Online Marketing Learning Guide

Online Marketing: Key Concepts

Marketing is about creating successful transactions.
- Marketing is like matchmaking: it's about bringing together two parties looking for something from each other
- You need to understand marketing basics
  - The 4Ps: product, price, promotion, place
  - Marketing tactics: bring the customer to the firm or bring the firm to the customer
  - The funnel is a way to represent how many people an advertiser needs to reach to generate a sale. Advertisers use it to calculate customer acquisition cost
- You need to understand marketing strategy and be able to develop a marketing strategy
- You need to be able to design a marketing campaign
Online marketing — acquiring and retaining customers online — is something that any business can do, not just "online" businesses
- The customer buying process specifies the steps involved in people's decision to buy
- You can use the internet to influence each of these steps
- The internet has had a big impact on marketing
  - There are more ways to reach people — called "marketing channels" — than there were before the internet
  - Marketers can customize messages for individuals and targets individuals based on their online behavior
  - Customers can broadcast their opinion of products to everyone in the world
  - Customers can now research easily online, so there are multiple influencers for a buyer's decision
  - Businesses can collect statistics on who visits their site, which pages they visit and whether or not they buy, using web site analytics software
- Greenwich Towing is an example of a simple yet effective internet marketing strategy
Internet advertising
- Businesses will pay for people's attention. This is called the economics of attention.
- Many web sites earn revenue from businesses that want to get the attention of people who visit that web site.
- There are many advertising-based business models, which is one of the reasons why there is so much free stuff on the internet
- Display advertising is the the type of advertising that displays ads from third parties on web sites
  - The participants in the display advertising industry include:
    - Advertisers: the people who buy the ads (usually businesses)
    - Web site owners: people who own the sites on which the ads are displayed e.g. The New York Times. Space in which ads can be placed is called "real estate."
    - Intermediaries: internet advertising agencies that develop the ads, advertising networks that distribute the ads across many different web sites, ad servers (such as DoubleClick — now owned by Google) — companies that place the ad on the web site
  - Unlike static advertising such as that in print magazines and on television, online advertisers can display different ads to different users, based in information about the users
    - Behavioral targeting is the practice of targeting ads to users based on their online behavior i.e. the sites they visit
    - Display advertisers use cookies to target ads
    - Display advertising advantages: can promote a brand and build awareness
    - Display advertising disadvantages: just like TV ads, you don't know if the people who see the ads are interested at all in the product
- Search advertising is the practice of placing advertisements in people's search results
  - Search advertising has a big advantage over other types of advertising: you know what people are looking for by what they type into the search engine
  - Advertisers will pay a premium to get access to users who are actively looking for something
  - That's how Google makes a lot of money
    - Google AdWords
    - Google AdSense
  - Search advertising advantages: can target ads at people actively looking to buy something
  - Search advertising disadvantages: cannot stimulate interest of people who are not looking; cannot build a brand e.g. "Coke" using search advertising
- Search engine optimization: the art of designing your web site so it is at the top of relevant search engine results
- Viral marketing and its close relative, social media marketing use social networks to get people to share ads or product information with their friends and to gather information about the users of social networks
  - - Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are the best known examples
    - But there are many others:
    - Advantages of social media marketing: people tend to trust and pay attention to recommendations from their friends; can spread funny or interesting messages very fast (called "going viral"); can be low cost or even "free" if you post your own advertising messages
    - Disadvantages of social media marketing: some products or services may not be interesting enough to "go viral"; results are unpredictable; people may resent having their personal information used
- Email marketing is adverting in emails
  - Most useful for repeat customers, as the business already has their email address
    - Advantages: low cost; can stimulate purchase from repeat customers
    - Disadvantages: can be hard to reach new prospects (seen as "spam")
- Blogs, user forums, customer complaints
  - Blogs provide a way to broadcast information to customers
  - Customer comments on blogs can be a useful form of customer feedback
  - User forums can be useful both for solving customer problems and getting customers to help each other
  - Advantages of blogs and customer forums: free; customers can help each other; can create a community, enhancing customer loyalty
  - Disadvantages of blogs and customer forums: customer complaints can be very visible to prospective new customers; maintaining a blog can be a lot of work; customer forums need to be monitored for spam or abuse
- Promotion on third-party shopping sites such as Google Products, eBay, Craigslist
  - Example: see this article mentioning how the owner of TheCellGuru.com cut his advertising and used Google Products
  - Advantages of promotion on shopping sites: much greater exposure; some listings are free (e.g. Google Products)
  - Disadvantages of promotion on shopping sites: product comparison is often by price, resulting in intense price competition
The web site is an important marketing tool
- Ultimately, almost all forms of online advertising direct the user to a web site
- It is then up to the design of that web site to turn a visitor into a customer
- You need to understand the elements of web site design
You need to be able to develop an online marketing campaign
- Select target
- Develop budget
- Select tactics