Internet Marketing News Analysis
Source:http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=25869
What I Learned:
This article is about the fact that consumers are spending considerable amounts of time looking at items on-line, with notable impact on the apparel and beauty departments. Some web sites, such as Fire mountains Gem Web site, boasts the highest average for consumers spending on their site, with an average of 40 minutes per shopper. Ebay still holds the lead for the top on-line apparel shopping destination with 10.12 million shoppers last year. This is down 10% from the year before, but is still a gigantic number. It just goes to show that the internet is still an exploding trend, and people are demanding the accessibility to be able to shop at home. I think this means we as consumers will only see more and more of this internet selling, and for those smaller companies who chose not to have a page on-line, they may not be able to compete in todays tech savvy lifestyles.
Reflections:
Chapter eight is about the importance of retaining customers after acquisition. The book says it costs 7-10 times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. I guess this is where the 80/20 rule comes into play. 80% of a business is done by 20% of the clientel. The book also goes on to say that while a happy customer will tell five people about their experience, an unhappy customer will tell nine. Thats a colossal amount, especially when reducing infractions by as little as 5% can increase profits from anywhere to 25%-85%.
The process of Customer Relationship management is said to be two-fold. Marketers must realize that relationship marketing requires significant changes in the way that marketing is done. They must focus more on the on going dialog between them and their customers and less on promotional campaigns. Secondly, the relationship must be treated and thought of as an ongoing process, not just a bunch of steps leading to a sale. This idea is going to lead to a series of new marketing techniques to help companies to better understand their customers.
Targeting, Personalization and Customization seem to be the key in this emerging customer relationship. Targeting is important to determine who is a valid prospect for acquisition or business. This comes in very nicely in marketing to make sure you are getting the right message across to the right people. Personalization involves creating special marketing content and is one of the fastest growing marketing techniques. It is used to break through all the clutter and try to reach a small target market. Customization is new products and services, made to fit that of an individual customer. People like to be able to customize their things, and companies have caught a hold of this. More and more we see information asked of us when we visit and open web pages. I see this as only the beginning of this trend. Information that we think is small unimportant stuff, for example when we fill out an application for a customer rewards program, is being used to target market products and services to us in a very big way. In a world where everything is so fast paced, people really still want to be treated as people, with respect. Companies are learning that if they are not customer friendly, they will be passed up for another business that is.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Chapter 7 Internet Marketing News Analysis and Reflections
Internet Marketing News Analysis
Source:http://www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Emarketer_2000398.aspx?src=report1_home
What I learned:
This article discusses the fact that marketing has changed not only for large companies and teenagers, but for moms as well. The article talks about how most marketing done to reach moms was done during soaps and on day time T.V. , this is no longer the case. Today more then 40 million woman who spend time on the internet have children at home who are under the age of 18. While a lot of time is spent on-line in parent related activities, it has been found that moms also use the net for shopping, entertainment and search reasons. Two-thirds of mothers research toys for their children on-line. This is a HUGE deal to on-line marketers. If they are to miss the fact that their internet client tel is also the biggest decision maker when it comes to purchasing toys for their children, they are missing out on fantastic opportunities to corner this target market. What this means to mothers is that there will probably be more and better information regarding these toys and where to get them for the lowest prices.
Reflections:
Chapter seven starts off by discussing search engines and their growing popularity. The book claims that in the recent survey 32% of respondents say they "couldn't live without a search engine" and that 84% of U.S. internet users have used them. To me, this number seems low as I think at some point everyone who has ever used the Internet has had to use a search engine for one thing or another. With $5.75 billion dollars spent on search marketing in the U.S. and Canada in 2005 alone, it is no wonder why companies are taking a much closer look and putting serious thought into how they are going to market themselves in the near feature. 60% of large companies report using the internet to increase product awareness while 62% of companies use the internet to sell product directly on-line. Thats not a big difference percentage wise. This says to me that companies find it just as important to get their message out there as they do to actually sell the product. No wonder why we are bombarded with so many ads.
Search engines are more complicated to me than I had thought. My assumption was you typed in a key word and anything relatively close just popped up. Truth be told, when search engine results pop up, not only is it just a small fragment of what the web has to offer, but results are also listed a a very organized and for lack of a better word, earned way. The book breaks it down when it says their are three basic components of a search engine. A crawler which searches the web, moving from one link to another, an index which organizes the content sent back to it, and a query processor that transmits the index and returns with the search engine results. The value of a search engine is based on the relevance of the results, with Google being the search results leader. While a lot of search results produce organic results, some of them are there because companies paid to have them displayed.
Paid placement is set up to be easy for the average marketer to be able to place an ad anywhere they choose. These ads are usually of short copy and do some type of bidding to acquire appropriate key words. It is recommended that at least twenty keywords are listed for each ad. Key words are an essential part of directing consumers to marketers pages, so they are usually well thought out and relevant to the product. The web increases in size by hundreds of web pages daily. Because of this, marketers are working harder then ever to get their messages across to us as consumers. If this means they are willing to research and analyze the web at a granular level, so be it. No wonder, when $166 billion is being spent annually and the rate is growing like a wild fire.
Source:http://www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Emarketer_2000398.aspx?src=report1_home
What I learned:
This article discusses the fact that marketing has changed not only for large companies and teenagers, but for moms as well. The article talks about how most marketing done to reach moms was done during soaps and on day time T.V. , this is no longer the case. Today more then 40 million woman who spend time on the internet have children at home who are under the age of 18. While a lot of time is spent on-line in parent related activities, it has been found that moms also use the net for shopping, entertainment and search reasons. Two-thirds of mothers research toys for their children on-line. This is a HUGE deal to on-line marketers. If they are to miss the fact that their internet client tel is also the biggest decision maker when it comes to purchasing toys for their children, they are missing out on fantastic opportunities to corner this target market. What this means to mothers is that there will probably be more and better information regarding these toys and where to get them for the lowest prices.
Reflections:
Chapter seven starts off by discussing search engines and their growing popularity. The book claims that in the recent survey 32% of respondents say they "couldn't live without a search engine" and that 84% of U.S. internet users have used them. To me, this number seems low as I think at some point everyone who has ever used the Internet has had to use a search engine for one thing or another. With $5.75 billion dollars spent on search marketing in the U.S. and Canada in 2005 alone, it is no wonder why companies are taking a much closer look and putting serious thought into how they are going to market themselves in the near feature. 60% of large companies report using the internet to increase product awareness while 62% of companies use the internet to sell product directly on-line. Thats not a big difference percentage wise. This says to me that companies find it just as important to get their message out there as they do to actually sell the product. No wonder why we are bombarded with so many ads.
Search engines are more complicated to me than I had thought. My assumption was you typed in a key word and anything relatively close just popped up. Truth be told, when search engine results pop up, not only is it just a small fragment of what the web has to offer, but results are also listed a a very organized and for lack of a better word, earned way. The book breaks it down when it says their are three basic components of a search engine. A crawler which searches the web, moving from one link to another, an index which organizes the content sent back to it, and a query processor that transmits the index and returns with the search engine results. The value of a search engine is based on the relevance of the results, with Google being the search results leader. While a lot of search results produce organic results, some of them are there because companies paid to have them displayed.
Paid placement is set up to be easy for the average marketer to be able to place an ad anywhere they choose. These ads are usually of short copy and do some type of bidding to acquire appropriate key words. It is recommended that at least twenty keywords are listed for each ad. Key words are an essential part of directing consumers to marketers pages, so they are usually well thought out and relevant to the product. The web increases in size by hundreds of web pages daily. Because of this, marketers are working harder then ever to get their messages across to us as consumers. If this means they are willing to research and analyze the web at a granular level, so be it. No wonder, when $166 billion is being spent annually and the rate is growing like a wild fire.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Chapter 6 Internet Marketing News Analysis and Reflections
Internet Marketing News Analysis
Source http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=25640
What I learned
This article talks about the fact that marketers feel as though they don't know their customers. In a recent survey taken,nearly half of marketers said they rate their customer as fair or poor. Despite the fact that 56 % of marketers agree that personalized marketing messages are much more effective then undifferentiated mass marketing, 43.5% of those companies reported a low level of personalized communication with customers. Because of this information,many marketers are planning on increasing their spending on personalization by 10% or more. To us as consumers, I think this means we will be seeing a lot more surveys, Behavioral and contextual advertising, along with new ways for companies to stand out from what the article calls a sea or unrelated marketing campaigns.
Reflections:
Chapter six talks about how the Internet has become a consumer controlled media. Blogs and web page creations are not just for teenagers looking to socialize and pass time any longer,but also have become a staple of communication among adults as well as business'. One Blog service reported more then 23 million blogs in 2005 with more being created daily. Because of all this time and energy being spent on line, marketers are having to find new and creative ways to get their messages across. More and more they are advertising on blogs,which not only stands out from the traditional methods of advertising, but is also able to be a very highly segmented and targeted task. It is now becoming more and more easy to reach not only adult consumers,but also teenagers in this complex communication environment.
With the interactivity and track ability of the web,media planners have been able to fine tune their marketing skills. They are able to market to the smallest groups of consumers using the information they have obtained from the users previous Internet use. This allows marketers to communicate individualized offers and messages to certain consumers. This presents many opportunity's to get a message across and while some don't agree with it,it has become so popular many companies are spending time and dollars to figure out exactly how to reach the Internet consumer.
One way of targeting consumers is called contextual advertising. This is where ads are delivered based on the content of a web site a consumer is viewing. This is done by examining content and keywords a viewer is looking at. From there companies are able to place ads, or pop ups onto the screen and is based on the nature of the content that is being viewed at that exact moment. It varies from Behavioral advertising in the fact that it is just kind of thrown out there at consumers randomly and is mainly sold on the basis of keywords, to which viewers are more then likely to just be browsing.
Behavioral Advertising is based on the consumers Internet behavior,past and present. It has more to do with a combination of what the viewer has been looking at opposed to what they have just browsed through. Many companies have reported success stories in the use of behavioral marketing. Some,such as American Airlines have boasted a viewership of ads to be 115% higher when targeted to specific consumers. It is also said to be 25% cheaper to reach target markets opposed to just throwing ads in any ones direction. The possibility's with this are endless, and while some may argue it is an invasion of privacy I think it is defiantly here to stay.
Source http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=25640
What I learned
This article talks about the fact that marketers feel as though they don't know their customers. In a recent survey taken,nearly half of marketers said they rate their customer as fair or poor. Despite the fact that 56 % of marketers agree that personalized marketing messages are much more effective then undifferentiated mass marketing, 43.5% of those companies reported a low level of personalized communication with customers. Because of this information,many marketers are planning on increasing their spending on personalization by 10% or more. To us as consumers, I think this means we will be seeing a lot more surveys, Behavioral and contextual advertising, along with new ways for companies to stand out from what the article calls a sea or unrelated marketing campaigns.
Reflections:
Chapter six talks about how the Internet has become a consumer controlled media. Blogs and web page creations are not just for teenagers looking to socialize and pass time any longer,but also have become a staple of communication among adults as well as business'. One Blog service reported more then 23 million blogs in 2005 with more being created daily. Because of all this time and energy being spent on line, marketers are having to find new and creative ways to get their messages across. More and more they are advertising on blogs,which not only stands out from the traditional methods of advertising, but is also able to be a very highly segmented and targeted task. It is now becoming more and more easy to reach not only adult consumers,but also teenagers in this complex communication environment.
With the interactivity and track ability of the web,media planners have been able to fine tune their marketing skills. They are able to market to the smallest groups of consumers using the information they have obtained from the users previous Internet use. This allows marketers to communicate individualized offers and messages to certain consumers. This presents many opportunity's to get a message across and while some don't agree with it,it has become so popular many companies are spending time and dollars to figure out exactly how to reach the Internet consumer.
One way of targeting consumers is called contextual advertising. This is where ads are delivered based on the content of a web site a consumer is viewing. This is done by examining content and keywords a viewer is looking at. From there companies are able to place ads, or pop ups onto the screen and is based on the nature of the content that is being viewed at that exact moment. It varies from Behavioral advertising in the fact that it is just kind of thrown out there at consumers randomly and is mainly sold on the basis of keywords, to which viewers are more then likely to just be browsing.
Behavioral Advertising is based on the consumers Internet behavior,past and present. It has more to do with a combination of what the viewer has been looking at opposed to what they have just browsed through. Many companies have reported success stories in the use of behavioral marketing. Some,such as American Airlines have boasted a viewership of ads to be 115% higher when targeted to specific consumers. It is also said to be 25% cheaper to reach target markets opposed to just throwing ads in any ones direction. The possibility's with this are endless, and while some may argue it is an invasion of privacy I think it is defiantly here to stay.
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