In the previous article "Vol.13: How is Landing Page Optimization Related to Persuasion Scenario?", persuasion scenario to navigate online web users/visitors to finally “buy” is explained, followed by positioning of landing page in the persuasion scenario, i.e. how landing page is related to persuasion scenario. This article will define what landing page is and its optimization.
1. What is landing page?
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, defines landing page in web marketing, sometimes known as a lead capture page, as the page that appears when a potential buyer/customer clicks on an advertisement or a search engine result click. The page will usually display web content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific words or phrases for indexing by search engines.
The web content displayed in the landing pages varies according the marketing programme. Some examples include description of special offers mentioned in the website and promotion of new product offering, calls to action referenced in another content page (e.g. blog, e-book), an organization’s story to a particular target market, or simply more detailed information from the original link.
2. Are there different types of landing pages?
Yes, mainly there are two types of landing page, reference and transactional.
1) Reference landing page
A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. The information can be presented by text, images, dynamic compilation of relevant links or other elements. Effectiveness of reference landing page can be measured by the revenue value of the advertising that is displayed on them.
A special type of reference landing page is “webvert”, the marketing goal focus on lead generation and interaction with the web visitor. A webvert is not transactional in nature, but is a reference based, ethical landing page, consisting of an advert, designed on the AID(M)A(S) principle mentioned in the previous article "Vol.13: How is Landing Page Optimization Related to Persuasion Scenario?". The webvert has a clear call to action, usually a reply form.
2) Transactional landing page
A transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page, with the goal being the immediate or eventual sales of product or service. If information is to be captured, the page will usually withhold information until some minimal amount of web visitor is provided, typical example being an e-mail address and in some cases a name and telephone number as well, which are sufficient to “capture the lead” and add the prospect to a mailing list/data base of CRM (Customer Relationships Management).
A visitor taking the expected/desired action = buy on a transactional landing page is referred to as a conversion. Although there are other metrics such as CTR (Click Through Rate), the efficiency or quality of the landing page can and is usually measured by its conversion rate, the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action = buying. The economics of many web marketing programmes are determined by the conversion rate, and from monitoring the conversion rate, web/Internet marketers constantly test alternatives and improvements to their landing pages.
In reality, there is another type of landing page, which is common used in direct marketing, called Squeeze Page. These web pages are extremely targeted and focus on capturing information about a web visitor. These pages usually have a very high conversion rate and collect data for an upcoming targeted e-mail or direct contact campaigns.
3. What is landing page optimization?
Landing page optimization is to design the landing page as a logical extension of the advertisement or link for prospects to deliver the promise made and meet expectations, so that the prospects would take series of micro actions to go through persuasion scenario.
Landing page optimization needs to be integrated with SEM (search engine marketing) and online advertising and all other web marketing initiatives to constitute a comprehensive (web) marketing programme.. When talking about SEM and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), optimizing key words and tags from understanding of algorithm for high search result ranking solely is focused in many cases. However, the ultimate value in SEM is its ability to help you understand the customer’s intent and ensure you present relevant information. Moreover, the value of relevant high rankings is completely undone if the promise of the result is followed in the landing page, as Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p80) states. This concept applies also to driving prospects to the landing page by online advertising and other methods. For this reason, SEM, online advertising, landing page optimization and all other topics should not be fragmented but integrated.
4. What happens if landing page optimization is not successful?
It is sad to say that in many cases, web content of the landing page is NOT a logical extension of the advertisement or link for prospects; therefore, it does not meet the expectation of the prospect, and fails to maintain interest and/or conviction of the prospect. It might be that the prospect finds branding of the advertising/link and the landing page inconsistent. Or the prospect cannot find the information he/she expected because it is simply not there or difficult to find even if it is available on the page. Or even if the information is available and the prospect finds it, it is not presented appropriate, such as not in his/her buyer persona style (language, style, etc.).
Whatever the reason may be, if the prospect is dissatisfied with the first landing page, (usually a reference landing page), the prospect would click away to say good bye, after all the effort and investment made to driving him/her to the entrance of the website (= landing page),. Prospects may click away saying good bye in later micro actions as well, but it is often said that majority of the click-away occurs at the first reference landing page and most remaining click-away at the transaction page when calling to action.
5. What is the significance and essence of landing page optimization?
It is quite clear from the above that landing page optimization is a crucial in web marketing. The essence of landing optimization is what Eisenberg & Eisenberg say about presenting relevant information and following through on the promise of the result. If this is successfully performed, web content of the landing page would meet (or even exceed) the expectation of the prospect and the prospect will take the next action of the persuasion scenario with satisfaction.
Landing page (to be specific, reference landing page) is the entries of prospects to the conversion funnel as in the previous article "Vol.13: How is Landing Pange Optimizationo Related to Persuasion Scenario?", so it needs to be designed and optimized to assure that prospects to take the next steps. This means to maintain the prospect’s attention and interest, and to take the first micro action. In many cases it is clicking to the next page in line with the persuasion scenario. This requires interest and conviction of the prospects to be generated and developed, so that the prospects take series of micro actions, going through persuasion scenario to complete by answering to “call to action” at the end.
As Scott (2009, p253) says, marketing with web landing pages is one of the most easiest and cost-effective ways to make a message read by a target market (prospect). It is also an excellent tool to move buyers through the sales cycle. This is why landing page optimization, carefully designed together with SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and other web marketing initiatives, is an extremely important topic in total web marketing, which, if successfully performed, can contribute to maximization of web marketing ROI.
In the next article, possible methodologies of landing page optimization will be introduced.
References:-
Omniture, An Adobe Company (2009), White Paper: 11 Tips for Master Search Marketers
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Vol.13: How is Landing Page Optimization Related to Persuasion Scenario?
In the previous article “Vol.12: How to Make Web Users Stay in Website and Finally “Buy”? , outline of how to make sure that online buyers/customers stay in the website/web content and take action(s) as expected was discussed. This article will explain effectively architecting persuasion scenario and the positioning of landing page optimization in the scenario.
1. What is architecting a persuasion scenario?
Architecting a persuasion scenario is to design total web/Internet marketing to drive online buyer/customer to the website and navigate them to take series of micro actions so that they would finally take macro action of “buy” as expected and desired (i.e. participate in a conversion action), based on the five steps of basic buying mentioned in the previous article “Vol.12: How to Make Web Users Stay in Website and Finally “Buy”?. A well known funnel theory concept comes in architecting the scenario.
As Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p190) say, a scenario consists of persuasive components that lead a buyer/customer to participate in a conversion action. These components will be linear or non-linear, all of which needs to be buyer/customer-focused, based on how each customer approaches the decision to buy, rather than business/web owner-focused. In addition, a scenario provides a structure for the meaningful measurement of buyer activity so that web/Internet marketer will be able to optimize performance.
2. What are components of the persuasion scenario?
The following 6 are the components of the persuasion scenario, as Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p190-p192) presents.
1) Driving point:
Driving point is the prospecting point, outside the funnel, where a scenario begins. It might be any of persuasion entities including search engine, explained as methodologies in driving web users to the website in "Vol.11: How to Successfully Drive Web Users to Web Contents?" This is where the buyer shows a level of interest in entering the scenario, even if the web owner cannot necessarily measure it, thus this is the A and I of AI(M)DA(S) concept. By establishing a driving point, buyer’s angle of approach can be understood.
2) Funnel points:
Funnel points are entries to the conversion funnel. At this point, web owner is in a position to control and develop the dynamic of the persuasive process. A funnel point might be a landing page or main product category page, which essentially functions as a home page to build persuasive momentum within the scenario itself. Funnel point needs to be identified to make a scenario measureable.
3) Points of resolution:
Points of resolution are opportunities to provide the information that buyers may need to answer questions associated with their individual buying processes. Each point of resolution always needs to be connected to a waypoint or conversion beacon (explained below) to ensure that the buyer never misses an opportunity to convert and continue taking micro actions.
4) Waypoints:
These are “persuasive touch points”, points of interactivity integral to the seller’s conversion goals but critical to the needs of a particular buyer. Waypoints support the sales process and the conversion goal.
Points of resolution and waypoints are persuasive components that support the non-linear qualities of the online experience. It is important that the buyer is allowed to interact with the web/Internet marketer in a way that he/she feels comfortable. At the same time, it is important to always try to move the buyer forward to his/her goal.
5) Conversion beacon:
A conversion beacon signals the first (or next) step in a linear process through which a buyer must pass to reach the conversion point. Points of resolution and waypoints lead a buyer to the conversion beacon, the place where the buyer demonstrates the intention to convert. Each step in completing the buying process constitutes another conversion beacon, and the buyer needs to complete each step in order.
6) Conversion point:
This is the point where web/Internet marketer knows with absolute certainty that a buyer has successfully completed a persuasion scenario. The conversion point is the entity that gets delivered so that both the buyer and the web/Internet marketer know conversion has taken place. The entity is usually some form of confirmation.
3. How persuasion scenarios go in action, and how is the action linked to landing page optimization?
Each components of a persuasion scenario is designed with a buyer-focus that acknowledges the different needs of each customer segment, depending on where each is in the buying decision process, and provides persuasive momentum (Eisenberg & Eisenberg, 2006, p192). For effective planning and measuring the goal of persuasion scenario structure, linear aspects and non-linear aspects are taken into account, as explained by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p192-p194).
1) Linear aspects:
This typically occurs at the beginning or at the end of a conversion process.
Examples of at the beginning:
Search engine result (driving point) to landing page (funnel point)
Banner ad (driving point) to landing page (funnel point)
Examples of at the end:
Shopping cart (conversion beacon) to complete checkout (conversion point)
Form completion (conversion beacon) to confirmation (conversion point)
Linear aspects of a scenario come in play when buyers need to start conversion process or complete a registration process or checkout process. Measurement for these aspects is relatively straightforward.
2) Non-linear aspects:
Buyers do not always interact in such a linear fashion, but often they have questions that need to be resolved before they finally buy. Answering these questions to make buyers take series of micro actions requires building non-linear qualities into the scenario, which is difficult but not impossible to measure.
Buyers define the non-linear aspects of a scenario as they navigate persuasion entities, which can be explicitly or implicitly planned, usually between the beginning and the end of linear aspects mentioned above. The point at which the buyer starts the scenario (driving point) to the point at which they complete the intended scenario (conversion point) can be measured although difficult. This can be done by identifying or not the buyer hits the key value waypoints, using web analytics, identifying the click-through path within the non-linear points of resolution. In this way, web/Internet marketers can determine whether they are providing the appropriate content to maintain persuasive momentum. .
Landing page optimization comes in the beginning of linear aspects, and non-linear aspects usually come in with linear aspects. Thus it goes without saying that landing page optimization plays a vital role in architecting an effective persuasion scenario, and this will be the topic for the next article.
References:-
Eisenberg, Bryan & Jeffrey with Davis, Lisa T. (2006), Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Nelson Business
1. What is architecting a persuasion scenario?
Architecting a persuasion scenario is to design total web/Internet marketing to drive online buyer/customer to the website and navigate them to take series of micro actions so that they would finally take macro action of “buy” as expected and desired (i.e. participate in a conversion action), based on the five steps of basic buying mentioned in the previous article “Vol.12: How to Make Web Users Stay in Website and Finally “Buy”?. A well known funnel theory concept comes in architecting the scenario.
As Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p190) say, a scenario consists of persuasive components that lead a buyer/customer to participate in a conversion action. These components will be linear or non-linear, all of which needs to be buyer/customer-focused, based on how each customer approaches the decision to buy, rather than business/web owner-focused. In addition, a scenario provides a structure for the meaningful measurement of buyer activity so that web/Internet marketer will be able to optimize performance.
2. What are components of the persuasion scenario?
The following 6 are the components of the persuasion scenario, as Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p190-p192) presents.
1) Driving point:
Driving point is the prospecting point, outside the funnel, where a scenario begins. It might be any of persuasion entities including search engine, explained as methodologies in driving web users to the website in "Vol.11: How to Successfully Drive Web Users to Web Contents?" This is where the buyer shows a level of interest in entering the scenario, even if the web owner cannot necessarily measure it, thus this is the A and I of AI(M)DA(S) concept. By establishing a driving point, buyer’s angle of approach can be understood.
2) Funnel points:
Funnel points are entries to the conversion funnel. At this point, web owner is in a position to control and develop the dynamic of the persuasive process. A funnel point might be a landing page or main product category page, which essentially functions as a home page to build persuasive momentum within the scenario itself. Funnel point needs to be identified to make a scenario measureable.
3) Points of resolution:
Points of resolution are opportunities to provide the information that buyers may need to answer questions associated with their individual buying processes. Each point of resolution always needs to be connected to a waypoint or conversion beacon (explained below) to ensure that the buyer never misses an opportunity to convert and continue taking micro actions.
4) Waypoints:
These are “persuasive touch points”, points of interactivity integral to the seller’s conversion goals but critical to the needs of a particular buyer. Waypoints support the sales process and the conversion goal.
Points of resolution and waypoints are persuasive components that support the non-linear qualities of the online experience. It is important that the buyer is allowed to interact with the web/Internet marketer in a way that he/she feels comfortable. At the same time, it is important to always try to move the buyer forward to his/her goal.
5) Conversion beacon:
A conversion beacon signals the first (or next) step in a linear process through which a buyer must pass to reach the conversion point. Points of resolution and waypoints lead a buyer to the conversion beacon, the place where the buyer demonstrates the intention to convert. Each step in completing the buying process constitutes another conversion beacon, and the buyer needs to complete each step in order.
6) Conversion point:
This is the point where web/Internet marketer knows with absolute certainty that a buyer has successfully completed a persuasion scenario. The conversion point is the entity that gets delivered so that both the buyer and the web/Internet marketer know conversion has taken place. The entity is usually some form of confirmation.
3. How persuasion scenarios go in action, and how is the action linked to landing page optimization?
Each components of a persuasion scenario is designed with a buyer-focus that acknowledges the different needs of each customer segment, depending on where each is in the buying decision process, and provides persuasive momentum (Eisenberg & Eisenberg, 2006, p192). For effective planning and measuring the goal of persuasion scenario structure, linear aspects and non-linear aspects are taken into account, as explained by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p192-p194).
1) Linear aspects:
This typically occurs at the beginning or at the end of a conversion process.
Examples of at the beginning:
Search engine result (driving point) to landing page (funnel point)
Banner ad (driving point) to landing page (funnel point)
Examples of at the end:
Shopping cart (conversion beacon) to complete checkout (conversion point)
Form completion (conversion beacon) to confirmation (conversion point)
Linear aspects of a scenario come in play when buyers need to start conversion process or complete a registration process or checkout process. Measurement for these aspects is relatively straightforward.
2) Non-linear aspects:
Buyers do not always interact in such a linear fashion, but often they have questions that need to be resolved before they finally buy. Answering these questions to make buyers take series of micro actions requires building non-linear qualities into the scenario, which is difficult but not impossible to measure.
Buyers define the non-linear aspects of a scenario as they navigate persuasion entities, which can be explicitly or implicitly planned, usually between the beginning and the end of linear aspects mentioned above. The point at which the buyer starts the scenario (driving point) to the point at which they complete the intended scenario (conversion point) can be measured although difficult. This can be done by identifying or not the buyer hits the key value waypoints, using web analytics, identifying the click-through path within the non-linear points of resolution. In this way, web/Internet marketers can determine whether they are providing the appropriate content to maintain persuasive momentum. .
Landing page optimization comes in the beginning of linear aspects, and non-linear aspects usually come in with linear aspects. Thus it goes without saying that landing page optimization plays a vital role in architecting an effective persuasion scenario, and this will be the topic for the next article.
References:-
Eisenberg, Bryan & Jeffrey with Davis, Lisa T. (2006), Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Nelson Business
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Vol.12: How to Make Web Users Stay in Website and Finally “Buy”?
In the previous article Vol.11 – How to Successfully Drive Web Users to Web Contents?, generating web traffic to drive as many online buyers/customers to web content/page was discussed. Keeping web users/online buyers/customers in the website/web content and successfully persuading them to “buy”, i.e. take action(s) as expected is the next challenge, which is the focus of this article.
1. Why making sure that online buyers/customer stay and walk around website/web pages inevitable in web/Internet marketing?
It is because in the online world, if dissatisfied, buyers/customer can walk away from website (which can be thought as a store in the online world) with just a single click, unlike in the offline world. In the brick and mortar offline world, buyers/customer would need to physically walk to the door and go out of the building to say goodbye. Also, if a staff had been serving the buyer, serving appropriately, the staff could persuade the buyer not to walk away and even contribute to changing the buyer’s mind. However, in online world, whether it is by intention or accidental, web user can walk away with a single click. For this reason, it is inevitable to design website/web content so that web users would not click goodbye but stay and enjoy the web content.
Moreover, it is inevitable to persuade and navigate them to buy = take actions as expected by web owner to achieve the objective of the web content. Buying is exchange of tangible or intangible value, from which, as Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p61) says, sales is “all about persuading people to take action you want them to take, and persuasion is a transactional process resulting in a change in belief, attitudes and behaviours”. This is why the word “buyers” is mainly used throughout this blog.
Sales in the online world (i.e. buying for web users) can be many things as below, as Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p60-61) list.
- The exchange of currency for products or services.
- The exchange of personal information for entry into a sweepstakes.
- Subscribing to a newsletter.
- Opting in to an e-mail list.
- Registering oneself to something.
- Agreeing to provide a referral.
- Converting someone to one’s opinion about something.
- Inspiring someone to get as enthusiastic about something as one is.
And in order to create and sustain persuasive momentum, 3 questions advocated by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p58) must be answered and executed.
(1) Who are the website owners trying to persuade to take the action?
The answer should be targeted buyers/customers (represented by the persona defined).
(2) What is the action the website owner wants the targeted buyers/customers to take?
The answer should be what is already discussed in the previous article Vol.9 – How to Reach Buyers Directly in Web/Internet Marketing?
(3) What does that person need in order to feel confident taking that action?
This may well be different from person to person and might be difficult to answer.
Factors that make person confident to take action are investigated by carefully identifying possible obstacles and motivations for the person to take that particular action. This can be something tangible such as money, something intangible such as time and authority, and/or something that is mental such as safety, empathy, rapport, trust, confidence, esteem and so forth. Although research and survey result is helpful, possible obstacles and motivations is best identified by conversation with the person and making the person confident is also often effectively done by interactive conversation to provide information around the brand for experience. How companies are having interactive conversation and providing information around the brand for experience have been evolving as web technologies have evolved from web 1.0 to web 2.0 by leveraging social media, and are expected to evolve further in web 3.0 online world.
2. How companies can design and develop website/web content so that web users finally “buy” (take actions as expected)?
Below are the main KFS (Key Factors for Success) for companies to design and develop website/web content so that web users would stay in the website and finally buy.
1) Define appropriate buyer/customer persona, correctly define their needs and motivation to buy and develop web contents answering their needs and motivation.
This KFS has already been discussed in the previous articles Vol.9 – How to Reach Buyers Directly in Web/Internet Marketing? and Vol.10 – How to Successfully Develop Web Content to Directly Reach Buyers. What the author would like to add is about people’s needs and motivation based on a well known Abraham Maslow’s ascending levels of human needs in the form of pyramid. Deficit needs represented at the bottom and being needs at the top, and the hierarchy is physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs.
In general, “being” needs provokes stronger motivation than “deficit” needs, and as society advances and people have less deficiencies, website owner really needs to meet “being” needs and the essence of people’s motivation. This will be interpreted to WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).
2) Define and deliver appropriately value proposition and offering to buyers as their WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).
WIIFM is mentioned by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006) and Safko, Lon and Brake (2009), and this is all about value proposition and offering mentioned by many marketers. Website and its content all about buyers so WIIFM, the benefit for buyers needs to be present and presented well so that buyers would recognize and value it.
WIIFM should be something that solves buyer’s problem and/or meets needs (whether deficit or being”, and when seen from the company side, this is to be “5) Why” explained in the previous article Vol.9 – How to Reach Buyers Directly in Web/Internet Marketing?, which is what the company what buyers/customers to believe such as “this product/service solves the problem” and “it is worth signing up this” so that they would take the action the company wants. This would lead to win-win for both the website/web content owner and the buyers, thus an ideal relationship.
Delivering WIIFM is most effectively performed by focusing on packaging appropriate information and shaping the experience around the brand. As Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p20) state, experience is entirely about “value in content”.
The author feels that this topic also deserves further discussion and she would like to discuss in one of the upcoming articles.
3) Design the total website/web content based on five steps of basic buying
The five steps presented by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p61) are:-
(1) Initiate the relationship by building rapport and confidence.
(2) Investigating needs, wants and problems.
(3) Suggesting a course of action.
(4) Obtaining agreement for decision.
(5) Closing, or taking action.
These steps are based on the two concepts. One is the classic concept of AID(M)A(S) model: attention, interest, desire, (memory), action and (satisfaction). The other is the 5 buying decision process of search, evaluate, decide, purchase and reevaluate mentioned by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p46).
4) Optimize the landing page.
Even if all the above KFI are successful, if this fails, web users would click to walk away. This deserves much discussion and will be the topic for the next article.
5) Design total website/web content so that online web users take series of micro actions to finally take macro actions.
When web users go through buying steps, they take many micro actions before finally taking macro action, the conversion goal of the website/web content. Micro actions are, as explained by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p53), series of clicks each of which represents a questions the web user is asking, representing his/her willingness to stay engaged with the website and a unique point of conversion and continued persuasive momentum.
The total flow of micro actions are of aligned with buying steps, and each web page needs to be designed appropriately, similarly to landing page.
6) Locate “call to action”.
Although the degree may vary according to the action expected by the online buyers/customers, but in many cases this is not clear even if it should be. This is one reason for low conversion rate. This also deserves further discussion preferably linking with #5 about series of micro actions, and the author hopes to discuss in one of upcoming articles.
Understanding buyers’ psychology and behaviour is vital in persuading online buyers/customers to “buy”. This is because unlike in the old economy in which simply providing hardware and functional benefits to meet deficiency needs was sufficient, in the new economy of web 2.0 online world, providing solution and answering to mental needs through experience is the key to persuading them to buy.
Such trend is the background for emergence and increasing popularity of experiential/emotional marketing and customer behaviour/psychology. The author believes that this trend is expected to become stronger in web 3.0 online world and marketers need to keep up with the trend. This kind of topic can be regarded as “soft” factors vs. “hard” factors of quantitative and qualitative information/data and framework, and marketers need to be well balanced between the two to successfully develop and execute web/Internet marketing strategy and plan.
References:-
Eisenberg, Bryan & Jeffrey with Davis, Lisa T. (2006), Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Nelson Business
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
1. Why making sure that online buyers/customer stay and walk around website/web pages inevitable in web/Internet marketing?
It is because in the online world, if dissatisfied, buyers/customer can walk away from website (which can be thought as a store in the online world) with just a single click, unlike in the offline world. In the brick and mortar offline world, buyers/customer would need to physically walk to the door and go out of the building to say goodbye. Also, if a staff had been serving the buyer, serving appropriately, the staff could persuade the buyer not to walk away and even contribute to changing the buyer’s mind. However, in online world, whether it is by intention or accidental, web user can walk away with a single click. For this reason, it is inevitable to design website/web content so that web users would not click goodbye but stay and enjoy the web content.
Moreover, it is inevitable to persuade and navigate them to buy = take actions as expected by web owner to achieve the objective of the web content. Buying is exchange of tangible or intangible value, from which, as Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p61) says, sales is “all about persuading people to take action you want them to take, and persuasion is a transactional process resulting in a change in belief, attitudes and behaviours”. This is why the word “buyers” is mainly used throughout this blog.
Sales in the online world (i.e. buying for web users) can be many things as below, as Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p60-61) list.
- The exchange of currency for products or services.
- The exchange of personal information for entry into a sweepstakes.
- Subscribing to a newsletter.
- Opting in to an e-mail list.
- Registering oneself to something.
- Agreeing to provide a referral.
- Converting someone to one’s opinion about something.
- Inspiring someone to get as enthusiastic about something as one is.
And in order to create and sustain persuasive momentum, 3 questions advocated by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p58) must be answered and executed.
(1) Who are the website owners trying to persuade to take the action?
The answer should be targeted buyers/customers (represented by the persona defined).
(2) What is the action the website owner wants the targeted buyers/customers to take?
The answer should be what is already discussed in the previous article Vol.9 – How to Reach Buyers Directly in Web/Internet Marketing?
(3) What does that person need in order to feel confident taking that action?
This may well be different from person to person and might be difficult to answer.
Factors that make person confident to take action are investigated by carefully identifying possible obstacles and motivations for the person to take that particular action. This can be something tangible such as money, something intangible such as time and authority, and/or something that is mental such as safety, empathy, rapport, trust, confidence, esteem and so forth. Although research and survey result is helpful, possible obstacles and motivations is best identified by conversation with the person and making the person confident is also often effectively done by interactive conversation to provide information around the brand for experience. How companies are having interactive conversation and providing information around the brand for experience have been evolving as web technologies have evolved from web 1.0 to web 2.0 by leveraging social media, and are expected to evolve further in web 3.0 online world.
2. How companies can design and develop website/web content so that web users finally “buy” (take actions as expected)?
Below are the main KFS (Key Factors for Success) for companies to design and develop website/web content so that web users would stay in the website and finally buy.
1) Define appropriate buyer/customer persona, correctly define their needs and motivation to buy and develop web contents answering their needs and motivation.
This KFS has already been discussed in the previous articles Vol.9 – How to Reach Buyers Directly in Web/Internet Marketing? and Vol.10 – How to Successfully Develop Web Content to Directly Reach Buyers. What the author would like to add is about people’s needs and motivation based on a well known Abraham Maslow’s ascending levels of human needs in the form of pyramid. Deficit needs represented at the bottom and being needs at the top, and the hierarchy is physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs.
In general, “being” needs provokes stronger motivation than “deficit” needs, and as society advances and people have less deficiencies, website owner really needs to meet “being” needs and the essence of people’s motivation. This will be interpreted to WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).
2) Define and deliver appropriately value proposition and offering to buyers as their WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).
WIIFM is mentioned by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006) and Safko, Lon and Brake (2009), and this is all about value proposition and offering mentioned by many marketers. Website and its content all about buyers so WIIFM, the benefit for buyers needs to be present and presented well so that buyers would recognize and value it.
WIIFM should be something that solves buyer’s problem and/or meets needs (whether deficit or being”, and when seen from the company side, this is to be “5) Why” explained in the previous article Vol.9 – How to Reach Buyers Directly in Web/Internet Marketing?, which is what the company what buyers/customers to believe such as “this product/service solves the problem” and “it is worth signing up this” so that they would take the action the company wants. This would lead to win-win for both the website/web content owner and the buyers, thus an ideal relationship.
Delivering WIIFM is most effectively performed by focusing on packaging appropriate information and shaping the experience around the brand. As Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p20) state, experience is entirely about “value in content”.
The author feels that this topic also deserves further discussion and she would like to discuss in one of the upcoming articles.
3) Design the total website/web content based on five steps of basic buying
The five steps presented by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p61) are:-
(1) Initiate the relationship by building rapport and confidence.
(2) Investigating needs, wants and problems.
(3) Suggesting a course of action.
(4) Obtaining agreement for decision.
(5) Closing, or taking action.
These steps are based on the two concepts. One is the classic concept of AID(M)A(S) model: attention, interest, desire, (memory), action and (satisfaction). The other is the 5 buying decision process of search, evaluate, decide, purchase and reevaluate mentioned by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p46).
4) Optimize the landing page.
Even if all the above KFI are successful, if this fails, web users would click to walk away. This deserves much discussion and will be the topic for the next article.
5) Design total website/web content so that online web users take series of micro actions to finally take macro actions.
When web users go through buying steps, they take many micro actions before finally taking macro action, the conversion goal of the website/web content. Micro actions are, as explained by Eisenberg & Eisenberg (2006, p53), series of clicks each of which represents a questions the web user is asking, representing his/her willingness to stay engaged with the website and a unique point of conversion and continued persuasive momentum.
The total flow of micro actions are of aligned with buying steps, and each web page needs to be designed appropriately, similarly to landing page.
6) Locate “call to action”.
Although the degree may vary according to the action expected by the online buyers/customers, but in many cases this is not clear even if it should be. This is one reason for low conversion rate. This also deserves further discussion preferably linking with #5 about series of micro actions, and the author hopes to discuss in one of upcoming articles.
Understanding buyers’ psychology and behaviour is vital in persuading online buyers/customers to “buy”. This is because unlike in the old economy in which simply providing hardware and functional benefits to meet deficiency needs was sufficient, in the new economy of web 2.0 online world, providing solution and answering to mental needs through experience is the key to persuading them to buy.
Such trend is the background for emergence and increasing popularity of experiential/emotional marketing and customer behaviour/psychology. The author believes that this trend is expected to become stronger in web 3.0 online world and marketers need to keep up with the trend. This kind of topic can be regarded as “soft” factors vs. “hard” factors of quantitative and qualitative information/data and framework, and marketers need to be well balanced between the two to successfully develop and execute web/Internet marketing strategy and plan.
References:-
Eisenberg, Bryan & Jeffrey with Davis, Lisa T. (2006), Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Nelson Business
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Vol.11 – How to Successfully Drive Web Users to Web Contents?
In the previous article "Vol.10: How to Successfully Develop Web Content to Directly Reach Buyers", methodology of effectively developing web contents based on the buyer/customer persona was discussed. The focus of this article is generating web traffic to drive web users to web contents developed.
1. What is the meaning and importance of successfully generating web traffic to drive targeted web users to web contents/pages?
Simply developing an excellent content meeting buyer/customer needs is not sufficient to succeed in Web 2.0/Internet marketing. Web is a pull media as stated in one of the previous article "Vol.8: How to Start Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing?" This means that companies (web content owners) need to drive web users (target buyers/customers) to their web contents/pages. As is always mentioned, there are millions of web pages on the Internet and many more are uploaded everyday. In such a situation, it is quite unlikely that the “right” people discover the “right” web content/page and therefore web/Internet marketers need to be extremely strategic in generating web traffic and driving their target buyers/customers to their web content/page.
As mentioned in previous articles, it is often said that “Content is King” but Weinberg (2009, p15) says that “Cotent is king (not by itself, at least)”, based on a slogan “content is king, but marketing is queen (and the queen rules the household” by Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the popular online TV show Sine Library. The author believes that content is king but fully understands what Weinberg says and agrees. It is the quality and value of the content that really counts and with good content, everyone can be a publisher in Web 2.0 online world, but marketing/promoting of web content is also crucial.
2. How companies can successfully drive target buyers/customer to their web contents/pages?
There are a number of methods to generate web traffic, and web/Internet marketers are required to select optimum ones and effectively mix them to attract as many target buyers/customer as possible to their web contents/pages. When companies first started web building and management, many of them (and web experts) seemed to believe that it is effective to drive target buyers/customer to their website from other traditional offline media, such as encouraging people to input URL written in the printed advertising and other collaterals. However, it turned out that it is much more effective to drive online buyers/customer to their web contents/pages. Also, Internet population is continuously increasing. Thus examples of methodologies mentioned below are primarily of driving online buyers/customer to web pages.
1) Online Adverting
Online advertising is one of the primary methods to generating web traffic, in general the cost is high compared to many other methodologies, in general, it is effective and the result can be achieved immediately as long as advertising is planned and executed appropriately. In fact, recent survey results conclude that online advertising spending is increasing and it is expected to surpass advertising in other media (such as TV and printed ads such as newspaper and magazines) in a few years in major Internet advanced countries. The challenge is increasing conversion rate (and ultimately ROI), and CTR (click through rate) is one of the well-used metric for measurement.
Link banner used to be one of a major online advertising but today there are many others, linking with social media ecosystems mentioned in the previous article of "Vol.5: What Social Media Ecosystem Does Web 2.0 Relize?". Such examples include search engine advertising first started by Google and now developed and provided also by Yahoo! and Microsoft, advertising embedded in Social Network and microblogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and advertising embedded in/linking with gaming and virtual world. With further evolution of social media leveraging Web 2.0 technologies, it is expected that more sophisticated and advanced online advertising is developed and online advertising market further grows.
2) SEM = Search Engine Marketing (including SEO = Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Advertising)
SEM is extremely effective in generating web traffic and its importance cannot be over emphasized. Scott (2009, p248) defines SEM by saying it means using search engines to reach buyers/customers directly. SEO plays an important role in SEM including search engine advertising mentioned in 1). Scott (2009, p248) defines SEO that it is the art and science of ensuring that the words and phrases on the web pages are found by search engines and that, once found, the web content/page is given the highest ranking possible in the natural search results (i.e., what the search engine algorithm deems important for the phrase entered). A book can be written about SEO and there are many experts in this issue, and therefore the author gives a general outline of SEM in this article.
Getting the web content ranked high up in the search results immediately leads to increase in web traffic, and the #5 point “Use appropriate title, tags, and key words and phrases” mentioned in the previous article "Vol.10: How to Successfully Develop Web Content to Directly Reach Buyers" is also one of the SEO measures. Other SEO measures include promoting links to the web page, keeping the web content fresh by frequent posting of web contents (which is why from SEO perspective, blog is often said to be better than statistic websites). Although many links to the web pages is good for SEO, cloaking and other inappropriate tactics to increase links such as “secret agreement” of exchanging links should be refrained as emphasized by Safko, Lon and Brake (2009) because search engine robots are clever to detect such inappropriateness to include such web pages in their blacklist.
Search engines have been going through evolutions as Solis (2009) explains in his blog article The Rapid Evolution of Search, and SEM is expected to evolve and its market further grows
3) Affiliate Programme
Affiliate programme is also very effective in generating web traffic and money. This is also another topic that needs much strategic approach from business model perspective and author would like to leave experts in this topic for detailed discussion.
4) RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed
RSS feed is another way to generate web traffic, especially driving repeaters to the web content. Web users who find the web content interesting and wants to get updated information register for RSS feeds. Thus this is usually used with other methodology and this is effective for repeaters, and this is expected to contribute to royalty and engagement.
5) E-mail (e-newsletter etc.)
With social media becoming popular, it is often said that e-mail marketing is no more effective but nevertheless it is still a good way to generating web traffic. Similarly to RSS, people driven to the web page by e-mail are those who happened to access web content and have registered for subscription, i.e. they have done opt-in to be repeaters. The challenge is how many subscribers actually open the e-mail and click the URLs in the e-mail as well as acquiring as many subscribers as possible.
6) Online Broadcast (microblogging such as Twitter, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn)
Online broadcast is effective in generating web traffic, and emergence of this methodology is the reason that social media marketing is said to be overtaking e-mail marketing. It is often said that (Twitter in particular,) it has potential to be an effective tool for achieving business goal, with increasing popularity and the fact that it can broadcast both to vast audience and targeted individuals.
7) Social Bookmarking Sites (e.g. delicious.com, StumbleUpon)
Although it still might be minor methodology, social bookmarking can also be effective in generating web traffic, as mentioned by Weinberg (2009). Stand-alone bookmarking by individuals now evolved to social sharing with social bookmarking sites, and in the future it is expected to be integrated into search results.
8) Social News Websites (e.g. Digg)
Social new websites are also effective in generating web traffic. Social news websites are, as Weinberg (2009, p230-231) states, communities that let web users submit web content in the form of articles, videos or pictures. If web contents are promoted in the front page 7typically dependant upon numerous factors), it is considered “popular” in social news jargon, leading to effective web traffic generation.
9) Links (including trackbacks and commenting on other blog articles)
Links from pages of related topic is a traditional and basic methodology of generating web traffic, and this cannot be ignored even this might be time consuming and when other new methodologies mentioned above proliferate. Links usually mean simple link buttons but there are other kinds especially in driving web users from other blog articles, such as trackbacks, and commenting on the blog article and including URL of the web page.
After all, “content” and “marketing/promoting of web content to drive web users to the page” are the two inevitable pillars for successful web/Internet marketing. Having developed driven target buyers/customer to excellent web content, the next challenge is increasing make buyers/customers take action as the web content owner expects, and this is be discussed in the next article.
1. What is the meaning and importance of successfully generating web traffic to drive targeted web users to web contents/pages?
Simply developing an excellent content meeting buyer/customer needs is not sufficient to succeed in Web 2.0/Internet marketing. Web is a pull media as stated in one of the previous article "Vol.8: How to Start Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing?" This means that companies (web content owners) need to drive web users (target buyers/customers) to their web contents/pages. As is always mentioned, there are millions of web pages on the Internet and many more are uploaded everyday. In such a situation, it is quite unlikely that the “right” people discover the “right” web content/page and therefore web/Internet marketers need to be extremely strategic in generating web traffic and driving their target buyers/customers to their web content/page.
As mentioned in previous articles, it is often said that “Content is King” but Weinberg (2009, p15) says that “Cotent is king (not by itself, at least)”, based on a slogan “content is king, but marketing is queen (and the queen rules the household” by Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the popular online TV show Sine Library. The author believes that content is king but fully understands what Weinberg says and agrees. It is the quality and value of the content that really counts and with good content, everyone can be a publisher in Web 2.0 online world, but marketing/promoting of web content is also crucial.
2. How companies can successfully drive target buyers/customer to their web contents/pages?
There are a number of methods to generate web traffic, and web/Internet marketers are required to select optimum ones and effectively mix them to attract as many target buyers/customer as possible to their web contents/pages. When companies first started web building and management, many of them (and web experts) seemed to believe that it is effective to drive target buyers/customer to their website from other traditional offline media, such as encouraging people to input URL written in the printed advertising and other collaterals. However, it turned out that it is much more effective to drive online buyers/customer to their web contents/pages. Also, Internet population is continuously increasing. Thus examples of methodologies mentioned below are primarily of driving online buyers/customer to web pages.
1) Online Adverting
Online advertising is one of the primary methods to generating web traffic, in general the cost is high compared to many other methodologies, in general, it is effective and the result can be achieved immediately as long as advertising is planned and executed appropriately. In fact, recent survey results conclude that online advertising spending is increasing and it is expected to surpass advertising in other media (such as TV and printed ads such as newspaper and magazines) in a few years in major Internet advanced countries. The challenge is increasing conversion rate (and ultimately ROI), and CTR (click through rate) is one of the well-used metric for measurement.
Link banner used to be one of a major online advertising but today there are many others, linking with social media ecosystems mentioned in the previous article of "Vol.5: What Social Media Ecosystem Does Web 2.0 Relize?". Such examples include search engine advertising first started by Google and now developed and provided also by Yahoo! and Microsoft, advertising embedded in Social Network and microblogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and advertising embedded in/linking with gaming and virtual world. With further evolution of social media leveraging Web 2.0 technologies, it is expected that more sophisticated and advanced online advertising is developed and online advertising market further grows.
2) SEM = Search Engine Marketing (including SEO = Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Advertising)
SEM is extremely effective in generating web traffic and its importance cannot be over emphasized. Scott (2009, p248) defines SEM by saying it means using search engines to reach buyers/customers directly. SEO plays an important role in SEM including search engine advertising mentioned in 1). Scott (2009, p248) defines SEO that it is the art and science of ensuring that the words and phrases on the web pages are found by search engines and that, once found, the web content/page is given the highest ranking possible in the natural search results (i.e., what the search engine algorithm deems important for the phrase entered). A book can be written about SEO and there are many experts in this issue, and therefore the author gives a general outline of SEM in this article.
Getting the web content ranked high up in the search results immediately leads to increase in web traffic, and the #5 point “Use appropriate title, tags, and key words and phrases” mentioned in the previous article "Vol.10: How to Successfully Develop Web Content to Directly Reach Buyers" is also one of the SEO measures. Other SEO measures include promoting links to the web page, keeping the web content fresh by frequent posting of web contents (which is why from SEO perspective, blog is often said to be better than statistic websites). Although many links to the web pages is good for SEO, cloaking and other inappropriate tactics to increase links such as “secret agreement” of exchanging links should be refrained as emphasized by Safko, Lon and Brake (2009) because search engine robots are clever to detect such inappropriateness to include such web pages in their blacklist.
Search engines have been going through evolutions as Solis (2009) explains in his blog article The Rapid Evolution of Search, and SEM is expected to evolve and its market further grows
3) Affiliate Programme
Affiliate programme is also very effective in generating web traffic and money. This is also another topic that needs much strategic approach from business model perspective and author would like to leave experts in this topic for detailed discussion.
4) RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed
RSS feed is another way to generate web traffic, especially driving repeaters to the web content. Web users who find the web content interesting and wants to get updated information register for RSS feeds. Thus this is usually used with other methodology and this is effective for repeaters, and this is expected to contribute to royalty and engagement.
5) E-mail (e-newsletter etc.)
With social media becoming popular, it is often said that e-mail marketing is no more effective but nevertheless it is still a good way to generating web traffic. Similarly to RSS, people driven to the web page by e-mail are those who happened to access web content and have registered for subscription, i.e. they have done opt-in to be repeaters. The challenge is how many subscribers actually open the e-mail and click the URLs in the e-mail as well as acquiring as many subscribers as possible.
6) Online Broadcast (microblogging such as Twitter, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn)
Online broadcast is effective in generating web traffic, and emergence of this methodology is the reason that social media marketing is said to be overtaking e-mail marketing. It is often said that (Twitter in particular,) it has potential to be an effective tool for achieving business goal, with increasing popularity and the fact that it can broadcast both to vast audience and targeted individuals.
7) Social Bookmarking Sites (e.g. delicious.com, StumbleUpon)
Although it still might be minor methodology, social bookmarking can also be effective in generating web traffic, as mentioned by Weinberg (2009). Stand-alone bookmarking by individuals now evolved to social sharing with social bookmarking sites, and in the future it is expected to be integrated into search results.
8) Social News Websites (e.g. Digg)
Social new websites are also effective in generating web traffic. Social news websites are, as Weinberg (2009, p230-231) states, communities that let web users submit web content in the form of articles, videos or pictures. If web contents are promoted in the front page 7typically dependant upon numerous factors), it is considered “popular” in social news jargon, leading to effective web traffic generation.
9) Links (including trackbacks and commenting on other blog articles)
Links from pages of related topic is a traditional and basic methodology of generating web traffic, and this cannot be ignored even this might be time consuming and when other new methodologies mentioned above proliferate. Links usually mean simple link buttons but there are other kinds especially in driving web users from other blog articles, such as trackbacks, and commenting on the blog article and including URL of the web page.
After all, “content” and “marketing/promoting of web content to drive web users to the page” are the two inevitable pillars for successful web/Internet marketing. Having developed driven target buyers/customer to excellent web content, the next challenge is increasing make buyers/customers take action as the web content owner expects, and this is be discussed in the next article.
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Vol.10: How to Successfully Develop Web Contents to Directly Reach Buyers?
In the previous article “Vol.9: How to Effectively Reach Buyers/Customers Directly in Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing?”, effectively targeting to directly reach buyers/customers was discussed. In doing so, 5W2H.framework was used, and the latter “H” of “How” was about web content development, which is the focus of this article.
1. What it is to successfully developing web content?
In short, it is to develop web content, respectively for buyer/customer persona already defined, solving problems of each persona and growing your business, in the persona’s words. To successfully develop such web contents, the website and all web pages needs to have a personality of the persona, i.e. consistent branding of the persona. Web contents should be developed based on the core message of what the company wants the buyer/customer persona to believe and take action from that belief.
2. How companies can develop web contents meeting needs of each buyer/customer persona?
In conclusion, it is to think and plan like a publisher with brand management concept, and develop web contents with key message of what the company wants the buyers/customers to believe which also solves their problem and/or fulfill their desire, with personality of the buyer/customer persona.
It is extremely important to align the message with the audience/web users (buyer/customer persona) is trying to reach and then deliver on that promise, as Gillin (2009, p204) emphasize. This is because then the message is not delivered on that promise, the audience would feel betrayed, and in web/Internet marketing, web users can immediately go away by a single click and would likely never come back again. They could even write about it variety of social media vehicles, which can easily go viral and damage the reputation and brand of the company.
Main points for successful web content development are as below.
1) Think and plan like a publisher.
As mentioned in previous articles, everyone is a publisher in web 2.0/Internet marketing and everyone need to think and plan like a publisher to create a meaningful content. This requires market-in mindset instead of product-in mindset. This means not selling to but embracing the persona with content that is not focused on company/product but solution to solve problems of buyers or answers to their questions, and requires needs analysis of the buyer/customer persona. Defining the essence of the desire and value of the persona is crucial. Having clarified the needs, think how the needs can be translated to what the company want buyer/customer persona to believe. Should the translated points be too many, simplification is needed but availability of multiple points is not a big problem.
2) Define personality of the web content with brand management concept.
Similarly to brand management (branding) of product and company, branding needs to be done for web content from by branding of the persona approach. From buyer/customer persona defined, design, layout, tone, taste, style etc. of the total web content, each page and all constituents (picture, audio/video, icon, chart, colouring, headline, text style and so forth) are defined, which should be consistent throughout the web content.
3) Construct authentic company story to tell directly to buyer/customer persona, targeting one at a time.
Similarly to presentations and sales talks, story telling is extremely effective in developing appealing web contents. With effective story telling, audience could easily understand and remember the message and content. They are more likely be able to vividly visualize, hear, feel the scenes/shots of the story even if the web content is of text. Of course, the effective use of audio, video, picture and chart would further assist this effect.
Story (scenario) is to be developed from the translated points already mentioned in the last part of “think and plan like a publisher”. From a translated points i.e. ingredients, different stories can be developed that gives completely different impression to audience meaning different reactions and outcomes; therefore, this process requires strategic thinking and sophisticate. It should be noted that authenticity and integrity need to be maintained. Audience would “sense” if it is not authentic, and if they should sense it, they would feel betrayed, finally leading to the company (web content owner) losing their trust.
4) Think and select the buyer/customer persona’s preferred media and learning styles.
This is the detailed action plan of “Where” of the previous article of “How to Effectively Reach Buyers/Customers Directly in Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing?”. As Scott (2009, p155) states, all people have different learning styles and media preferences and the companies should develop appropriate web content designed for each buyer/customer persona. Scott goes on to say that marketers should have messages (and stories) in as many formats as practical, and that even though the messages are the same, they will appeal to different group of people (buyer/customer persona). For examples, a persona may prefer an e-book but another persona may prefer a tele-seminar and therefore the company can take the same content and turn it into tele-seminar.
5) Use appropriate title, tags, and key words and phrases.
Title, tags and key words and phrases determine how web users are driven to the web content/page and whether they read the content. It goes without saying that not jargon, acronyms and industry-speak words and phrases should be refrained. Words and phrases need to be familiar with buyer/customer persona.
In addition, it should be noted that catchy title for printed matters such as newspapers and magazines may not be effective in Web/Internet marketing. What this means is that web/Internet marketing, worlds used in the title needs to be selected strategically from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective, and this often means title that is quite different from great headlines of printed media, as Gillin states with concrete examples (2009, p205). In web/Internet marketing, simple, declarative title that matches the search terms is necessary.
6) Make buyer/customer persona engaged and stay connected.
Web/Internet marketing is all about engagement and being connected with buyers/customers with interactive conversation. Some tactics for this include including interactive content tools, making feedback loops available, providing ways for customers to interact one another, and creating content with pass-along value that could go viral, as mentioned by Scott (2009).
7) Think and implement methods to make persona easy to understand.
Methodology to help persona better understand varies according to persona. For example, as stated by Scott (2009), journalists may well request information both to better understand the big picture and background as well as detailed information (detailed product specs and other valuable data), and customers may find information on how other customers use products helpful.
There may well be more points for effective web content development, and after all, web content development is “more an art than a science” as Scott (2007, p108) says.
Content is the king and web content development meeting needs of buyer/customer persona is vital for successful web/Internet marketing. Next article is to be about driving web users to the contents/pages, which is another vital point for successful web/Internet marketing.
References:-
Gillin, Paul (2009), Secrets of Social Media Marketing, Quill Driver Books
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
1. What it is to successfully developing web content?
In short, it is to develop web content, respectively for buyer/customer persona already defined, solving problems of each persona and growing your business, in the persona’s words. To successfully develop such web contents, the website and all web pages needs to have a personality of the persona, i.e. consistent branding of the persona. Web contents should be developed based on the core message of what the company wants the buyer/customer persona to believe and take action from that belief.
2. How companies can develop web contents meeting needs of each buyer/customer persona?
In conclusion, it is to think and plan like a publisher with brand management concept, and develop web contents with key message of what the company wants the buyers/customers to believe which also solves their problem and/or fulfill their desire, with personality of the buyer/customer persona.
It is extremely important to align the message with the audience/web users (buyer/customer persona) is trying to reach and then deliver on that promise, as Gillin (2009, p204) emphasize. This is because then the message is not delivered on that promise, the audience would feel betrayed, and in web/Internet marketing, web users can immediately go away by a single click and would likely never come back again. They could even write about it variety of social media vehicles, which can easily go viral and damage the reputation and brand of the company.
Main points for successful web content development are as below.
1) Think and plan like a publisher.
As mentioned in previous articles, everyone is a publisher in web 2.0/Internet marketing and everyone need to think and plan like a publisher to create a meaningful content. This requires market-in mindset instead of product-in mindset. This means not selling to but embracing the persona with content that is not focused on company/product but solution to solve problems of buyers or answers to their questions, and requires needs analysis of the buyer/customer persona. Defining the essence of the desire and value of the persona is crucial. Having clarified the needs, think how the needs can be translated to what the company want buyer/customer persona to believe. Should the translated points be too many, simplification is needed but availability of multiple points is not a big problem.
2) Define personality of the web content with brand management concept.
Similarly to brand management (branding) of product and company, branding needs to be done for web content from by branding of the persona approach. From buyer/customer persona defined, design, layout, tone, taste, style etc. of the total web content, each page and all constituents (picture, audio/video, icon, chart, colouring, headline, text style and so forth) are defined, which should be consistent throughout the web content.
3) Construct authentic company story to tell directly to buyer/customer persona, targeting one at a time.
Similarly to presentations and sales talks, story telling is extremely effective in developing appealing web contents. With effective story telling, audience could easily understand and remember the message and content. They are more likely be able to vividly visualize, hear, feel the scenes/shots of the story even if the web content is of text. Of course, the effective use of audio, video, picture and chart would further assist this effect.
Story (scenario) is to be developed from the translated points already mentioned in the last part of “think and plan like a publisher”. From a translated points i.e. ingredients, different stories can be developed that gives completely different impression to audience meaning different reactions and outcomes; therefore, this process requires strategic thinking and sophisticate. It should be noted that authenticity and integrity need to be maintained. Audience would “sense” if it is not authentic, and if they should sense it, they would feel betrayed, finally leading to the company (web content owner) losing their trust.
4) Think and select the buyer/customer persona’s preferred media and learning styles.
This is the detailed action plan of “Where” of the previous article of “How to Effectively Reach Buyers/Customers Directly in Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing?”. As Scott (2009, p155) states, all people have different learning styles and media preferences and the companies should develop appropriate web content designed for each buyer/customer persona. Scott goes on to say that marketers should have messages (and stories) in as many formats as practical, and that even though the messages are the same, they will appeal to different group of people (buyer/customer persona). For examples, a persona may prefer an e-book but another persona may prefer a tele-seminar and therefore the company can take the same content and turn it into tele-seminar.
5) Use appropriate title, tags, and key words and phrases.
Title, tags and key words and phrases determine how web users are driven to the web content/page and whether they read the content. It goes without saying that not jargon, acronyms and industry-speak words and phrases should be refrained. Words and phrases need to be familiar with buyer/customer persona.
In addition, it should be noted that catchy title for printed matters such as newspapers and magazines may not be effective in Web/Internet marketing. What this means is that web/Internet marketing, worlds used in the title needs to be selected strategically from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective, and this often means title that is quite different from great headlines of printed media, as Gillin states with concrete examples (2009, p205). In web/Internet marketing, simple, declarative title that matches the search terms is necessary.
6) Make buyer/customer persona engaged and stay connected.
Web/Internet marketing is all about engagement and being connected with buyers/customers with interactive conversation. Some tactics for this include including interactive content tools, making feedback loops available, providing ways for customers to interact one another, and creating content with pass-along value that could go viral, as mentioned by Scott (2009).
7) Think and implement methods to make persona easy to understand.
Methodology to help persona better understand varies according to persona. For example, as stated by Scott (2009), journalists may well request information both to better understand the big picture and background as well as detailed information (detailed product specs and other valuable data), and customers may find information on how other customers use products helpful.
There may well be more points for effective web content development, and after all, web content development is “more an art than a science” as Scott (2007, p108) says.
Content is the king and web content development meeting needs of buyer/customer persona is vital for successful web/Internet marketing. Next article is to be about driving web users to the contents/pages, which is another vital point for successful web/Internet marketing.
References:-
Gillin, Paul (2009), Secrets of Social Media Marketing, Quill Driver Books
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Vol.9: How to Reach Buyers Directly in Web/Internet Marketing?
In the previous article “How to Start Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing”, segmentation and positioning were explained. In this article, effectively reaching buyers/customers is discussed, which is the next step after segmentation and positioning.
1. What are KFS (Key Factors for Success) for companies to reach prospects directly, turning them into buyers/customers?
Targeting is the next step to take after market/customer segmentation, and this is about identifying one or more buyer/customer personas to target based on market/customer segmentation and positioning already done. As Scott (2007) says, buyer/customer persona profile for each customer segment, a kind of simple biography, needs to be built. This is best done by interviewing people of the customer segment.
The importance of buyer/customer persona in web marketing cannot be exaggerated, especially when customization/personalization is one of the characteristic of the Internet and it is logical to leverage Anderson’s (2006) concept of “The Long Tail”. Based on this theory, one-size-fits-for-all mass marketing approach is inappropriate in the Internet era, without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, but instead, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. To succeed in long-tail marketing (and PR/IR), different criteria accompanied by different customer segment each with different buyer/customer persona.
It is with good and accurate persona that effective web marketing plan is made, leading to successful online branding. With good and accurate person, web content appealing to target customers is developed and delivered appropriately (i.e. effective communication), turning prospects into buyers.
2. What needs to be defined in web marketing plan?
5W2H are required to be defined in web marketing plan.
1)What:
This is the key message the company aims to deliver to each buyer/customer persona to achieve the goal, such as “please purchase this” and “please sign up this”. This would be the core of the web content planning and development, which determine other “Ws” and “Hs”.
2) Who:
There are two for “Who”. The first and the more important is “who to target”. The company would have clear idea of this by this stage and actually should have defined this by developing the buyer/customer persona for each customer segment, through the process explained in the previous article.
The second is “who is responsible”. Specifying this may seem strange; however, in a large company/organization, defining and sharing with all related parties of who (which department) is responsible for what (which web content, which social media vehicle, which customer segment etc.) is a requirement for smooth operation. This does not mean bureaucracy; role-sharing clarification should never hinder cross-functional collaborative teamwork. Members of the role-sharing usually includes external members such as agency and partners. Company also need to strategically plan to “involve” other stakeholders, mass media, bloggers and other Internet marketers, leveraging viral marketing approach; viral marketing is extremely effective in Internet marketing.
3) When:
This is the timing of delivering the key message by respective web content to each buyer/customer persona. This is determined by the external business environment such as industry and competitors’ trend and events/incidents, and internal business environment such as company events (e.g. new product launch, campaign) as in offline marketing. This is also determined by how the company can find something new or something that the persona will be interested in even if there is no big news or event, to continue conversation with them and win their engagement.
4) Where:
This is which online media/channel to use to deliver respective web content, i.e. selecting which web initiatives and social media tools to use for each web content. There are variety of online media/channels, as already introduced in one of the previous article “Vol.7 - What is the Overview of Web 2.0 Online World?”, all of which has strengths and uniqueness.
It should be noted that selecting tools is secondary, coming after the company/business objectives/goal and “what” mentioned above, and that the tool with most advanced technology is not necessarily the best option. Media/channels/tools should be carefully selected based on the factors such as market share, vertical industry focus, adoption rate and market momentum as Gillin states (2009, p23) as well as web content characteristics and buyer/customer persona needs, and effectively mixed to generate synergy. Gillin proposes matrix chart of social media tools (2009, p24, p39) which are helpful in understanding strengths of each tools and selecting appropriate ones. Gillin’s charts and Clough’s framework of Web 2.0 Online Marketing ROI (2009) are worth referring to in tool selection.
5) Why:
This is the reason for web content development, which can be paraphrased by what the company what buyers/customers to believe such as “this product/service solves the problem” and “it is worth signing up this” so that they would take the action the company wants,. The action is equivalent to “What” already mentioned.
6) How much:
This is about determining the total resource (budget, manpower, infrastructure etc.) to invest and its allocation. In many cases, resources currently available in the company becomes a restraint in creating out-of-the-box ideas and developing an innovative strategy and action plan, and balancing risk taking and feasibility would count. After all, decision making on resource need to be done from perspective of short-term and long-term ROI, both quantitative and qualitative. Web/Internet metrics, especially those of social media, are still immature as Gillin (2009) says, but important to perform PDCA cycle with trial and error concept. This deserves discussion and will be discussed in later article(s).
7) How:
This can be paraphrased by with what web content the company reach directly respective persona. This deserves much discussion and will be the topic in the next article.In the previous article “How to Start Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing”, segmentation and positioning were explained. In this article, effectively reaching buyers/customers is discussed, which is the next step after segmentation and positioning.
References:-
Gillin, Paul (2009), Secrets of Social Media Marketing, Quill Driver Books
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Anderson, Chris (2006), The Long Tail, in a nutshell
http://www.thelongtail.com/about.html
Clough, Mike (2009), Web 2.0 Online Marketing Series – Overview
http://bestbizpractices.org/2009/08/16/web-2-0-online-marketing-series-overview/
1. What are KFS (Key Factors for Success) for companies to reach prospects directly, turning them into buyers/customers?
Targeting is the next step to take after market/customer segmentation, and this is about identifying one or more buyer/customer personas to target based on market/customer segmentation and positioning already done. As Scott (2007) says, buyer/customer persona profile for each customer segment, a kind of simple biography, needs to be built. This is best done by interviewing people of the customer segment.
The importance of buyer/customer persona in web marketing cannot be exaggerated, especially when customization/personalization is one of the characteristic of the Internet and it is logical to leverage Anderson’s (2006) concept of “The Long Tail”. Based on this theory, one-size-fits-for-all mass marketing approach is inappropriate in the Internet era, without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, but instead, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. To succeed in long-tail marketing (and PR/IR), different criteria accompanied by different customer segment each with different buyer/customer persona.
It is with good and accurate persona that effective web marketing plan is made, leading to successful online branding. With good and accurate person, web content appealing to target customers is developed and delivered appropriately (i.e. effective communication), turning prospects into buyers.
2. What needs to be defined in web marketing plan?
5W2H are required to be defined in web marketing plan.
1)What:
This is the key message the company aims to deliver to each buyer/customer persona to achieve the goal, such as “please purchase this” and “please sign up this”. This would be the core of the web content planning and development, which determine other “Ws” and “Hs”.
2) Who:
There are two for “Who”. The first and the more important is “who to target”. The company would have clear idea of this by this stage and actually should have defined this by developing the buyer/customer persona for each customer segment, through the process explained in the previous article.
The second is “who is responsible”. Specifying this may seem strange; however, in a large company/organization, defining and sharing with all related parties of who (which department) is responsible for what (which web content, which social media vehicle, which customer segment etc.) is a requirement for smooth operation. This does not mean bureaucracy; role-sharing clarification should never hinder cross-functional collaborative teamwork. Members of the role-sharing usually includes external members such as agency and partners. Company also need to strategically plan to “involve” other stakeholders, mass media, bloggers and other Internet marketers, leveraging viral marketing approach; viral marketing is extremely effective in Internet marketing.
3) When:
This is the timing of delivering the key message by respective web content to each buyer/customer persona. This is determined by the external business environment such as industry and competitors’ trend and events/incidents, and internal business environment such as company events (e.g. new product launch, campaign) as in offline marketing. This is also determined by how the company can find something new or something that the persona will be interested in even if there is no big news or event, to continue conversation with them and win their engagement.
4) Where:
This is which online media/channel to use to deliver respective web content, i.e. selecting which web initiatives and social media tools to use for each web content. There are variety of online media/channels, as already introduced in one of the previous article “Vol.7 - What is the Overview of Web 2.0 Online World?”, all of which has strengths and uniqueness.
It should be noted that selecting tools is secondary, coming after the company/business objectives/goal and “what” mentioned above, and that the tool with most advanced technology is not necessarily the best option. Media/channels/tools should be carefully selected based on the factors such as market share, vertical industry focus, adoption rate and market momentum as Gillin states (2009, p23) as well as web content characteristics and buyer/customer persona needs, and effectively mixed to generate synergy. Gillin proposes matrix chart of social media tools (2009, p24, p39) which are helpful in understanding strengths of each tools and selecting appropriate ones. Gillin’s charts and Clough’s framework of Web 2.0 Online Marketing ROI (2009) are worth referring to in tool selection.
5) Why:
This is the reason for web content development, which can be paraphrased by what the company what buyers/customers to believe such as “this product/service solves the problem” and “it is worth signing up this” so that they would take the action the company wants,. The action is equivalent to “What” already mentioned.
6) How much:
This is about determining the total resource (budget, manpower, infrastructure etc.) to invest and its allocation. In many cases, resources currently available in the company becomes a restraint in creating out-of-the-box ideas and developing an innovative strategy and action plan, and balancing risk taking and feasibility would count. After all, decision making on resource need to be done from perspective of short-term and long-term ROI, both quantitative and qualitative. Web/Internet metrics, especially those of social media, are still immature as Gillin (2009) says, but important to perform PDCA cycle with trial and error concept. This deserves discussion and will be discussed in later article(s).
7) How:
This can be paraphrased by with what web content the company reach directly respective persona. This deserves much discussion and will be the topic in the next article.In the previous article “How to Start Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing”, segmentation and positioning were explained. In this article, effectively reaching buyers/customers is discussed, which is the next step after segmentation and positioning.
References:-
Gillin, Paul (2009), Secrets of Social Media Marketing, Quill Driver Books
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Anderson, Chris (2006), The Long Tail, in a nutshell
http://www.thelongtail.com/about.html
Clough, Mike (2009), Web 2.0 Online Marketing Series – Overview
http://bestbizpractices.org/2009/08/16/web-2-0-online-marketing-series-overview/
Saturday, 14 November 2009
How to Start Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing?
One of the rules mentioned in the previous article “The New Rules of Marketing, PR & IR in Web 2.0 Online World” was reaching buyer/customer directly. This is the key for successful Web 2.0/Internet marketing, and this and upcoming articles will be discussed from this viewpoint.
1. Is reaching buyers/customers directly to be done the same way as direct marketing in offline world?
The author would answer “yes and no”. What she means is that as in many other marketing topics, basic concept, framework and theory of traditional marketing and offline marketing needs to be based on; however, in many cases they need to be tailored to meet online world requirements, based on the characteristics of the Internet world. Such characteristics include the following, to name a few.
Characteristics of the Internet
1) Ubiquitous: Boundary-free, connected worldwide.
2) Interactivity: Two-way of one-to-one, or even one-to-many, many-to-many, meaning interactive conversation is possible.
3) Continuous operation: 365 days a year / 7 days a week / 24 hours a day.
4) Pull media: Web users need to access the web page to get information, or register for RSS and e-newsletter etc. to receive “pushed” information, meaning permission marketing is required.
5) Richness and reachness: Basically there is no limitation of information volume unlike printed materials, audio and video is available besides still or moving pictures using flash and text in Web 2.0 online world. Also, everyone is equally able to reach information as long as they are connected to Internet and search the web page they desire.
6) Flexible information update: This is especially in Web 2.0 online world, in which people can upload web content without HTML and other web technology knowledge nor expertise.
7) Personalization/customization: Navigating separately to ultimately different landing pages developed according to different customer segment is possible, “my page” is possible etc.
8) Data-oriented: Web statistics and e-newsletter metric statistics such as CTR (Click Through Rate) is obtainable with ease in a timely manner in comparison to traditional media.
It is because of the characteristics #1, #5 and #7 that companies are to reach their buyers/customer directly, and in doing so, companies need to plan and execute taking into account the above 8 points.
2. How to plan Web 2.0 / Internet marketing?
1) First, segmentation, positioning and targeting must to done, aligning with the company’s mission statement, vision/goal and strategy.
Similarly to traditional marketing, market and customer segmentation, positioning and targeting need to be done, starting with segmentation, and the author feels that these are even more critical in Internet/web online marketing than traditional offline marketing. What she means is that because of one of the characteristics of IT marketing “switching from one brand to another is difficult”, it is almost impossible to reverse the market share and become leader in Internet marketing once a competitor becomes a leader in the market segment the company targets. This is easily understood when compared with BtoC marketing of FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods in offline world in which customers can switch from one brand to another with ease.
In general, IT marketing consists of many factors that make customers difficult or unwilling to switch from one brand to another once they started using products of a particular brand. Such factors include compatibility of application/OS etc. often accompanied by software issues and war for industry standardization, customers required to learn and get used to utilizing application/OS etc., and importance of customer information DB. This is why in cases, despite short-tem loss, companies implement enormous campaign to acquire and retain customers in the seeding phase before competitors enter their marketing segment, and leverage CRM (Customer Relations Management) to maximize CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), for ultimate long-term win.
2) Rules of Web 2.0 / Internet marketing needs to be applied.
The difficulty of switching in IT marketing is the reason the two Ries (2001) state that one of the 11 immutable laws of Internet Branding is be first in the market segment to be targeted. This means that first mover advantage in the targeted market segment is vital to succeed in online business. This explains why an offline book giant Barns & Noble struggles to take the initiative in online book business from Amazon.
The prerequisite of benefiting from first mover advantage means that speed is inevitable in Internet business, hence the term “dog year” has long been used.
3) There are some possible solutions in entering a market already established by a competitor.
If a company should plan to target a market/customer segment that a competitor already leads, re-segmentation and re-positioning (even a little) followed by careful targeting based on its business domain and core competence are required in order to successfully start and grow business without directly competing with the market leader. This can be easily understood by online advertising business. Yahoo! was the leader in this business, primary business including banner advertising, then Google made a market segmentation of “search-engine advertising” leveraging its core competence and leading position in search engine and positioned itself as the leader in that market segment. And then with successful customer segmentation and targeting, Google successfully become the market leader in the segment, creating a new online advertising market, as is well known. This often means new business model.
Other possible solutions are based on starting destructive innovation, i.e. apply Christensen’s theory of The Innovator’s Dilemma and Solution. Such solutions are proactive strategies, leading to change in the external business environment of the company, such as industry trend and rule(s) and competitors’ positioning and strategy.
Emergence of something new such as government policy and technology is the optimum timing to adopt this kind of solution/strategy, also meaning new business model. Amazon, eBay, Dell and Fedex to name a few are such examples, which might be of Web 1.0 online world. Web 2.0 online world is still very new and it is impossible to define a good example agreed by everyone; however, the author feels that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn could become such examples, and there are others that have potential to become such candidates as Second Life. This is because the three companies are generating revenue and their profitability seems to be sound when many dot.com companies remain in the red for many years, in addition to the growth in number of their web users. They seem to be entering online advertising business and/or recruiting/job matching business market, and this could trigger paradigm shift(s) in the future online business.
The upcoming article is to be about targeting and directly reaching buyers/customers.
References:-
Ries, Al, and Laura, Ries (2001), The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, Harper Collins
1. Is reaching buyers/customers directly to be done the same way as direct marketing in offline world?
The author would answer “yes and no”. What she means is that as in many other marketing topics, basic concept, framework and theory of traditional marketing and offline marketing needs to be based on; however, in many cases they need to be tailored to meet online world requirements, based on the characteristics of the Internet world. Such characteristics include the following, to name a few.
Characteristics of the Internet
1) Ubiquitous: Boundary-free, connected worldwide.
2) Interactivity: Two-way of one-to-one, or even one-to-many, many-to-many, meaning interactive conversation is possible.
3) Continuous operation: 365 days a year / 7 days a week / 24 hours a day.
4) Pull media: Web users need to access the web page to get information, or register for RSS and e-newsletter etc. to receive “pushed” information, meaning permission marketing is required.
5) Richness and reachness: Basically there is no limitation of information volume unlike printed materials, audio and video is available besides still or moving pictures using flash and text in Web 2.0 online world. Also, everyone is equally able to reach information as long as they are connected to Internet and search the web page they desire.
6) Flexible information update: This is especially in Web 2.0 online world, in which people can upload web content without HTML and other web technology knowledge nor expertise.
7) Personalization/customization: Navigating separately to ultimately different landing pages developed according to different customer segment is possible, “my page” is possible etc.
8) Data-oriented: Web statistics and e-newsletter metric statistics such as CTR (Click Through Rate) is obtainable with ease in a timely manner in comparison to traditional media.
It is because of the characteristics #1, #5 and #7 that companies are to reach their buyers/customer directly, and in doing so, companies need to plan and execute taking into account the above 8 points.
2. How to plan Web 2.0 / Internet marketing?
1) First, segmentation, positioning and targeting must to done, aligning with the company’s mission statement, vision/goal and strategy.
Similarly to traditional marketing, market and customer segmentation, positioning and targeting need to be done, starting with segmentation, and the author feels that these are even more critical in Internet/web online marketing than traditional offline marketing. What she means is that because of one of the characteristics of IT marketing “switching from one brand to another is difficult”, it is almost impossible to reverse the market share and become leader in Internet marketing once a competitor becomes a leader in the market segment the company targets. This is easily understood when compared with BtoC marketing of FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods in offline world in which customers can switch from one brand to another with ease.
In general, IT marketing consists of many factors that make customers difficult or unwilling to switch from one brand to another once they started using products of a particular brand. Such factors include compatibility of application/OS etc. often accompanied by software issues and war for industry standardization, customers required to learn and get used to utilizing application/OS etc., and importance of customer information DB. This is why in cases, despite short-tem loss, companies implement enormous campaign to acquire and retain customers in the seeding phase before competitors enter their marketing segment, and leverage CRM (Customer Relations Management) to maximize CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), for ultimate long-term win.
2) Rules of Web 2.0 / Internet marketing needs to be applied.
The difficulty of switching in IT marketing is the reason the two Ries (2001) state that one of the 11 immutable laws of Internet Branding is be first in the market segment to be targeted. This means that first mover advantage in the targeted market segment is vital to succeed in online business. This explains why an offline book giant Barns & Noble struggles to take the initiative in online book business from Amazon.
The prerequisite of benefiting from first mover advantage means that speed is inevitable in Internet business, hence the term “dog year” has long been used.
3) There are some possible solutions in entering a market already established by a competitor.
If a company should plan to target a market/customer segment that a competitor already leads, re-segmentation and re-positioning (even a little) followed by careful targeting based on its business domain and core competence are required in order to successfully start and grow business without directly competing with the market leader. This can be easily understood by online advertising business. Yahoo! was the leader in this business, primary business including banner advertising, then Google made a market segmentation of “search-engine advertising” leveraging its core competence and leading position in search engine and positioned itself as the leader in that market segment. And then with successful customer segmentation and targeting, Google successfully become the market leader in the segment, creating a new online advertising market, as is well known. This often means new business model.
Other possible solutions are based on starting destructive innovation, i.e. apply Christensen’s theory of The Innovator’s Dilemma and Solution. Such solutions are proactive strategies, leading to change in the external business environment of the company, such as industry trend and rule(s) and competitors’ positioning and strategy.
Emergence of something new such as government policy and technology is the optimum timing to adopt this kind of solution/strategy, also meaning new business model. Amazon, eBay, Dell and Fedex to name a few are such examples, which might be of Web 1.0 online world. Web 2.0 online world is still very new and it is impossible to define a good example agreed by everyone; however, the author feels that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn could become such examples, and there are others that have potential to become such candidates as Second Life. This is because the three companies are generating revenue and their profitability seems to be sound when many dot.com companies remain in the red for many years, in addition to the growth in number of their web users. They seem to be entering online advertising business and/or recruiting/job matching business market, and this could trigger paradigm shift(s) in the future online business.
The upcoming article is to be about targeting and directly reaching buyers/customers.
References:-
Ries, Al, and Laura, Ries (2001), The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, Harper Collins
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Vol.7: The New Rules of Marketing, PR and IR in Web 2.0 Online World
How Web 2.0 is shaping marketing and other activities can be discussed from various aspects. After having read some resources and thought about this, the author decided to start with clarifying new rules in Web 2.0 online world, comparing with the old rules in the offline world. Following the previous article of “What is the Overview of Web 2.0 Online World?” in which the discussion was focused on marketing, this article will also focus on marketing plus PR and IR, which is the cousin of PR because of the new rule #1.
1. Old Rules in Offline World Before the Emergence of the Internet
Scott (2009, p8 & p12) lists the old rules of marketing and PR. The below are summary of the rules mentioned by Scott.
1) The Old Rules of Marketing
(1)Marketing simply meant advertising (and branding), appealing to the masses.
(2)Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message, which was exclusively about selling products.
(3)Advertising was one-way: company-to-consumer, based on campaigns with limited life.
(4)Creativity was deemed the most important factor of advertising, and ad agency winning advertising award was more important than client winning new customers.
(5)Marketing (advertising) and PR were separate disciplines run by different people with different goals, strategies and measurement criteria.
2) The Old Rules of PR
(1)Media was the only channel for PR and companies communicated to journalists via press releases, so actual press release was seen by only limited reports and editors and customers (buyers/consumers) would learn about the press release content only if the media wrote an article about it.
(2)Companies needed significant news to write a press release (thus PR was done only on big event basis).
(3)Jargon was accepted because the journalists all understood it but press release had to include quotes from third parties, such as customers, analysis and experts.
(4)The only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through “clip books”.
(5)PR and marketing were separate disciplines run by different people with different goals, strategies and measurement criteria.
IR is out of scope of Scott’s book, but to the author, many old rules of PR also apply to IR, the cousin of PR although there may be some IR specific rules.
2. New Rules in Web 2.0 Online World
In contrast to the above old rules, the new rules can be summarized as below.
1) Marketing, PR (and IR) is converging.
In the offline world, marketing, PR and IR were all separate; separate strategy developed and implemented by separate departments with different people/skills. However, in the online world, the line between traditional marketing, PR and IR is blurring. This is because of the rules that follow this first rule.
2) Marketing is not simply advertising.
In the online world of Web 2.0, marketing is about delivering customer-centric content at the precise moment when the customer (audience) needs it. Marketing is also about reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web based on long-tail theory* instead of mainstream marketing or reaching of the mass. This is why personalization and customization encouraged by Web 2.0 is a key in success online business. After all, marketing is, as Scott (2007, p26) states, not about winning awards but is about the organization winning business.
3) PR and IR are not only for a mainstream media audience.
In Web 2.0 online world, PR and IR are for all web users. PR and IR are about customers = purchasers/people who benefit from their products and services seeing and effectively utilizing information of the company and products online. This means that, as Scott states, “The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost focus on media” (2007, p26). This is basically the same for IR as well.
4) Companies are to reach online consumers directly.
With new media channels of Internet/web, companies can and should reach consumers directly in the form the customers appreciate for those particular contents (e.g. blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases, and all other online content format). The fact that companies are to directly reach customers means that companies need to drive people into purchasing (or any other action the company intends such as making subscription, making investment and donation etc.) process with appealing online content. This means that content is the most important factor. Safko and Brake advocate this using the phrase “content is the king” (2009) throughout their book.
5) With a good content, everyone can be and is a publisher.
As long as an individual has a good, appealing content, he/she can publish it online without HTML knowledge. This means that companies and individuals can be more flexible in delivering information online, which, together with the rule #4 i.e. that companies are to reach directly to customers, means that companies need to act on frequent basis instead of only on a big event basis as in offline world. This rule also implies that it is possible for many “trivial” and “unreliable” information to proliferate, and this is what Scott means by “people want authenticity, not spin” (2007, p25). In addition, this rule also indicates that voice of an individual can become louder and more influential than voice of an organization. Also, the risk of social media exists whether people participate or not, and this is why many companies are developing social media guidelines and training their employees, as Ross (2009) states.
6) Marketing, PR and IR are interactive communication.
In Web 2.0 online world, marketing, PR and IR are not one-way communication/interruption but interactive communication, attributing to interactivity of the Internet. This means that conversation with the customers is extremely important. Together with rule #5 that everyone (including individuals of customers) can be a publisher, companies need to encourage customers to participate and not propaganda to win their engagement.
Reaching buyers (customers) directly, the key factor in Web 2.0 online world, will be discussed in the next article.
References:-
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ross, Joshua-Michele (2009), A Corporate Guide For Social Media
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/30/social-media-guidelines-intelligent-technology-oreilly.html
Scoopdog (2009), Tweet or Trouble: 2.0 Investor Relations
http://scoopdog.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/ir2-0-social-media-for-information-equality/
1. Old Rules in Offline World Before the Emergence of the Internet
Scott (2009, p8 & p12) lists the old rules of marketing and PR. The below are summary of the rules mentioned by Scott.
1) The Old Rules of Marketing
(1)Marketing simply meant advertising (and branding), appealing to the masses.
(2)Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message, which was exclusively about selling products.
(3)Advertising was one-way: company-to-consumer, based on campaigns with limited life.
(4)Creativity was deemed the most important factor of advertising, and ad agency winning advertising award was more important than client winning new customers.
(5)Marketing (advertising) and PR were separate disciplines run by different people with different goals, strategies and measurement criteria.
2) The Old Rules of PR
(1)Media was the only channel for PR and companies communicated to journalists via press releases, so actual press release was seen by only limited reports and editors and customers (buyers/consumers) would learn about the press release content only if the media wrote an article about it.
(2)Companies needed significant news to write a press release (thus PR was done only on big event basis).
(3)Jargon was accepted because the journalists all understood it but press release had to include quotes from third parties, such as customers, analysis and experts.
(4)The only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through “clip books”.
(5)PR and marketing were separate disciplines run by different people with different goals, strategies and measurement criteria.
IR is out of scope of Scott’s book, but to the author, many old rules of PR also apply to IR, the cousin of PR although there may be some IR specific rules.
2. New Rules in Web 2.0 Online World
In contrast to the above old rules, the new rules can be summarized as below.
1) Marketing, PR (and IR) is converging.
In the offline world, marketing, PR and IR were all separate; separate strategy developed and implemented by separate departments with different people/skills. However, in the online world, the line between traditional marketing, PR and IR is blurring. This is because of the rules that follow this first rule.
2) Marketing is not simply advertising.
In the online world of Web 2.0, marketing is about delivering customer-centric content at the precise moment when the customer (audience) needs it. Marketing is also about reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web based on long-tail theory* instead of mainstream marketing or reaching of the mass. This is why personalization and customization encouraged by Web 2.0 is a key in success online business. After all, marketing is, as Scott (2007, p26) states, not about winning awards but is about the organization winning business.
3) PR and IR are not only for a mainstream media audience.
In Web 2.0 online world, PR and IR are for all web users. PR and IR are about customers = purchasers/people who benefit from their products and services seeing and effectively utilizing information of the company and products online. This means that, as Scott states, “The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost focus on media” (2007, p26). This is basically the same for IR as well.
4) Companies are to reach online consumers directly.
With new media channels of Internet/web, companies can and should reach consumers directly in the form the customers appreciate for those particular contents (e.g. blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases, and all other online content format). The fact that companies are to directly reach customers means that companies need to drive people into purchasing (or any other action the company intends such as making subscription, making investment and donation etc.) process with appealing online content. This means that content is the most important factor. Safko and Brake advocate this using the phrase “content is the king” (2009) throughout their book.
5) With a good content, everyone can be and is a publisher.
As long as an individual has a good, appealing content, he/she can publish it online without HTML knowledge. This means that companies and individuals can be more flexible in delivering information online, which, together with the rule #4 i.e. that companies are to reach directly to customers, means that companies need to act on frequent basis instead of only on a big event basis as in offline world. This rule also implies that it is possible for many “trivial” and “unreliable” information to proliferate, and this is what Scott means by “people want authenticity, not spin” (2007, p25). In addition, this rule also indicates that voice of an individual can become louder and more influential than voice of an organization. Also, the risk of social media exists whether people participate or not, and this is why many companies are developing social media guidelines and training their employees, as Ross (2009) states.
6) Marketing, PR and IR are interactive communication.
In Web 2.0 online world, marketing, PR and IR are not one-way communication/interruption but interactive communication, attributing to interactivity of the Internet. This means that conversation with the customers is extremely important. Together with rule #5 that everyone (including individuals of customers) can be a publisher, companies need to encourage customers to participate and not propaganda to win their engagement.
Reaching buyers (customers) directly, the key factor in Web 2.0 online world, will be discussed in the next article.
References:-
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Scott, David Meerman (2007), The New Rules of Marketing & PR. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ross, Joshua-Michele (2009), A Corporate Guide For Social Media
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/30/social-media-guidelines-intelligent-technology-oreilly.html
Scoopdog (2009), Tweet or Trouble: 2.0 Investor Relations
http://scoopdog.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/ir2-0-social-media-for-information-equality/
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Vol.6: What is the Overview of Web 2.0 Online World?
In the previous article, the social media ecosystem realized by Web 2.0 technologies was introduced, in which social media categories were briefly explained. In this article, Overview of Web 2.0 Online World is introduced utilizing an interesting framework in which social media categories introduced in the previous article constitute many of the elements.
Overview of Web 2.0 Online World is introduced from marketing perspective because this is the most logical and practical. As from survey results of McKinsey and others, companies leverage Web 2.0 technologies to benefit in marketing the most. Many other use of Web 2.0 mentioned in the survey such as product development and collaboration with business partners are part of or related to 4Ps of marketing (product, price, place, promotion). Also, HR activities which are also how companies benefit from Web 2.0 (e.g. recruiting, employee engagement) can be said as marketing in the broad sense because such activities are employee marketing. Furthermore, there is an interesting framework of Web 2.0 overview developed from marketing perspective.
This is probably the best concept as far as the author knows to understand the big picture of an organic structure of the Web 2.0 Online World Overview, constituted by website and other elements including social media categories. This depicts well how each element relates one another from marketing ROI (Return on Investment), and this can be of a good reference in planning and executing online strategy.
Website is the core of Web 2.0 world, surrounded by all other elements of Internet that support the website, although there might be a discussion that blog(s) can entirely substitute a website. Blog(s) might substitute a website for online branding and web strategy, for an individual and for small organizations in particular, but an official website is the core of web strategy. This concept is supported by an interesting framework of Web 2.0 Online Marketing ROI developed by Clough (2009), which has a website in the centre.
The website in the first ring or as Clough (2009) says “bulls-eye” is the centre of the Web 2.0 online marketing strategy. In the virtual, Internet world, it is the virtual store/office of the companies and organizations, and it is where business is done to generate revenue and provide the highest ROI. Web design and architecture, page layout, quality and quantity of information, navigation and accessibility, and total web branding are KFS (Key Factors for Success) of websites, and they need to be built from customer-centric way. This means that websites needs to be carefully designed taking into consideration psychology and behaviour of customers online, similarly to designing a store in the real world. In doing so, traditional concept such as AIDMA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Memory, Action) can be applied even though some web consultants may advocate different concepts, which to the author, are application of AIDMA.
The elements located in the second ring (the outer ring of the first ring of bulls-eye) including blogs, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), online press releases, e-mail marketing, pay-per-click advertising and auto responder are the next priority. This is because they are critical to support online activity at the website, and they generate the next highest ROI. Among these elements, blog and SEO were mentioned as social media categories in the previous article.
The elements located in the third ring (outer ring of the second ring) do not mean that they are less important than elements located in the second ring; it simply means that they are in general of smaller ROI. Many of them were mentioned as social media categories in the previous articles (e.g. social networking, video/podcasts, RSS feeds) and many of them provide richer contents than Web 1.0 websites. Furthermore, many of them are very effective in community building and customer engagement, which are the characteristics of social media realized by Web 2,0 technologies, and the importance of these characteristics is continuously increase as the web/Internet marketing evolves. Even the elements that were not mentioned as social media categories are effective online initiative as long as they are carefully designed and implemented, sometimes totally changing how the business is performed (or even a new business model can be realized) from how business is performed in the traditional old economy for successful online business. Affiliate programme is perhaps one of such a good example, along with e-mail marketing located in the second ring.
The author would add some of the social media categories mentioned in the previous article to the framework, such as live casting, virtual worlds, gaming, aggregators and interpersonal in the third ring. She strongly feels that importance of virtual world, gaming and aggregators would increase in the future, especially in entertainment industry, and that its technique and methodology developed may well be applied to other industries and settings such as EC (electronic commerce) and online advertising.
Assuming the framework is that of PC, the author would position mobile as something encompassing the whole of the framework. She also envisions that as interactive TV and its services become established and popularize in the future (in Web 3.0 world), interactive TV would be added as the 16th social media category of the social media ecosystem, which encompasses the whole of the framework mentioned above, similarly to mobile.
In planning and executing web/Internet (marketing) strategy in the Web 2.0 world, social media categories realized by Web 2.0 technologies and other Web 1.0 elements/initiatives need to be strategically selected and effectively and systematically mixed with clear objectives and strategy for synergy and total maximum ROI. Linking mobile with PC online marketing (and with interactive TV in the future) would be inevitable and this trend would surely become more and more vital. Last but not least, online marketing should be aligned with total business strategy of the company/organization, to make synergy with offline initiatives.
The upcoming article is to be about how social media realized by Web 2.0 technologies is changing marketing and business.
References:-
Clough, Mike (2009), Web 2.0 Online Marketing Series – Overview
http://bestbizpractices.org/2009/08/16/web-2-0-online-marketing-series-overview/
McKinsey (2009), How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Business_Technology/BT_Strategy/How_companies_are_benefiting_from_Web_20_McKinsey_Global_Survey_Results_2432
Mzinga (2009), Social Media’s Primary Use: Marketing (from Social Software Business Survey)
http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2009/161/social-medias-primary-use-marketing
Overview of Web 2.0 Online World is introduced from marketing perspective because this is the most logical and practical. As from survey results of McKinsey and others, companies leverage Web 2.0 technologies to benefit in marketing the most. Many other use of Web 2.0 mentioned in the survey such as product development and collaboration with business partners are part of or related to 4Ps of marketing (product, price, place, promotion). Also, HR activities which are also how companies benefit from Web 2.0 (e.g. recruiting, employee engagement) can be said as marketing in the broad sense because such activities are employee marketing. Furthermore, there is an interesting framework of Web 2.0 overview developed from marketing perspective.
This is probably the best concept as far as the author knows to understand the big picture of an organic structure of the Web 2.0 Online World Overview, constituted by website and other elements including social media categories. This depicts well how each element relates one another from marketing ROI (Return on Investment), and this can be of a good reference in planning and executing online strategy.
Website is the core of Web 2.0 world, surrounded by all other elements of Internet that support the website, although there might be a discussion that blog(s) can entirely substitute a website. Blog(s) might substitute a website for online branding and web strategy, for an individual and for small organizations in particular, but an official website is the core of web strategy. This concept is supported by an interesting framework of Web 2.0 Online Marketing ROI developed by Clough (2009), which has a website in the centre.
The website in the first ring or as Clough (2009) says “bulls-eye” is the centre of the Web 2.0 online marketing strategy. In the virtual, Internet world, it is the virtual store/office of the companies and organizations, and it is where business is done to generate revenue and provide the highest ROI. Web design and architecture, page layout, quality and quantity of information, navigation and accessibility, and total web branding are KFS (Key Factors for Success) of websites, and they need to be built from customer-centric way. This means that websites needs to be carefully designed taking into consideration psychology and behaviour of customers online, similarly to designing a store in the real world. In doing so, traditional concept such as AIDMA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Memory, Action) can be applied even though some web consultants may advocate different concepts, which to the author, are application of AIDMA.
The elements located in the second ring (the outer ring of the first ring of bulls-eye) including blogs, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), online press releases, e-mail marketing, pay-per-click advertising and auto responder are the next priority. This is because they are critical to support online activity at the website, and they generate the next highest ROI. Among these elements, blog and SEO were mentioned as social media categories in the previous article.
The elements located in the third ring (outer ring of the second ring) do not mean that they are less important than elements located in the second ring; it simply means that they are in general of smaller ROI. Many of them were mentioned as social media categories in the previous articles (e.g. social networking, video/podcasts, RSS feeds) and many of them provide richer contents than Web 1.0 websites. Furthermore, many of them are very effective in community building and customer engagement, which are the characteristics of social media realized by Web 2,0 technologies, and the importance of these characteristics is continuously increase as the web/Internet marketing evolves. Even the elements that were not mentioned as social media categories are effective online initiative as long as they are carefully designed and implemented, sometimes totally changing how the business is performed (or even a new business model can be realized) from how business is performed in the traditional old economy for successful online business. Affiliate programme is perhaps one of such a good example, along with e-mail marketing located in the second ring.
The author would add some of the social media categories mentioned in the previous article to the framework, such as live casting, virtual worlds, gaming, aggregators and interpersonal in the third ring. She strongly feels that importance of virtual world, gaming and aggregators would increase in the future, especially in entertainment industry, and that its technique and methodology developed may well be applied to other industries and settings such as EC (electronic commerce) and online advertising.
Assuming the framework is that of PC, the author would position mobile as something encompassing the whole of the framework. She also envisions that as interactive TV and its services become established and popularize in the future (in Web 3.0 world), interactive TV would be added as the 16th social media category of the social media ecosystem, which encompasses the whole of the framework mentioned above, similarly to mobile.
In planning and executing web/Internet (marketing) strategy in the Web 2.0 world, social media categories realized by Web 2.0 technologies and other Web 1.0 elements/initiatives need to be strategically selected and effectively and systematically mixed with clear objectives and strategy for synergy and total maximum ROI. Linking mobile with PC online marketing (and with interactive TV in the future) would be inevitable and this trend would surely become more and more vital. Last but not least, online marketing should be aligned with total business strategy of the company/organization, to make synergy with offline initiatives.
The upcoming article is to be about how social media realized by Web 2.0 technologies is changing marketing and business.
References:-
Clough, Mike (2009), Web 2.0 Online Marketing Series – Overview
http://bestbizpractices.org/2009/08/16/web-2-0-online-marketing-series-overview/
McKinsey (2009), How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Business_Technology/BT_Strategy/How_companies_are_benefiting_from_Web_20_McKinsey_Global_Survey_Results_2432
Mzinga (2009), Social Media’s Primary Use: Marketing (from Social Software Business Survey)
http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2009/161/social-medias-primary-use-marketing
Saturday, 24 October 2009
Vol.5: What Social Media Ecosystem Does Web 2.0 Realize?
Some social media vehicles have already been mentioned the previous articles but in this article 15 social media categorized by Safko and Brakd (2009) that form social media ecosystem is briefly explained. All of them are realized by Web 2.0 technologies.
1. Social networking: This is a common place online that any trusted network, a group of like-minded people who have come together to share thoughts, ideas and information about themselves. Examples of social networking site include Facebook, Linked, Bebo and MySpace, to just name a few.
2. Publish: This is a broad category that might be a little misleading because technically people can publish all kinds of content, including video, audio, photos and games as well as texts of e-mail, web pages, blogs, Internet forums and wikis. Examples of tools, companies, tools and applications include Blogger, Constant Contact, Joomla, Knol, Slide Share, TypePad and Wikia.
3. Photo: Picture is worth a thousand words and that is where the value of being able to sort, organize and share photos with people in one’s network comes in. Examples of companies, tools and application include Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Radar.net, Slide, Smug Mug, Twixr and Zoomr.
4. Audio: Now iPod have become such a ubiquitous and indispensable device that people want to take around with them to listen to audio contents, and more than 30 million people subscribe to podcasts already, and therefore audio can be a critical aspect of a social media strategy. Examples of companies, tools and applications include iTunes, PodBean, Podcast.net and Rapsody.
5. Video: Video recording could also be considered a podcast because the iPod and other digital playback devices display photographs, audio and video but in this article audio recordings as a podcast and video recordings as video or vlog (comes from Video web LOG as the word blog stands for weB LOG). Video recording refers to Web 2.0 services with the ability to deliver video content on demand that can also be shared and promoted across social networks. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Brightcove, Google Video, Hulu, Metacafe, Viddler and YouTube.
6. Microblogging: This is text messaging with character limitation (e.g. 140 characters) but can be considered as a cross between blogging and text messaging. Microblogging includes the ability to send messages, audio, video and even attached files from a computer or mobile phone and offer business in particular a versatile way to interact with employees and customers, and therefore has the potential to be used in variety of settings for variety of objectives. Examples of companies include Plurt, Twitter and Twitxr.
7. Livecasting: This is a category of social media tools that enables people to broadcast information (video and audio) using the Internet/Web 2.0 technologies, distributing (or streaming) that content to his/her network. For businesses, these applications have a variety of uses on the communication, collaboration, entertainment and education settings. Examples of companies, tools and applications include BlogTalkRadio, Llive 365, Justins.tv, SHOUTcast and TalkShoe.
8. Virtual Worlds: These present a new frontier for businesses with the possibility of real-time interaction with employees, customers and vendors. Other businesses are also pursuing ways to sell actual products and services in a virtual world. The 5 key players in this space are Active Worlds, Kaneva, Second Life, There and ViOS.
9. Gaming: Online gaming is one of the Internet phenomena that are continuously gaining popularity, being a magnet that attracts large numbers of people (gamers) with a common interest. Gamers currently represent a special kind of social network but there is an opportunity in category to influence word-of-mouth promotion. Some applications (games) include 4x4 Evolution, Entropia Universe, EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
10. Productivity Applications: These are all of business productivity tools. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Acteva, AOL, Google Alerts, Google Gmail, MSSTAG, TiddyWiki, Yahoo! And Zoho.
11. Aggregators: This is about market and business intelligence which can be an extremely valuable part of social media strategy. Some aggregators gather information and data in one place for easy access and are directed to keep it updated, and some others additionally leverage the wisdom of the crowd and tell what other people are saying about a particular product, service or brand. Examples of applications include Digg, FriendFeed, Google Reader, iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Reddit and Yelp.
12. RSS: This is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, which is a one-click solution that allows all one’s content to be sent to his/her followers the moment the content is published. This is extremely valuable for a user when he/she has a favourite blog or regularly visits a website that provides updated information with specific value to him/her. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Atom, FeedBurner, PingShot and RSS 2.0.
13. Search: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are techniques by which web pages, photos and even videos are optimized to maximize search engine rankings. The ability to search and easily locate a variety of content on the web represents a tactical advantage to the business. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Google Search, Yahoo! Search, Bing of Microsoft, EveryZing, Ice Rocket and Meta Tube.
14. Mobile: Mobile phones are the epitome of both digital convergence and social media, and probably have contributed much to advance social media than any other single device. And today, iPhone, BlackBerry and other similar device functions as an operational control centre for people’s business because many of the social media tools in the ecosystem function just as well with mobile devices as they do with computer and therefore this category is rapidly growing. Examples of tools and applications include airG, AOL Mobile, Brightkite, CallWave, Jott, Jumbuck and SMS.ac.
15. Interpersonal: This refers to the many applications and websites in the social media ecosphere that allows people to communicate live, real time on a one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many basis. Examples of one-to-one exchange tools include Skype, AOL Instant Messager, GTal, Apple’s iChat and Jott. One-to-many tools include Jott, Twitter, Yahoo! Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger and Doodle. Many-to-many applications include GoToMeeting, WebEx and Adobe Connect. Many-to-one could be considered page aggregators where the conversations of many different bloggers are complied into a web page or even Google Alerts where alerts about many different mentions of one’s search terms are sent directly to his/her personal e-mail.
How the above social media categories form an organic structure together with Website(s) and e-mail marketing comes next, so that use of Web 2.0 technologies companies will be better understood in the upcoming articles.
References:-
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
1. Social networking: This is a common place online that any trusted network, a group of like-minded people who have come together to share thoughts, ideas and information about themselves. Examples of social networking site include Facebook, Linked, Bebo and MySpace, to just name a few.
2. Publish: This is a broad category that might be a little misleading because technically people can publish all kinds of content, including video, audio, photos and games as well as texts of e-mail, web pages, blogs, Internet forums and wikis. Examples of tools, companies, tools and applications include Blogger, Constant Contact, Joomla, Knol, Slide Share, TypePad and Wikia.
3. Photo: Picture is worth a thousand words and that is where the value of being able to sort, organize and share photos with people in one’s network comes in. Examples of companies, tools and application include Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Radar.net, Slide, Smug Mug, Twixr and Zoomr.
4. Audio: Now iPod have become such a ubiquitous and indispensable device that people want to take around with them to listen to audio contents, and more than 30 million people subscribe to podcasts already, and therefore audio can be a critical aspect of a social media strategy. Examples of companies, tools and applications include iTunes, PodBean, Podcast.net and Rapsody.
5. Video: Video recording could also be considered a podcast because the iPod and other digital playback devices display photographs, audio and video but in this article audio recordings as a podcast and video recordings as video or vlog (comes from Video web LOG as the word blog stands for weB LOG). Video recording refers to Web 2.0 services with the ability to deliver video content on demand that can also be shared and promoted across social networks. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Brightcove, Google Video, Hulu, Metacafe, Viddler and YouTube.
6. Microblogging: This is text messaging with character limitation (e.g. 140 characters) but can be considered as a cross between blogging and text messaging. Microblogging includes the ability to send messages, audio, video and even attached files from a computer or mobile phone and offer business in particular a versatile way to interact with employees and customers, and therefore has the potential to be used in variety of settings for variety of objectives. Examples of companies include Plurt, Twitter and Twitxr.
7. Livecasting: This is a category of social media tools that enables people to broadcast information (video and audio) using the Internet/Web 2.0 technologies, distributing (or streaming) that content to his/her network. For businesses, these applications have a variety of uses on the communication, collaboration, entertainment and education settings. Examples of companies, tools and applications include BlogTalkRadio, Llive 365, Justins.tv, SHOUTcast and TalkShoe.
8. Virtual Worlds: These present a new frontier for businesses with the possibility of real-time interaction with employees, customers and vendors. Other businesses are also pursuing ways to sell actual products and services in a virtual world. The 5 key players in this space are Active Worlds, Kaneva, Second Life, There and ViOS.
9. Gaming: Online gaming is one of the Internet phenomena that are continuously gaining popularity, being a magnet that attracts large numbers of people (gamers) with a common interest. Gamers currently represent a special kind of social network but there is an opportunity in category to influence word-of-mouth promotion. Some applications (games) include 4x4 Evolution, Entropia Universe, EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
10. Productivity Applications: These are all of business productivity tools. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Acteva, AOL, Google Alerts, Google Gmail, MSSTAG, TiddyWiki, Yahoo! And Zoho.
11. Aggregators: This is about market and business intelligence which can be an extremely valuable part of social media strategy. Some aggregators gather information and data in one place for easy access and are directed to keep it updated, and some others additionally leverage the wisdom of the crowd and tell what other people are saying about a particular product, service or brand. Examples of applications include Digg, FriendFeed, Google Reader, iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Reddit and Yelp.
12. RSS: This is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, which is a one-click solution that allows all one’s content to be sent to his/her followers the moment the content is published. This is extremely valuable for a user when he/she has a favourite blog or regularly visits a website that provides updated information with specific value to him/her. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Atom, FeedBurner, PingShot and RSS 2.0.
13. Search: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are techniques by which web pages, photos and even videos are optimized to maximize search engine rankings. The ability to search and easily locate a variety of content on the web represents a tactical advantage to the business. Examples of companies, tools and applications include Google Search, Yahoo! Search, Bing of Microsoft, EveryZing, Ice Rocket and Meta Tube.
14. Mobile: Mobile phones are the epitome of both digital convergence and social media, and probably have contributed much to advance social media than any other single device. And today, iPhone, BlackBerry and other similar device functions as an operational control centre for people’s business because many of the social media tools in the ecosystem function just as well with mobile devices as they do with computer and therefore this category is rapidly growing. Examples of tools and applications include airG, AOL Mobile, Brightkite, CallWave, Jott, Jumbuck and SMS.ac.
15. Interpersonal: This refers to the many applications and websites in the social media ecosphere that allows people to communicate live, real time on a one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many basis. Examples of one-to-one exchange tools include Skype, AOL Instant Messager, GTal, Apple’s iChat and Jott. One-to-many tools include Jott, Twitter, Yahoo! Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger and Doodle. Many-to-many applications include GoToMeeting, WebEx and Adobe Connect. Many-to-one could be considered page aggregators where the conversations of many different bloggers are complied into a web page or even Google Alerts where alerts about many different mentions of one’s search terms are sent directly to his/her personal e-mail.
How the above social media categories form an organic structure together with Website(s) and e-mail marketing comes next, so that use of Web 2.0 technologies companies will be better understood in the upcoming articles.
References:-
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Saturday, 17 October 2009
Vol. 4: What is Web 2.0? What Distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0?
In this article, Web 2.0 is defined by defining Social Media, a well-used term together, clarifying the relationship between the two terms, and what distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0.
1. What exactly is Social Media?
According to Safko and Brake (2009), “social media refers to activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media. Conversational media are Web-based applications that make it possible to create and easily transmit content in the form of words, pictures, videos, and audios.”
Some example of actual usage of social media vehicles being an active member of social media ecosystem is that a person belongs to several online communities such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, use computer, mobile phone and/or any other devices to access and send messages to other members of your group/community to make connections, interact and participate in discussions, read blogs, watch a YouTube video, and listen to podcast.
2. What about Web 2.0?
The author has defined Web 2.0 as “the Internet that enables social media tools and applications that are interactive and multi-dimensional, with primary goal of enabling communities to form and interact with one another.” from multiple sources.
According to Safko and Brake (2009, p6-7), Web 2.0 is somewhat of a misnomer because “it does not refer to a new and improved version of the World Wide Web, the information superhighway that’s become ubiquitous over the last decade or so. There really is no new physical version of the Internet.” Safko and Brake goes on to say that to continue the analogy, there are many more interesting vehicles traveling on the highway and some incredible places to stops along that highway, thanks to Web 2.0 technologies and the inventive people behind them (2009, p7). What they say is that social media and Web 2.0 come together and the two terms are closely related and social media refer to tools and applications, and that the primary goal of the two is enable communities to form and interact with another.
According to Dubral in his blog article Channel Website Obituary. R.I.P., 2.0 websites are interactive and multi-dimensional, evolving into full-blown end-user communities, and visitors engage in conversation via blogs, forums, videos and more, whereas 1.0 websites are static and one-dimensional and visitors are expected to read information and leave. Although there does not seem to be other sources that explicitly give definition of Web, 2.0, the term Web 2.0 is used in the context defined by Safko and Brake and Channels of the Future in other sources.
3. What distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0?
From the above, it can be summarized that the key distinctions between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are static vs. interactive and one-dimensional vs. multi-dimensional, and key word of 2.0 websites (Web 2.0 websites) is “community”. Concrete elements that distinguish Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 are best stated by Kuchinskas in her blog article Learning from Web 2.0 (Without the Web). Kuchinskas states that the core principles of Web 2.0 are:-
- Mix and Match: Data or applications can be combined in new ways to create new opportunities.
- Distribute Widely: Instead of waiting for customers to come to the website owner, products or services are released where customers already are.
- Enable, Do not Control: Instead of forcing customers to do things a certain way, it is made easy for them to do it in whatever way works best.
She then also goes on to say that smart companies have applied these philosophies in offline environment to realize the following, which all enabling communities to form and interact with one another:-
- Mashups: Combine two data sources or services to create a new one.
- Syndication: People can receive whatever content they are interested in automatically via RSS, atom feeds etc.
- Personalization: Web 2.0 encourages personalization and customization, allowing customers to tailor products to suit their preferences to make product more useful and increase users’ interest in it.
- Mass Collaboration: Web 2.0 technologies embrace the idea that the more people use a service or application, the stronger and more valuable it becomes, as in the case of the Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace etc.
It is with the above philosophy and methods that Web 2.0 websites can form communities with rich information and content compared to Web 1.0 websites, leading to more “sticky” websites. A web user (customer) stays in such a Web 2.0 “sticky” website longer than Web 1.0 website and returns more frequently to such a “sticky” Web 2.0 website than a Web 1.0 website. This means that retention and loyalty of web users (customers) is a focus of Web 2.0 websites, and it can be said that as websites evolve from Web 1.0 to 2.0 and maybe 3.0 and so forth in the future, the more customer retention and engagement becomes the critical KFS (key factors for success).
After all, Web 2.0 websites (social media vehicles) are all about engagement with web users of customers, prospects, employees and all other stakeholders by facilitating one or more of communication, collaboration, education and entertainment. In fact, these constitute the 4 pillars of Web 2.0/social media strategy.
In the next article, the social media ecosystems that Web 2.0 technologies realize will be introduced.
References:-
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Dubrall, Michael (2009) Channel Website Obituary. R.I.P.
http://gilwellgroup.blogspot.com/2009/07/channel-website-obituary-born-1995-died.html
Kuchinskas, Susan (2009) Learning from Web 2.0 (Without the Web)http://www.bnet.com/2403-13241_23-66095.html?tag=content;col1
People who have read this article may want to read:-
Vol.1: Introduction
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-direction-of-web-20-and-internet.html
Vol.2: How Companies are Benefiting from Web 2.0?
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/10/vol2-how-companies-are-benefiting-from.html
Vol.3: Background of Writing the Blog Articles
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/10/vol3-background-of-writing-blog-article.html
1. What exactly is Social Media?
According to Safko and Brake (2009), “social media refers to activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media. Conversational media are Web-based applications that make it possible to create and easily transmit content in the form of words, pictures, videos, and audios.”
Some example of actual usage of social media vehicles being an active member of social media ecosystem is that a person belongs to several online communities such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, use computer, mobile phone and/or any other devices to access and send messages to other members of your group/community to make connections, interact and participate in discussions, read blogs, watch a YouTube video, and listen to podcast.
2. What about Web 2.0?
The author has defined Web 2.0 as “the Internet that enables social media tools and applications that are interactive and multi-dimensional, with primary goal of enabling communities to form and interact with one another.” from multiple sources.
According to Safko and Brake (2009, p6-7), Web 2.0 is somewhat of a misnomer because “it does not refer to a new and improved version of the World Wide Web, the information superhighway that’s become ubiquitous over the last decade or so. There really is no new physical version of the Internet.” Safko and Brake goes on to say that to continue the analogy, there are many more interesting vehicles traveling on the highway and some incredible places to stops along that highway, thanks to Web 2.0 technologies and the inventive people behind them (2009, p7). What they say is that social media and Web 2.0 come together and the two terms are closely related and social media refer to tools and applications, and that the primary goal of the two is enable communities to form and interact with another.
According to Dubral in his blog article Channel Website Obituary. R.I.P., 2.0 websites are interactive and multi-dimensional, evolving into full-blown end-user communities, and visitors engage in conversation via blogs, forums, videos and more, whereas 1.0 websites are static and one-dimensional and visitors are expected to read information and leave. Although there does not seem to be other sources that explicitly give definition of Web, 2.0, the term Web 2.0 is used in the context defined by Safko and Brake and Channels of the Future in other sources.
3. What distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0?
From the above, it can be summarized that the key distinctions between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are static vs. interactive and one-dimensional vs. multi-dimensional, and key word of 2.0 websites (Web 2.0 websites) is “community”. Concrete elements that distinguish Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 are best stated by Kuchinskas in her blog article Learning from Web 2.0 (Without the Web). Kuchinskas states that the core principles of Web 2.0 are:-
- Mix and Match: Data or applications can be combined in new ways to create new opportunities.
- Distribute Widely: Instead of waiting for customers to come to the website owner, products or services are released where customers already are.
- Enable, Do not Control: Instead of forcing customers to do things a certain way, it is made easy for them to do it in whatever way works best.
She then also goes on to say that smart companies have applied these philosophies in offline environment to realize the following, which all enabling communities to form and interact with one another:-
- Mashups: Combine two data sources or services to create a new one.
- Syndication: People can receive whatever content they are interested in automatically via RSS, atom feeds etc.
- Personalization: Web 2.0 encourages personalization and customization, allowing customers to tailor products to suit their preferences to make product more useful and increase users’ interest in it.
- Mass Collaboration: Web 2.0 technologies embrace the idea that the more people use a service or application, the stronger and more valuable it becomes, as in the case of the Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace etc.
It is with the above philosophy and methods that Web 2.0 websites can form communities with rich information and content compared to Web 1.0 websites, leading to more “sticky” websites. A web user (customer) stays in such a Web 2.0 “sticky” website longer than Web 1.0 website and returns more frequently to such a “sticky” Web 2.0 website than a Web 1.0 website. This means that retention and loyalty of web users (customers) is a focus of Web 2.0 websites, and it can be said that as websites evolve from Web 1.0 to 2.0 and maybe 3.0 and so forth in the future, the more customer retention and engagement becomes the critical KFS (key factors for success).
After all, Web 2.0 websites (social media vehicles) are all about engagement with web users of customers, prospects, employees and all other stakeholders by facilitating one or more of communication, collaboration, education and entertainment. In fact, these constitute the 4 pillars of Web 2.0/social media strategy.
In the next article, the social media ecosystems that Web 2.0 technologies realize will be introduced.
References:-
Safko, Lon and Brake, David K (2009), The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Dubrall, Michael (2009) Channel Website Obituary. R.I.P.
http://gilwellgroup.blogspot.com/2009/07/channel-website-obituary-born-1995-died.html
Kuchinskas, Susan (2009) Learning from Web 2.0 (Without the Web)http://www.bnet.com/2403-13241_23-66095.html?tag=content;col1
People who have read this article may want to read:-
Vol.1: Introduction
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-direction-of-web-20-and-internet.html
Vol.2: How Companies are Benefiting from Web 2.0?
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/10/vol2-how-companies-are-benefiting-from.html
Vol.3: Background of Writing the Blog Articles
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/10/vol3-background-of-writing-blog-article.html
Vol.3: Background of Writing the Blog Article Series
This is the Vol.3 of "Future Direction of Internet and Web 2.0 Marketing"
Instead of writing about the definition of Web 2.0, clarifying what distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 and then about detailed use of Web 2.0 to succeed the previous article, which is "Vol.2 - How Companies are Benefiting from Web 2.0? "
the author decided to first write about why she is doing this, i.e. writing about Web 2.0/Internet in English blog, then go back to write the main issues. This is because when she asked for help to write upcoming articles to her LinkedIn members, among some kind help and offer which she was greatly thankful and impressed, she also had a proposal of “what about writing why you are doing this”. She understood that this kind of information is also what the readers would like to read.
1. Why the author decided to write the series of articles on Web 2.0/Internet marketing
The author has already written about this in the first article, which was the introduction.
Vol. 1 - Introduction
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-direction-of-web-20-and-internet.html
The trigger of starting writing this series was the fact that the author became a heavy Web 2.0 and social media user this year, and the recent survey results on Web 2.0 usage. She thought it could be a good idea to write about Web 2.0/Internet marketing focusing on use and future trend/direction, which can be applied to (everyday) use in business and private settings. She realized that this could be a kind of follow-up from her MBA thesis as well.
2. Why writing in English
It might be strange for a Japanese author, i.e. native language being Japanese, to write blog articles in English, but it is logical and natural for the author. From her experience of writing a thesis on web, the author is fully aware that most information to be used for this kind of topic would be in English. This means it would be easier to write in English because it would be easier to write in the same language as the source and references as long as the author has sufficient English communication skills. As for the author, she has much experience of writing in English; thesis and reports on assignments for MBA, and at work variety of texts including press releases, internal articles and executive messages/speeches in English and Japanese besides checking web contents and catalogue texts. The fact that most relevant information would be in English implies that the target for the articles would be mostly people who can read and communicate well in English. From all these points, author decided to write in English.
3. Why blog articles
After profound consideration, the author concluded that series of blog articles in not-too-casual style is the best. Considering the objectives and targets, she first thought perhaps some other format is appropriate; however, formal paper would be over the top and also too big a hurdle to start and continue. The author wanted to write more casually. In addition, this kind of topic evolves momentarily and the author preferred something flexible. Thus, the author decided to write blog articles in series, in not-too-casual style.
The author also writes blog articles in Japanese, but the target and objectives is different from English ones and therefore the style is different. Many Japanese blog articles are casual (many are like diary) and her Japanese blog articles are in a casual style as well, in a “talking-to-readers” style, similarly to the e-newsletter with many links to related web contents she has been writing and distributing for more than 5 years.
4. What does writing this blog article series mean to the author
For the author, writing this blog article series is a way of self-expressing her belief and thoughts, and also a way of focusing on her careers. She was originally IT illiterate but changed her role and position to start Internet/web initiatives in March 2001 by job posting system when she was working for her ex-employer, marking a turning point in her career. (Her ex-bosses and colleagues were extremely surprised about this). This was because she “felt” the potential of the Internet and believed that the success of the company and the individual in the new economy of 21st century would be determined by effective use of IT and the Internet technology (together with English communication skill plus strengths/unique skill/competency that can be paraphrased as core competency) in all realms of business and management, regardless of the industry, the organization, the function of the role. It does not necessarily mean that the user of IT and the Internet technology need to know much about the technology itself.
The Internet/web is not only about technology and system engineers, but is a tool/platform for innovation in business and management, and therefore it must be aligned with the overall business and management strategy, meaning it must be effectively mixed with traditional infrastructure, systems and media/channels, based on the clicks & mortar concept. This is why the author has been driving (global) web initiatives AND driving and advocating media mix for online and offline synergy, developing various concepts and frameworks. She believes that this concept should be applied to online business as well because it is very unlikely for any business to be fulfilled in am exclusive online/virtual world
Such of her beliefs has become stronger and stronger although the author’s role had not necessarily been focusing on Internet/web for the past 3 years. And now that Web 2.0/social media has become a hot topic, she strongly believes that it is high time for her to go back to the Internet/web and leverage Web 2.0. The author had a kind of community and relationship concept of social media in mind when she stated in her MBA thesis on web equity that the key for website success would be “stickiness” of the site and retention of web users. The fact that her current employer started to leverage Web 2.0 (e.g. Yammer, a microblogging website) worldwide and she uses it daily is also a wind-wing situation. So she first joined LinkedIn, and started Facebook and Twitter, then Japanese blog followed by English blog. Many of her Japanese blog articles are about how she is leveraging Web 2.0 and social media including simple explanation of Twitter and some tips. But she concluded that leveraging social media vehicles including LinkedIn and Twitter and writing blog articles in English on this topic is good if she is to study and give output professionally to share and utilize in business.
The author hope the above would help readers better understand the background of the series of blog articles.
Should you have any further questions and comments, please let the author know. She would be delighted to know.
The next article is
Vol.4: What is Web 2.0? What Distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0?
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-is-web-20-what-distinguishes-web.html
Instead of writing about the definition of Web 2.0, clarifying what distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 and then about detailed use of Web 2.0 to succeed the previous article, which is "Vol.2 - How Companies are Benefiting from Web 2.0? "
the author decided to first write about why she is doing this, i.e. writing about Web 2.0/Internet in English blog, then go back to write the main issues. This is because when she asked for help to write upcoming articles to her LinkedIn members, among some kind help and offer which she was greatly thankful and impressed, she also had a proposal of “what about writing why you are doing this”. She understood that this kind of information is also what the readers would like to read.
1. Why the author decided to write the series of articles on Web 2.0/Internet marketing
The author has already written about this in the first article, which was the introduction.
Vol. 1 - Introduction
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-direction-of-web-20-and-internet.html
The trigger of starting writing this series was the fact that the author became a heavy Web 2.0 and social media user this year, and the recent survey results on Web 2.0 usage. She thought it could be a good idea to write about Web 2.0/Internet marketing focusing on use and future trend/direction, which can be applied to (everyday) use in business and private settings. She realized that this could be a kind of follow-up from her MBA thesis as well.
2. Why writing in English
It might be strange for a Japanese author, i.e. native language being Japanese, to write blog articles in English, but it is logical and natural for the author. From her experience of writing a thesis on web, the author is fully aware that most information to be used for this kind of topic would be in English. This means it would be easier to write in English because it would be easier to write in the same language as the source and references as long as the author has sufficient English communication skills. As for the author, she has much experience of writing in English; thesis and reports on assignments for MBA, and at work variety of texts including press releases, internal articles and executive messages/speeches in English and Japanese besides checking web contents and catalogue texts. The fact that most relevant information would be in English implies that the target for the articles would be mostly people who can read and communicate well in English. From all these points, author decided to write in English.
3. Why blog articles
After profound consideration, the author concluded that series of blog articles in not-too-casual style is the best. Considering the objectives and targets, she first thought perhaps some other format is appropriate; however, formal paper would be over the top and also too big a hurdle to start and continue. The author wanted to write more casually. In addition, this kind of topic evolves momentarily and the author preferred something flexible. Thus, the author decided to write blog articles in series, in not-too-casual style.
The author also writes blog articles in Japanese, but the target and objectives is different from English ones and therefore the style is different. Many Japanese blog articles are casual (many are like diary) and her Japanese blog articles are in a casual style as well, in a “talking-to-readers” style, similarly to the e-newsletter with many links to related web contents she has been writing and distributing for more than 5 years.
4. What does writing this blog article series mean to the author
For the author, writing this blog article series is a way of self-expressing her belief and thoughts, and also a way of focusing on her careers. She was originally IT illiterate but changed her role and position to start Internet/web initiatives in March 2001 by job posting system when she was working for her ex-employer, marking a turning point in her career. (Her ex-bosses and colleagues were extremely surprised about this). This was because she “felt” the potential of the Internet and believed that the success of the company and the individual in the new economy of 21st century would be determined by effective use of IT and the Internet technology (together with English communication skill plus strengths/unique skill/competency that can be paraphrased as core competency) in all realms of business and management, regardless of the industry, the organization, the function of the role. It does not necessarily mean that the user of IT and the Internet technology need to know much about the technology itself.
The Internet/web is not only about technology and system engineers, but is a tool/platform for innovation in business and management, and therefore it must be aligned with the overall business and management strategy, meaning it must be effectively mixed with traditional infrastructure, systems and media/channels, based on the clicks & mortar concept. This is why the author has been driving (global) web initiatives AND driving and advocating media mix for online and offline synergy, developing various concepts and frameworks. She believes that this concept should be applied to online business as well because it is very unlikely for any business to be fulfilled in am exclusive online/virtual world
Such of her beliefs has become stronger and stronger although the author’s role had not necessarily been focusing on Internet/web for the past 3 years. And now that Web 2.0/social media has become a hot topic, she strongly believes that it is high time for her to go back to the Internet/web and leverage Web 2.0. The author had a kind of community and relationship concept of social media in mind when she stated in her MBA thesis on web equity that the key for website success would be “stickiness” of the site and retention of web users. The fact that her current employer started to leverage Web 2.0 (e.g. Yammer, a microblogging website) worldwide and she uses it daily is also a wind-wing situation. So she first joined LinkedIn, and started Facebook and Twitter, then Japanese blog followed by English blog. Many of her Japanese blog articles are about how she is leveraging Web 2.0 and social media including simple explanation of Twitter and some tips. But she concluded that leveraging social media vehicles including LinkedIn and Twitter and writing blog articles in English on this topic is good if she is to study and give output professionally to share and utilize in business.
The author hope the above would help readers better understand the background of the series of blog articles.
Should you have any further questions and comments, please let the author know. She would be delighted to know.
The next article is
Vol.4: What is Web 2.0? What Distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0?
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-is-web-20-what-distinguishes-web.html
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Vol.2: How Companies are Benefiting from Web 2.0?
This article is vol.2 of the “Future Direction of Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing“.
To follow vol.1 which was the introduction, how Web 2.0 is currently used by companies and how companies are benefiting from Web 2.0 is clarified first from the author’s viewpoint, from recent survey results of “How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results” and “Social Media’s Primary Use: Marketing” which was conducted by Bobson Executive Education & Mzinga, both issued in September, 2009.
1. Who Benefits From Web 2.0 Technologies?
It can be concluded from the survey results that it is IT executives in high tech/telecom industry of large companies in India or North America who benefit the most from using Web 2.0 technologies. The author feels that such people are probably what many of us imagine as someone who utilizes Web 2.0 the most.
1) Industry
The survey result concludes that high tech/telecom users benefit the most, followed by business/legal/ professional services, manufacturing and financial. Manufacturing and financial are about the same. To the author, the fact that high tech/telecom is the top industry is not surprising because they develop leading-edge IT and communication technology and services to lead the use of such technology and services to grow their own business.
The author find it logical that professional service comes next according to the survey because in general, services (e.g. convenience, cost competitiveness) are drastically improved with the use of IT, often to create a new business model and therefore is said to be of good affinity with Internet and web. IT and web cannot be used in the isolated virtual world but online & offline synergy concept needs to be applied even for Internet-oriented businesses. For example, Amazon’s business can be achieved by collaboration with transportation companies etc. The author feels this is one good reason why “clicks & mortar” (vs. “bricks & mortar” of old economy symbolized by manufacturing companies) concept of Charles Schwab was defined, and therefore finance is expected to benefit more.
2) Company Size
According to the survey results, companies with revenues exceeding $1 billion are likely to benefit than smaller companies. This is because big companies are likely to have more staff to manage Web 2.0 and the technology spreads very quickly among the social networks of these individuals. Also they tend to have more customers, in number and diversity, so they have more chance to gain benefits from using Web 2.0 technology.
The author strongly feels that very small companies should benefit from Web 2.0 as well because they are usually more flexible, and Web 2.0 can cost very little according to how they use. Small companies with little resources, for example, could decide to leverage technologies and services that cost very little such as blog, micro blogging (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and video services (e.g. YouTube), instead of developing a new system/software/programme from scratch that needs much investment. This is one reason why we find quite a few Internet venture business and (SOHO) individuals that are capable of generating revenue to be successful in business, which was not thought to be realistic in the old economy.
3) Region
From the survey results, India and North America enjoy customer benefit the most, and India and China enjoy benefits flowing from their interactions with customer and partners. This is logical for the author considering the mechanism of the global economy and how global companies operate in such an environment.
This is also in conformity with what is depicted in “The World Is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. The author would explain this from the fact that North America was the starter of the IT innovation and Internet business, and now India has abundant IT professionals and therefore many of IT services are outsourced to India. China has been said to be “the factory of the world” since the 1990s and in many cases, China is responsible for manufacturing part of a value chain of manufacturing companies, whether it is of a single company or a “networked company” consisting of multiple-companies of business partners.
2. In What Way Companies Are Benefiting Web 2.0?
The survey results draw conclusion that companies seem to gain measurable gains the most from customer-related purposes, especially in marketing. They also benefit from internal purposes and working with external partners/suppliers, especially in increasing speed of access to knowledge. The author would say that this is attributed to the characteristics of Internet and Web 2.0 in comparison to other traditional platform/media/tool, summarized with such key words as ubiquitous, 365 days/24 days, speed, connectivity and interactivity.
1) Internal Purpose
From the survey results, the author conclude that in short, benefit of internal purpose is increase in productivity and cost by internal collaboration and learning, and this is the objective of many internal IT projects in many companies. In addition, companies benefit the most from increasing speed of access to knowledge, followed by reducing communication costs, increasing speed of access to internal experts, and decreasing travel costs.
Moreover, from the survey results, the benefits are ensured if Web 2.0 is integrated into employees’ day-to-day work activities, senior leaders be the role modeling/championing use of technology, and informal incentives are provided.
2) Customer-Related Purpose
From the survey results the author feels that companies benefit from customer-related purpose the most, primarily in effectiveness and efficiency of marketing, i.e. activities engaged in the touch point with customers. Also, the author concluds that the benefits include increasing effectiveness of marketing (awareness which presumably include PR and advertising, consideration, conversion and loyalty), reducing marketing costs, reducing time to market for products/services, and increasing customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it can be said that reduce in marketing cost is presumably to include factors mentioned in internal purposes such as reducing communication costs, travel costs and operational costs.
In addition, it can be said from the survey results that the benefits are ensured, similarly to internal purposes, if Web 2.0 is integrated with other modes of customer interaction, Web 2.0 initiatives to customers is marketed, and informal incentives are provided.
3) Working With External Partners/Suppliers
According to the survey results, benefits from working with external partners/suppliers are basically the same with internal purpose. To the author, this is not surprising because external partners/suppliers can be said as members of networked company, all collaborating to create and provide value proposition to customers.
The survey results also indicates that the benefits are ensured, similarly to customer-related purposes, if Web 2.0 is integrated with other modes of partner/supplier interaction, participation of leading partners/suppliers/external experts to gain critical mass is ensured, Web 2.0 initiatives to partners/suppliers/suppliers/external partners is marketed, and informal incentives are provided.
3. How Companies Use Web 2.0 Technologies?
The author concludes from the survey results that companies usually use a mix of variety of Web 2.0 vehicles to multiply the opportunities for collaboration and to allow knowledge and information to spread quickly and effectively, for internal purposes, customer-related purposes and working with external partners/suppliers.
The author also concludes that for all three purposes, blogs, social networking, automatic information feeds of RSS, video sharing and wikis are widely used, which are the same tools that are popular among consumers. Also, web videos are becoming more frequently used with the technology improvements, enabling companies to produce and disseminate within organizations.
Now that the total picture of how companies currently use Web 2.0 is clarified, factors distinguishing Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 will be studied next.
References:-
How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Business_Technology/BT_Strategy/How_companies_are_benefiting_from_Web_20_McKinsey_Global_Survey_Results_2432
Social Media’s Primary Use: Marketing
http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2009/161/social-medias-primary-use-marketing
The web users who have read this article may be interested to read:-
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-direction-of-web-20-and-internet.html
To follow vol.1 which was the introduction, how Web 2.0 is currently used by companies and how companies are benefiting from Web 2.0 is clarified first from the author’s viewpoint, from recent survey results of “How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results” and “Social Media’s Primary Use: Marketing” which was conducted by Bobson Executive Education & Mzinga, both issued in September, 2009.
1. Who Benefits From Web 2.0 Technologies?
It can be concluded from the survey results that it is IT executives in high tech/telecom industry of large companies in India or North America who benefit the most from using Web 2.0 technologies. The author feels that such people are probably what many of us imagine as someone who utilizes Web 2.0 the most.
1) Industry
The survey result concludes that high tech/telecom users benefit the most, followed by business/legal/ professional services, manufacturing and financial. Manufacturing and financial are about the same. To the author, the fact that high tech/telecom is the top industry is not surprising because they develop leading-edge IT and communication technology and services to lead the use of such technology and services to grow their own business.
The author find it logical that professional service comes next according to the survey because in general, services (e.g. convenience, cost competitiveness) are drastically improved with the use of IT, often to create a new business model and therefore is said to be of good affinity with Internet and web. IT and web cannot be used in the isolated virtual world but online & offline synergy concept needs to be applied even for Internet-oriented businesses. For example, Amazon’s business can be achieved by collaboration with transportation companies etc. The author feels this is one good reason why “clicks & mortar” (vs. “bricks & mortar” of old economy symbolized by manufacturing companies) concept of Charles Schwab was defined, and therefore finance is expected to benefit more.
2) Company Size
According to the survey results, companies with revenues exceeding $1 billion are likely to benefit than smaller companies. This is because big companies are likely to have more staff to manage Web 2.0 and the technology spreads very quickly among the social networks of these individuals. Also they tend to have more customers, in number and diversity, so they have more chance to gain benefits from using Web 2.0 technology.
The author strongly feels that very small companies should benefit from Web 2.0 as well because they are usually more flexible, and Web 2.0 can cost very little according to how they use. Small companies with little resources, for example, could decide to leverage technologies and services that cost very little such as blog, micro blogging (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and video services (e.g. YouTube), instead of developing a new system/software/programme from scratch that needs much investment. This is one reason why we find quite a few Internet venture business and (SOHO) individuals that are capable of generating revenue to be successful in business, which was not thought to be realistic in the old economy.
3) Region
From the survey results, India and North America enjoy customer benefit the most, and India and China enjoy benefits flowing from their interactions with customer and partners. This is logical for the author considering the mechanism of the global economy and how global companies operate in such an environment.
This is also in conformity with what is depicted in “The World Is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. The author would explain this from the fact that North America was the starter of the IT innovation and Internet business, and now India has abundant IT professionals and therefore many of IT services are outsourced to India. China has been said to be “the factory of the world” since the 1990s and in many cases, China is responsible for manufacturing part of a value chain of manufacturing companies, whether it is of a single company or a “networked company” consisting of multiple-companies of business partners.
2. In What Way Companies Are Benefiting Web 2.0?
The survey results draw conclusion that companies seem to gain measurable gains the most from customer-related purposes, especially in marketing. They also benefit from internal purposes and working with external partners/suppliers, especially in increasing speed of access to knowledge. The author would say that this is attributed to the characteristics of Internet and Web 2.0 in comparison to other traditional platform/media/tool, summarized with such key words as ubiquitous, 365 days/24 days, speed, connectivity and interactivity.
1) Internal Purpose
From the survey results, the author conclude that in short, benefit of internal purpose is increase in productivity and cost by internal collaboration and learning, and this is the objective of many internal IT projects in many companies. In addition, companies benefit the most from increasing speed of access to knowledge, followed by reducing communication costs, increasing speed of access to internal experts, and decreasing travel costs.
Moreover, from the survey results, the benefits are ensured if Web 2.0 is integrated into employees’ day-to-day work activities, senior leaders be the role modeling/championing use of technology, and informal incentives are provided.
2) Customer-Related Purpose
From the survey results the author feels that companies benefit from customer-related purpose the most, primarily in effectiveness and efficiency of marketing, i.e. activities engaged in the touch point with customers. Also, the author concluds that the benefits include increasing effectiveness of marketing (awareness which presumably include PR and advertising, consideration, conversion and loyalty), reducing marketing costs, reducing time to market for products/services, and increasing customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it can be said that reduce in marketing cost is presumably to include factors mentioned in internal purposes such as reducing communication costs, travel costs and operational costs.
In addition, it can be said from the survey results that the benefits are ensured, similarly to internal purposes, if Web 2.0 is integrated with other modes of customer interaction, Web 2.0 initiatives to customers is marketed, and informal incentives are provided.
3) Working With External Partners/Suppliers
According to the survey results, benefits from working with external partners/suppliers are basically the same with internal purpose. To the author, this is not surprising because external partners/suppliers can be said as members of networked company, all collaborating to create and provide value proposition to customers.
The survey results also indicates that the benefits are ensured, similarly to customer-related purposes, if Web 2.0 is integrated with other modes of partner/supplier interaction, participation of leading partners/suppliers/external experts to gain critical mass is ensured, Web 2.0 initiatives to partners/suppliers/suppliers/external partners is marketed, and informal incentives are provided.
3. How Companies Use Web 2.0 Technologies?
The author concludes from the survey results that companies usually use a mix of variety of Web 2.0 vehicles to multiply the opportunities for collaboration and to allow knowledge and information to spread quickly and effectively, for internal purposes, customer-related purposes and working with external partners/suppliers.
The author also concludes that for all three purposes, blogs, social networking, automatic information feeds of RSS, video sharing and wikis are widely used, which are the same tools that are popular among consumers. Also, web videos are becoming more frequently used with the technology improvements, enabling companies to produce and disseminate within organizations.
Now that the total picture of how companies currently use Web 2.0 is clarified, factors distinguishing Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 will be studied next.
References:-
How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Business_Technology/BT_Strategy/How_companies_are_benefiting_from_Web_20_McKinsey_Global_Survey_Results_2432
Social Media’s Primary Use: Marketing
http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2009/161/social-medias-primary-use-marketing
The web users who have read this article may be interested to read:-
http://megumioyanagi.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-direction-of-web-20-and-internet.html
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