Whole Internet Marketing

Now the Internet is a Whole Channel. By Riggs Eckelberry This paper is based on a speech delivered by the author on February 12, 1998, at the Venture Talent ’98 conference in Bellevue, WA. Introduction The Internet is maturing into a whole channel. That means it is acquiring all the trappings of a channel, with multiple tiers, gatekeepers, storefronts, push and pull marketing, brand building and category domination. In effect, you have to approach the Internet no longer as a derivative channel - that assists other channels - but as its own environment, with what we call Whole Internet Marketing. The Components of Whole Internet Marketing There are three key components to Whole Internet Marketing: Audience Building Revenue Generation Brand Building. The implementation of these components should occur in sequence. Audience Building - No More Happy Puppies In the early days of 1996, it was possible to "get the pop" through a clever promotion or two. Internet marketer Annie van Bebber made Happy Puppy the second most-trafficked game site with great promotion and a likeable, useful site. Ongoing Dialog Those factors haven’t gone away. But today, I believe that they are largely wasted without a process for ongoing dialog with both prospective and current site visitors. In other words, you have to stay in touch. This isn’t easy, and most companies don’t do it. The result is a tremendous waste in prospective audience. How many times have you downloaded software and never heard from the company again - or if you did, it was a generic bulk announcement? The dialog machine To ensure that initial traffic generated by effective promotional activity results in loyalty and eventual purchase, Internet marketers need to implement systems that allow extremely sophisticated and personalized interaction with their target audiences. The voice In addition, they must create a "voice" (a style) that is appropriate to the company, and then apply that voice consistently as an ongoing direct response activity - both in bulk and personalized communications. The voice must be consistent wherever it originates in the organization. Valuable, Free Information I’ve written elsewhere (see The Three Pillars of Interactive Marketing) on the importance of providing the constant coin of valuable, free information to attract and keep your audience. That lesson is easily forgotten. The Internet is the ultimate Direct Response channel - but it despises being treated like one. Stay away from sell-sell-sell. Offer free, valuable information. Studies have shown repeatedly that offers of valuable, free information work best, sales pitches least. Revenue Generation - It’s The Product, Stupid Product Design Tiny software utility maker Mijenix earns unusually hefty monthly revenue figures from its Internet-based sales. Why is this? According to the principals, it’s primarily because their products are Internet sales-friendly. This is another example of the Internet as a Whole Channel. You design and package products specifically for retail, don’t you? Then you must do the same for Internet-based sales. And you should look beyond simple "wrapping" systems, and really focus on how your product line should take advantage of the many ways to be Internet-friendly. Product Adoption You should pay keen attention to your strategy for seeding your audience with product. Go for product adoption and the sales will follow. Go for sales and you’ll likely get neither. There are several good working models that I will be glad to tell you about - but that’s for another paper. Mijenix also does well because it has developed a " voice" closely related to the quality of its products - and has made Internet-friendly product design part of that product quality. Establish Revenue Before Brand Internet revenue generation follows audience-building, but, perhaps paradoxically, should come before brand building. Get your audience. Get to revenue. Then attack brand building. Brand-Building, Secure Your Position Security and Your Revenue Model The first part of brand-building is about securing your position. This is closely related to your revenue generation strategies. For example, Amazon created a web of links from thousands of referring sites that get a percentage for referring business. Go to Vetnet, and their helpful listing of specialized veterinarian books leads - sure enough - to Amazon. This referral network is a powerful advantage that isn’t likely to go away. It’s a major source of ongoing business for Amazon.com, but while the bookseller could probably survive without it, it’s a huge fortress against competition. Those links are pretty much hard-coded. Category Domination But that’s only the beginning of brand-building. The next area of focus should be category domination, and, coming back to our example, barnesandnoble.com is doing some great work there. For example, they’ve bought into some major sites, like the NY Times. So, build your fortress based on how you make revenue, then work constantly to ensure your domination of the category. Category Domination is about planting a flag in a category and holding it. Your domination strategy will be yours uniquely. Brand Building With your Revenue Model Fortress and your Category Domination scheme well in hand, you can now build your long-term brand. It’s clear that brand-building on the Internet is about constant innovation and staying relentlessly in front of your audience. BUT don’t confuse innovation and technological change with a change in product focus, voice or message. Those are constants. Insist on reinforcing them. Remember CompuServe’s Wow!? The business online service went after the consumer, when they should have reinforced their value to business. I guess the trap was that they could do it, technologically. But that didn’t mean they should have. Instead, use the Net to re-energize your brand. "To keep a brand alive over the long haul, to keep it vital, you’ve got to do something new, something unexpected. It has to be related to the brand’s core position. But every once in a while you have to strike out in a new direction, surprise the consumer, add a new dimension to the brand, and re-energize it." Scott Bedbury, the marketer behind Nike and now Starbucks, in Fast Company. Your Whole Internet Strategy OK, all the above is very necessary, but it doesn’t translate to specifics. What to do? The Big Idea First, strategy. You need a big strategic idea that the whole company can get behind that reinforces the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of your product(s), and which translates into owning your category. Hint: this idea usually revolves around what you can give away for free. Free Product: A McAfee ad says "some people think they’re stealing our software". The company’s policy of REALLY GIVING IT AWAY FOR FREE helps them maintain a solid market position. Even in this enlightened age, you will be bitterly opposed in your company for giving away things for free. Yet that is what you must do. And don’t give them away as crippled product - all you’ll do is create a market awareness opportunity for the next guy. Sure, your strategy needs to lead to revenue. Work it out. Then execute the Free Product idea boldly. A client of ours couldn’t get their great product noticed until they made a version available for free. Bang, that week they got onto Jesse Berst’s Anchor Desk, distribution 1.5 MILLION. Free Information: There is probably only one shot at being the information resource for your segment. You’re a nuts & bolts manufacturer. You become the information resource on nuts & bolts. Control that spot and you can be as altruistic as you like - you’re in the catbird seat. If someone already took the top spot, then find a niche. What about STANDARDS ISSUES concerning nuts & bolts? It’s a public service thing. But it reaps huge rewards in goodwill, audience and market share on the Net. What to do - Free Product or Free Information? Both, of course, if you can. Avenues of Inflow Next, you need to work out your avenues of inflow. For example, a client of Lassoo Interactive's is in the Virtual Reality Authoring tools business. What’s their avenue of inflow? The current VR worlds, of course. The Amazon.com associates network is a brilliant thing. Try to put that to use. A software utility company needs to be all over the shareware sites, especially CNET’s Download.com and ZDNet’s Launch Pad. The launching of a product to get The Big Hits is an art form these days. Assign Bandwidth At Lassoo, we tell our prospective clients to imagine having 22 people on their staff doing online marketing. They always laugh because no one has that kind of bandwidth devoted to online marketing. Face it, you never will. The Internet is a one-to-one market that has to be communicated with on a mass basis. That’s a contradiction that means you need to be resource-heavy, yet your management tends to think of the Internet as an automated environment. That’s why you’ll never have the resources you need. That system I mentioned earlier under "the dialog machine" - that alone is a massive undertaking to get underway. Gary Brooks, who oversaw Altavista’s Internet marketing, tells me he had three people at Digital handling their communication machine, and no way could he find even one spare person to do the job at his current company. He’s far from alone. So, don’t reinvent. Get an Internet marketing agency in to help you manage the channel. That means you can then extend your reach out into areas your competition may not have gotten to yet. The Internet Is About Real People My last point is this: when you’re doing Internet marketing, you’re talking to real people out there. "Heather" A company we’ve been talking to in the herbs business has modeled its typical customer. They call her Heather. A new-wave consumer, Heather is information-hungry. She peruses the racks at the health food store, and discusses herbs with her friends and her chiropractor. Heather is a great customer. She wants all the information you’re willing to give her. She is going to leap on your website. Today, we’re all a little like Heather. We’re information-hungry. So the next time you look at your Internet marketing ideas or someone else’s, ask yourself if YOU would be interested in this as a consumer. Because the person you talk down to may be yourself. Eclectics It’s a good thing that the Internet came along, because, as an eclectic, I found my place in it. Hiring eclectics for your Internet marketing does work - if you have process to back it up! But the Internet is a total outside-the-box environment, and I hope it will remain so for a long time. And may you have huge success in your Whole Internet Marketing. Riggs Eckelberry Copyright © Riggs Eckelberry 1998 ALL WORLD RIGHTS RESERVED Any part of this article may be reproduced so long as copyright is acknowledged and a link to the writer's email address is included.