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Chapter 8

Strategies for Marketing, Sales, and Promotion

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Creating an Effective Web Presence

• Businesses always create a presence in the physical world by building stores and office buildings.

• The only contact that customers and other stakeholders have with a firm on the Web is through its presence there.

• Creating an effective Web presence can be critical even for the smallest and newest firm operating on the Web.

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Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn about:• Establishing an effective business presence

on the Web• Promoting your Web site• Meeting the needs of Web site visitors• Creating trust and building loyalty in Web

site visitors• Testing usability in Web site design

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Learning Objectives (Cont.)

• Identifying and reaching customers on the Web

• Choosing successful marketing approaches for the Web

• Understanding the elements of branding• Considering branding strategies and costs• Choosing a business model for selling on

the Web

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Identifying Web Presence Goals

• On the Web, businesses have the luxury of intentionally creating a space that creates a distinctive presence.

• A Web site can perform many image-creation tasks very effectively, including:– Serving as a sale brochure– Serving as a product showroom– Showing a financial report– Posting an employment ad– Serving as a customer contact point

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Achieving Web Presence Goals

• An effective site is one that creates an attractive presence that meets the objectives of the business or other organization.

• Possible objectives include:– Attracting visitors to the Web site– Making the site interesting enough– Convincing visitors to follow the site’s links– Creating an impression of corporate image– Building a trusting relationship with visitors– Reinforcing positive images of the organization– Encouraging visitors to return to the site.

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The Toyota Site

• The Toyota site is a good example of an effective Web presence.

• The site provides:– A product showroom feature– Links to detailed information about each

product line– Links to dealers– Links to information about company

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Quaker Oats

• Quaker Oats has created Web sites that did not offer any corporate presence until 1999.

• In 1999, Quaker Oats changed its Web page to improve its general appearance and user-friendliness.

• The Toyota and Quaker Oats examples illustrate that the Web can integrate an opportunity for enhancing the image of a business with the provision of information.

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Not-for-Profit Organizations

• A key goal for many not-for-profit organizations is information dissemination.

• The combination of information dissemination and a two-way contact channel is a key element in any Web site.

• The American Civil Liberties Union and American Red Cross have created effective Web presences.

• Political parties and museums also use Web site for their image presences.

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How the Web is Different

• The failure to understand how the Web is different from other presence-building media is one reason that businesses fail to achieve their Web objectives.

• Firms must use the Web’s capability for two-way, meaningful communication with their customers.

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Meeting the Needs of Web Site Visitors

• Businesses that are successful on the Web realize that every visitor to their Web site is a potential customer.

• Creating a Web site that meets the needs of visitors with a wide range of motivations can be challenging.

• Technology variation can be another concern to Web presence.

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Meeting the Needs of Web Site Visitors

• A good Web site should give the visitor the option to select smaller versions of the images.

• A good site design lets visitors choose among information attributes, such as level of detail, forms of aggregation, viewing format, and downloading format.

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Trust and Loyalty

• When customers buy a product, they are also buying that service element.

• A seller can create value in a relationship with a customer by nurturing customers’ trust and developing it into loyalty.

• Customer service is a problem for many corporate sites.

• A primary weak spot for many sites is the lack of integration between the companies’ call centers and their Web sites.

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Usability Testing

• Firms are now starting to perform usability testing to their Web sites.

• As the usability testing becomes more common, more Web sites will meet their goals.

• Eastman Kodak, T. Rowe Price, and Maytag have found that a series of Web site test designs help them a lot.

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Identifying and Reaching Customers

• Two general ways of identifying and reaching customers: personal contact and mass media.

• An important element of corporate Web presence is connecting with site visitors who are customers or potential customers.

• Mass media is a one-to-many communication model, the Web is a Many-to-one communication model, and personal contact is a one-to-one communication model.

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Measuring the Effectiveness of Web Site Advertising

• The pricing metric in mass media is called cost-per-thousand and is often abbreviated CPM.

• Measuring Web audiences is more complicated.• Banner ads are often sold on a CPM basis where

the ‘thousand’ is 1000 impressions.• Rates vary greatly and depend on how much

demographic information the Web site obtains about its visitors, but most are within the range of $1 to $100 CPM.

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New Marketing Approaches for the Web

• The Web is an intermediate step between mass media and personal contact.

• Using the Web to communicate with potential customers offer many advantages of personal contact selling and many of the cost savings of mass media.

• GartnerGroup reported that customer-centered marketing strategies would be an excellent fit for the Internet marketplace.

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Technology-Enabled Relationship Management

• Technology-enabled relationship management occurs when a firm obtains detailed information about a customer and uses that information for marketing purpose.

• It is also called customer relationship management (CRM) or electronic customer relationship management (eCRM).

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Creating and Maintaining Brands on the Web

• A known and respected brand name can present to potential customers a powerful statement of quality and value.

• Branded products are easier to advertise and promote, because each product carries the reputation of the brand name.

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Elements of Branding

• The key elements of a brand are differentiation, relevance, and perceived value.

• Product differentiation indicates that the company must clearly distinguish its product from all others in the market.

• Relevance is the degree to which the product offers utility to a potential customer.

• Perceived value is a key element in creating a brand that has value.

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Emotional Branding vs. Rational Branding

• Companies have traditionally used emotional appeals in their advertising and promotion efforts to establish and maintain brands.

• Rational branding relies on the cognitive appeal of the specific help offered, not on a broad emotional appeal.

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Permission Marketing Strategies

• Many businesses may send e-mail messages to their customers and potential customers.

• The practice of sending e-mail messages to people who have requested them is a part of marketing strategy called permission marketing.

• One Web site that offers opt-in e-mail services is yesmail.com.

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Brand-Leveraging Strategies

• Rational branding is not the only way to build brands on the Web.

• One method that is working for well-established Web sites is to extend their dominant positions to other products and services.

• Yahoo! is an excellent example of this strategy.

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Affiliate Marketing Strategies

• In affiliate marketing, the affiliate firm’s Web site includes descriptions, reviews, ratings, or other information about a product that is linked to another firm’s site that offers the item for sale.

• The affiliate site receives a commission.• The affiliate site also obtains the benefit of the

selling site’s brand in exchange for the referral.

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Viral Marketing Strategies

• Viral marketing relies on existing customers to tell other persons about the products or services they have enjoyed using.

• Viral marketing approaches use individual customers to spread the words.

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Brand Consolidation Strategies

• Another way to leverage the established brands of existing Web sites was devised by Della & James, an online bridal registry.

• Della & James offers a single registry that connects to several local and national department and gift stores, including Crate&Barrel, Dillard’s, Gump’s, Neiman Marcus and Williams-Sonoma.

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Cost of Branding

• Transferring existing brands to the Web or using the Web to maintain an existing brand is much easier and less expensive than creating an entirely new brand on the Web.

• Promoting the company’s Web presence should be an integral part of brand development and maintenance.

• Integrating the URL with the company logo on brochures can also be helpful.

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Web Site Naming Issues

• The legal and marketing aspects of Web site naming can be complicated.

• Obtaining identifiable names to use for branded products on the Web is important.

• URL brokers sell or auction domain names.• The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and

Numbers (ICANN) maintains a list of accredited domain name registrars.

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Selling Goods and Services

• The business model of selling goods and services on the Web is based on the mail order catalog business model.

• When the catalog model is expanded to the Web site, it is called the Web-catalog model.

• Compaq, Dell, and Gateway are examples of selling computers on the Web.

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Selling Information or Other Digital Content

• Firms that own intellectual property have embraced the Web as a new and highly efficient distribution mechanism.

• ProQuest is a Web site that sells digital copies of published documents.

• The ACM Digital Library offers subscriptions to electronic versions of its journals to its members and to libraries.

• Encyclopedia Britannica is an example that has transferred an existing brand to the Web.

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Advertising-Supported Model

• The advertising-supported business model is the one used by network television in the U.S.

• The success of Web advertising has been hampered by two major problems:– No consensus has emerged on how to measure and

charge for site visitor views

– Very few Web site have sufficient numbers of visitors to interest large advertiser.

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Advertising-Subscription Mixed Model

• In this mixed model, subscribers pay a fee and accept some level of advertising.

• The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal use a mixed advertising-subscription model.

• The Reuters wire service also uses a mixed model in its Web offerings.

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Fee-for-Transaction Models

• The travel agency business model involves receiving a fee for facilitating a transaction.

• Now, a number of online travel agencies began doing business on the Web.

• Stock brokerage firms use a fee-for-transaction model. They charge their customers a commission for each trade executed.