Internet Marketing Roadmap: the Truth for A Change

S.F. Allen

THE TRUTH FOR A CHANGE For a company to build a thriving Internet business, its managers will need to understand the truths around Internet Marketing. Though an ever-evolving subject in technical terms, underlying Internet Marketing are three competencies: Traffic Infrastructure, Marketing Application Development, and Permission Marketing Methodologies.

Practicing Internet Marketing with all three competencies in motion resembles gear-shifting when driving a car with manual transmission -- both the mechanics of the gear drives as well as how the driver shifts through the gears will determine performance. Buyers beware; as consultants and vendors sell, internal staff champion, Internet Marketing solutions with only one gear in place.

WHEN DID MARKETING GET SO COMPLICATED? Internet Marketing has gotten complicated for responsible marketers; and the trend is that Internet marketers, online advertisers, and web developers are working closer then ever before and that their functions are blurring. The Internet is the grounds for this evolution in marketing; it collapsed barriers to entry, facilitated real-time measurements, and contracted time-to-market.

Your company will need a designated driver who understands and can execute, or shift through, the four competencies of Internet Marketing.

TRAFFIC INFRASTRUCTURE The notion of "If you build it, they will come" holds true on the Internet. Just as an offline company's rental payment is an investment towards shop traffic, a budget -- along with an allocation plan to invest the dollars in a sustainable manner -- is required by an online business to build traffic.

As long as your website's traffic infrastructure is set up correctly, this investment in presence will have several edges over its offline counterpart. For one, you have the ability to pay incrementally for traffic. Secondly, you have the freedom to add and change locations anytime. And last but not least, traffic and exposure can be retained via database marketing technologies and permission marketing tactics.

Major Traffic Infrastructure projects include: search engine optimization, website submission, and online partnerships/advertising.

Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing your website for incoming search engine robots (also known as spiders and bots) is analogous to koshering a company just before a media critic's visit. Since the grade given by the robot is included in the algorithm which determines where your website will rank on various queries, optimization impacts traffic directly.

As a rule of thumb to better scores, your website should align the copy in its title tag, Meta tags, image alts, and visible content. Conversely, inclusion of frames, Flash components, and comment tags will negatively affect scores.

For websites generating web content with server-side technology such as ASP, JSP, Perl, or Cold Fusion (your website uses Cold Fusion) the foremost challenge is that search engines cannot scour these site very well. There are two problems: First, dynamically built pages usually contain a question mark and ampersands in its URL, which to a bot, resembles unlimited combinations of next-level pages. For this reason, bots are programmed not to go beyond the current page or level. Secondly, dynamically built pages are built "on-click", an awkward action for software bots to simulate.

Your website can remedy this problem by building .htm ending pages which redirects to corresponding .asp pages for its key sections. However, there is a caveat to carrying out this tactic; occasionally, search engine bots ignore redirect pages since spammers uses this trick to flood search engines with multiple pages that route to the same website. Therefore, a more assured remedy is to submit hard-coded .htm pages.

The usage of meta tags deserves elaboration in addition to the alignment technique described above. Rather than plugging in key words associated with your business (say an online tea e-tailer), inscribe key phrases; specifically, phrases which differentiates your website from its competition. In practice, avoid using generic key words such as "online tea house", instead, use a phrase such as "green tea Matcha"; this will enable your website to cut through the advertisement clutter on search engines.

Search Engine Submission

Having optimized your traffic infrastructure, you can proceed to invite the critics. There are hundreds of quality search engines and directories that your website could submit to but realistically only a handful that will yield positive return on effort. Confusing the matter is the undergoing consolidation of the search engine and directory industry, which is producing conflicting partnerships and reseller programs; duplication of efforts and spending is quite common because of this.

your website might have been approached by such a reseller service: an offer to provide a monthly positioning service that will elevate your website's listing ahead of its competitors. Unfortunately, many resellers resort to deceitful methods (eg. setting up multiple redirect domains, inserting misleading meta tags, etc) that are considered as spam by the major search engines. So while in the short run websites enjoy increase in traffic, breaching the published code of ethics of website submission will soon get them black listed.

Initially, your website should manually submit to major portals such as Yahoo!, open-source directories such as Dmoz, search engines like Google, paid-inclusion providers of Inktomi's sort, and the major local directories. Furthermore, if your website caters to international customers, be sure to submit to those cultures' major online properties, preferably in their respective languages. Yes, most of the destinations named above charge annual/monthly fees, but they are a crucial source for new traffic and an important part of the traffic infrastructure.

Online Partnerships and Advertising

Inactive forms of online advertisement such as banners and sponsorships are dead. When engaging in online advertisement partnerships, invest only in sites that handout a lot of restrictions. A site that controls its advertisers does so because its customer base is valuable enough to justify the cost of protection and that it correctly views advertisement as a relationship building exercise. In particular, your website should be instructed on copy, design, permission and privacy policies, reporting capabilities, performance projections, etc.

Self-help advertising such as Google's Adwords program is one of the most effective online advertising tools; it's targeting at its finest. This cost-per-click (performance-based) program will empower your online business the ability to evade, or alternatively, face-off directly with its competitors. Ultimately, you can position competition on their behalf -- a very powerful marketing strategy indeed. Moreover, you can set a maximum spend amount and a maximum bid amount per given keyword; essentially, your business pays rent based on walk-ins, and can add or move store locations on a daily basis.

If generic Adwords surrounding tea (again, using online tea e-tailer as an example) are already cluttered, they should be avoided at the outset. You should instead focus on tea names, and tea keywords tied to local markets. Buying the former reaches destination niche customers, and the latter touches regional tea enthusiasts (eg. of Vancouver, BC).

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, use it as a distinct competitive advantage. Store imagery should be posed wherever possible, giving reassurance to both regional, but more significantly, destination buyers. Cargo & James' advertisement and website exemplifies this perfectly.

MARKETING APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Creating a Distribution Network

To market successfully online, an online business must seek access to, and then build, a distribution network. This feat of turning customer access into customer ownership is facilitated by database-driven marketing applications.

Specifically, these are marketing applications that enable, automate, or support customer relationship marketing and the interaction between partners, marketers, and customers. Technically, applications may consist of web pages, databases, forms, business rules, and users. Together these elements process the flow of marketing data, automate processes, and enable customer relationship management. As a result, closed-loop marketing strategies are a possibility.

Begin by creating or refitting your database system so that the customer data and data posted from marketing applications are integrated. This will enable your website to execute marketing campaigns with real-time data. Additional, predictive modeling and data mining can be done if offline and online transactional data where tied to the abovementioned systems.

Once the systems are in place, marketing applications would reside on your website as well as partners' to start capturing customer information. The goal here is, one, to convert partners' customers into yours; and two, to enrich existing customers' records with more data. When followed up by further communications and interactions, trust is build and a customer-base is realized. The bread-and-butter of all successful Internet marketers is effectively this -- create a distribution network and market to it over time in a closed-loop environment.

Immediate Examples

To set in motion customer acquisition, retention and conversion, your website can develop marketing applications such as: electronic coupon systems, contest registration applications, membership/club applications, and loyalty programs. PERMISSION MARKETING METHODOLOGY Online Permission Marketing is similar to dating: the subject in this case is a customer. Like a person would on a date, permission marketers treat their customers with respect, and invest ample amount of time and energy to the development of the relationship. Most Internet marketers, however, favor the brute force approach to marketing. Instead of building relationships with their customers, they thoughtlessly push products as frequently as possible to reach short-term results. This is analogous to making a marriage proposal to a stranger on a first date -- even if some customers say "yes", the frail relationship will soon end on a bad note.

Online Permission Marketing is a practice that involves the meticulous management of trust, as marketers strategically leverage trust into dependence, and dependence into profit. Through this process, decision-making powers are gradually shifted towards your website marketers and casual customers are transformed into loyal members. When carried out correctly by, Permission Marketing is the most effective and sustainable Internet Marketing methodology.

Permission Marketing is a scientific process with methodologies and best practices. It is a merger of traditional marketing concepts which a company already does very well (such as branding and consumer behavior) with Internet specific technologies, tools and business models. Permission Marketing speaks real-time statistics that facilitates continued adaptation and learning ¡X making campaigns measurable and profits sustainable.

Specifically, the three pillars of Permission Marketing for your website are: 1. Anticipated for acceptance (Cut through the clutter) 2. Personalized for relevance (Empower customers with choice) 3. Trusted for dependence (Shift decision-making power to marketers)

Building customer relationships based on these three pillars will produce a rare breed of online customers who will anxiously await your message amidst other mail/email clutter that competes for their limited attention.

Eventually, your goals are twofold: first, gain enough customer trust to be allowed to make decisions on the client's behalf; and second, be able to predict campaign outcomes. An extreme example of such power-shift can be seen when consumers allow Columbia House to purchase CDs on their behalf. Amazon.com, claimed by critics as the world's most customer-centric company, is working towards a derivative of the Columbia House model via Permission Marketing concepts and a state-of-the-art data-mining infrastructure.

Permission Marketing vs. Direct Marketing

Online Permission Marketing is often confused with Direct Marketing because the latter can be a component within the Permission Marketing process. While Direct Marketing focuses on short-term profits and rapidly expends trust, Permission Marketing centers on leveraging trust to generate sustainable and substantial profits for the long run. Permission marketers quantify trust and mitigates lost of future revenue from marketing activities.

Direct marketers commonly criticize permission marketers for being "soft-sellers". In actual fact, Permission Marketing, in both the short and the long run, produces better sales results and, furthermore, generates beneficial byproducts such as value, customer growth and brand-awareness -- most of which not easily achieved in Direct Marketing campaigns. In sum, while Direct Marketing sells by interrupting a consumer's behavior, Permission Marketing sells by altering or creating consumer behavior.

How Permission Marketing Rewrites Partnerships

In online Permission Marketing, non-exclusive affiliate programs, non-adaptive banner advertisement, and non-committal partnerships are out. These "lazy", unmanaged marketing tactics are what drove down the value and effectiveness of Internet advertisements. On the contrary, Permission marketers work hard at establishing billing and service relationships with consumers and crafting value-add marketing campaigns with partners in which parties share equal stake.

How Can a Company Practice True Internet Marketing Internet Marketing inherited many traditional marketing traits. Often, the two are strategically and functionally interwoven in an organization, but can only be accomplished by staff with very different skill sets.

Start by taking a look at a company's current marketing activities, strategies and partnerships. This will help determine where a company's strategy needs revisions. Then, evaluate the human resources within the company to see whether the gap lies in traditional or Internet marketing expertise. Fill the gaps, develop a new strategy, and then infiltrate the new strategy throughout the company so that it is reflected in everything the company does.

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Internet Marketing Roadmap: the Truth for A Change

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