel case. McDonald's management did not comprehend this aspect of the web, and an action to frighten off critics rebounded into a public relations disaster.
Plasticity:
The internet is always changing, and not only in the sense of growth in number of users. The content is always changing and anything that may be posted to the internet such as web sites can be changed at any moment with for essentially for the cost of a local phone call. In marketing terms, it means that product changes or anything else can be rapidly disseminated to customers and other interested parties. This fact implies that the organisation must be capable of handling such changes within itself. A consequence of this would be that the department responsible for presenting the organisation on the internet must have this task it its first duty, not doing it as a sideline.
Participation:
Unlike any other medium, the internet requires the active cooperation of the target audience. Firstly, even the act of entering a web address is an act of deliberate volition by the viewer, and secondly the sender is totally dependent upon the viewer for the display of his message. This has profound implications for the design of web pages for conveying a sales message. Many are the cases where a page looks perfect on the 21" monitors in the graphic design studio, but is unreadable on a 14" monitor attached to a dialup link. A brilliant fanfare becomes pointless if the sound on a web browser is turned off. The cleverest Java script is futile if a corporate firewall strips out all such scripts as a security measure. Anybody commissioning a site would do well to insist that it be demonstrated on a small screened slow computer via a dial- up link. True, the site will win no prizes, but you can be sure that your target audience can receive it without undue delays and in a legible form.
Before deciding to use the internet as a marketing tool, it must be characterised from the point of view of the organisation intending to use it. This is best done by a reversal of roles - imagine that you wanted to use the internet to buy or find out about the product/service that you offer - how would you do it? This is a vital exercise, and must be carried out by the person who has to make decisions about whether to implement and how any such implimentation should be carried out. If this is not done in this fashion, there is a grave risk of errors, waste of money, disappointment and disillusion. The information gained is indispensable for the next stage of the exercise. Even if the result of the exercise shows that the internet is unsuitable, the money and time have not been wasted. A clear result is always valuable.
The core of internet marketing is the website, because this is the only part of the internet that is entirely under your control.
Answers to four questions must be provided:
The information gained during the investigation mentioned in the previous paragraph is central to formulation of correct answers to these questions. The success or failure of the whole internet marketing exercise is dependent upon getting these answers right.
Generally speaking the core of the message should be stated at top of the page. Viewers will make judgment whether to carry on the basis of what appears on the first screen. If the theme needs to be developed, hyperlinks to this additional material should be provided.
Hypertext, which is a means by which a reader can jump to another point in a document or to a different document, provides a solution to one of the most intractable problems in information dissemination, namely how to provide for the differing levels of information required by different viewers. Hypertext enables material to be arranged hierarchically. The incoming viewer can be guided the desired level, so that his information needs are fulfilled at the level of detail desired. A suitable scheme might be:
There are circumstances where each viewer has his own individual requirements that cannot be fulfilled by a set of fixed pages. Such a situation is encountered by Railtrack, the company responsible for the railway infrastructure in the U.K., from people looking up train timetables. Railtrack solves this problem by gathering the information from viewer about his travel plans and dynamically creating a suitable page through a program stored on Raitrack's server.
The web is a marketing man's dream. Each file accessed is logged and these logs can be analysed to discover find out the most effective means of drawing attention to the site and which part of the site attracts the most interest. Patterns of movement around the site can be traced, and any weakness identified. It is the author's opinion that no Web site host organisation that does not supply weekly log files should be considered for a serious marketing effort.
Karl Kurt Juchheim GmbH is a very typical family owned company of the German Mittelstand. It has 35 employees. Its products are highly specialised, of interest only to chemists and chemical engineers in universities and the chemical industry. The products have a worldwide application.
Its main marketing problem is that, although well known in the German speaking Continent, it is not well known on a world basis. Although a large part of its output is exported, these exports have developed on a haphazard basis. This situation has arisen because it has not had the resources to mount a conventional marketing effort. The fact that its products are aimed at a clearly defined worldwide audience means that the internet is ideally suited for marketing its products.
The web site has two functions - to get "JUVO", the Juchheim brand name, known to the target market, and to gather requests for the printed catalogue from serious enquirers. Because the target market is primarily outside German speaking Europe, the site is entirely in English. Any German in the target audience will have at least a reading knowledge of English.
Attracting visitors - there are many places on the net specialising in matters of chemistry where advertising notices can be placed. The content of the notices are to the effect that if you are interested in pressure reaction vessels, small chemical pilot plants etc. have a look at this site. The messages contain the addresses of various pages the site. For instance, if a reader is interested in pilot plants, he is given the addressfor the page covering pilot plants, so he can go directly there. He is notleft at the "front door" and left to find his way to the desired page.Leaving people at the index page is a good way of losing them. If navigationthrough the site is at all difficult, the visitor will give up and leave thesite without receiving the message. Assuming the visitor is interested enoughto want a catalogue, he must fill out an on-screenform. This ensures that the webmaster receives all the informationnecessary to process the request in a structured manner.
As a final touch, the information submitted is used to dynamically producea unique page on the viewer's screen mentioning his name and acknowledging hisrequest for a catalogue.
Results - requests for catalogues come in about every 10 days. During that time some forty visitors receive what is essentially a shortform catalogue from the site. Given the highly specialised nature of the products, this is a very satisfactory state of affairs. The cost is less than 1% of that which would be required to produce a similar result from conventional advertising.
This is an example how the internet creates totally new opportunities in the domain of micro businesses. There is a pool of highly skilled professional and amateur artists in southern England whose work should be more widely known and sold. The marketing task is to make these artists known without incurring prohibitive marketing costs.
The plasticity of the web enables the display to changed regularly with little effort. The only capital equipment needed, apart from a computer, is a camera and a scanner. The principal problem with the site is how to advertise it. Unlike the previous case study, where the target audience is very well defined, the market for art is very dispersed. The solution at present being adopted is to have all pictures collected as themes, and post messages in those areas where the themes might have resonance, e.g. for pictures of horses, messages are posted in groups concerned with horses and equestrianism. Consideration is being given to mass emailing as a means of attracting visitors, but there are many problems to overcome. These are primarily technical and organisational, but not financial. However, the business is only 5 months old - so there is plenty of time to resolve them. Outlay so far is around £200.
What counts on the internet is brains, skills and ingenuity - not money. The author runs a worldwide marketing operation for less money per year than the majority of executives earn in a week. It is supremely democratic, and makes effective marketing no longer the prerogative of large organisations. Its effect on the social and industrial structures of the world will be similar to that what occurred after the previous information revolution - the invention and spread of the art of printing.
Note Since the address was given, the art gallery has been closed down.
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