03/ 31/ 2006
by Reid Goldsborough
Whether you run a small, part-time business out of your home or own a multinational corporation, tapping into the power of the Internet can help you generate sales. It can also backfire, if you don't respect Internet conventions and simple courtesy.
Internet marketing offers interactivity. Unlike traditional advertising, which is a one-way avenue from the advertiser to the target market, Internet advertising runs both ways. Prospective customers can talk to advertisers and talk amongst themselves.
“Internet marketing is word-of-mouth advertising on steroids,” says Dave Evans, who co-founded Digital Voodoo (www.digital-voodoo.com), an Austin, Texas-based marketing technology consulting business that specializes in social media. “It invites users to take control, create their own messages and share them.”
Social media encompass older Internet offerings, such as e-mail discussion lists, Usenet newsgroups, Web communities and product review sites, as well as newer offerings, such as blogs, wikis and podcasts.
The key difference between Internet advertising media and traditional advertising media is that the latter are interruptive––advertisers interrupt your message to bring you theirs––while the former are participative––advertisers can join in with your marketing efforts. Evans recommends choosing advertising in which others can participate.
“You need to get the support of vocal user communities,” Evans says. “Through those, individuals can credibly spread the word about your products or services.” In the Internet age, “to truly persuade, you must engage,” he says.
You can't engage people within a social network without disturbing the network itself, Evans acknowledges. In doing that, you could wind up coming across as manipulative––if you're not careful.
The classic case of a new media marketing backfiring involved Sony Ericsson. When it launched a new camera/cell phone in 2002, the company hired actors to pretend they were foreign tourists in New York City. To help spread the word about the new gadgets, the actors, fake accents and all, asked New Yorkers to take a picture of them with the device. Once the truth surfaced, people were indignant. The backlash became larger than campaign itself, and the brand took a knock.
Though the Internet didn't play a direct role here, it does make it easy for individuals and companies alike to mask their identity. Avoid the temptation. Given the connected nature of consumers today, it’s just a matter of time before any disguised marketing effort will be widely exposed.
“Be 110 percent transparent,” Evans recommends. “Tell people who you are, what you're selling, and why you're trying to sell it to them.”
The classic way to market products or services through participative technologies is to establish yourself as an expert and provide objective content that has value beyond your specific products or services. To sell via the Internet, you first must be useful. The more useful you are, the more you'll persuade people to visit your Web site and check into your products or services.
This advice still applies today with broadband and iPods. You need to find out who your core talkers are and where they're talking, give them positive subjects to discuss, track what they're saying and determine how this affects your overall marketing efforts. If you do it right, consumers will advertise for you.
Say you're in the travel business, for example. One effective new media marketing technique is to create your own travel blog and participate in the travel-related blogs of others. Don't just blog about your product or service, Evans says. Give people useful information about topics like traveling with children.
No matter where you try to market yourself online, don't leave a hit-and-run ad. You have to schmooze. Join in or start useful, friendly conversations that give you an opportunity to eventually discuss what you're trying to sell.
To direct people to your site in a non-annoying way, include your Web address, along with other contact information, in your sig, the short “signature” that many e-mail, Usenet programs and Web sites let you automatically append to the end of your messages.
At HearThis.com (www.hearthis.com), a part of Evans’ Digital Voodoo marketing consulting business, you can listen to 28 free 10-minute podcasts on word-of-mouth Internet advertising.
Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book, Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com or http://members.home.net/reidgold.
