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"Effective Use
Of Online Marketing"
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GEORGE MATYJEWICZ is
Chief Marketing Officer of GAP Enterprises, LLC a management and marketing consulting firm
based in New York.
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- George embraced the Internet in
1989 and the WWW when it first came into being, and has developed
e-commerce and marketing strategies for some of the top Internet
sites. He is an active member on over 130 discussion lists;
owner/moderator of
E-Tailer's
Digest, a discussion list for retailers in 49 countries (online
and in print); guest moderator of three other lists -- all geared to
keep finger on the pulse of the Internet.
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- For the past five years, George
has had a column in Gifts & Decorative Accessories magazine, and is
widely quoted and featured in many publications. He has been writing
press releases for over 20 years, and, for the past four years has
been distributing them online via the firm's Automated Press Release
service which reaches over 10,000 media contacts (the largest and
most diverse on the Net).
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- He has been a guest speaker at
over 400 conferences and business meetings since 1983.
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- Contact information:
- George Matyjewicz
- GAP Enterprises, LLC
- Harmon Cove Towers
- Secaucus, NJ 07094
- Tel: (201) 866-8199
- Fax: (201)221-7689
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One
of the unique features of the Internet are discussion
lists where folks who have like interests have online
discussions. These are not to be confused with chat
rooms, which are normally geared towards individuals who
want to have a one-on-one (or one-on-many) online chat.
With discussion lists, a list member posts a question,
which is seen by all members, and anybody can respond.
There are over 90,000 discussion lists and they
come in four varieties:
1).
Open, unmoderated list where any member can post without
moderator intervention. Members received each individual
post, or may choose to have a digest which accumulates 10
or 20 posts (or one day's).
2). Open, moderated list as above, except that the
moderator reviews each post and rejects those that are not
appropriate. The quality of the list content is much
better.
3). Moderated, digest list, where all posts come to the
moderator who assembles them into an organized digest for
distribution.
4). A
newsletter where the publisher assembles material of
interest to list members.
The merits
of each list type will not be discussed here, as they
each serve a unique purpose. Rather we will discuss the
advertising opportunities. These lists usually have
sponsors who pay to have an ad running in each issue (or
post, in the case of open list).
The advantages:
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A highly
focused group
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The ad
usually has more content - up to 20 lines of 60 characters
each
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It is a
way of A giving
back to the community who benefits from the list content.
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You know the
demographics of the list
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List owners
usually promote you in addition to the ad
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List members
will spread the word about your products to other lists
(they usually subscribe to at least 12 lists, with many
subscribing to over 100)
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The
disadvantages:
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Cannot
display logo or graphics
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List
sponsorships cost anywhere from $2 per CPM (thousand of
impressions, i.e., a digest sent three times a week to 2,000
members would have 6,000 impressions or 6 CPM) to $40 CPM for
highly specialized lists.
Bartering is very common online. You may place somebody's
ad on your site in exchange for placing your ad on
theirs. Or you may get free admission and advertising at
a trade show in exchange for promoting their show.
Bartering is a win-win situation and should be considered
whenever possible. They cost nothing (except maybe time),
as they are usually an exchange of goods or services.
Affiliate
programs are very similar to sales rep organizations
offline. A company signs up to become an affiliate and
displays your banner on their site. When somebody
purchases from you, the affiliate is paid a commission.
There
are two major affiliate control groups (BeFree and
Linkshare) who handle all the tracking of sales, site
co-branding, banner ads, html coding, commission paying,
etc. Linkshare recently introduced a B2B affiliate
arrangement. They charge a fee for their service, (3% of
sales under $750,000 per month; 2% over $750,000), plus a
license fee of $20,000.
Affiliates
are an excellent way to build a database very quickly.
E-Toys obtained 2 2
million customers in
18 months mainly through affiliates. You should use
affiliates to create an awareness in your products and to
help build a list of prospects.
Keep in
mind the Internet is a 24/7 operation - 24 hours a day, 7
days a week. Folks may visit you any time of the day or
night. So you need to be prepared to respond. You should
have autoresponders available whenever possible. They
allow you to communicate with the visitor without any
human intervention. Autoresponders can be of two types:
1.
Automatically
from your site - as soon as a visitor hits your site, an
e-mail is sent out.
2. Automatically
from your e-mail program. Some programs (like Eudora that
I use) will allow you to automatically send a message
whenever something is received to a special address. If
you sent a message to fpc@gapent.com, for example, you got
this report automatically when I received your message,
and when it filtered to a special box I set up.
Always
respond to visitors to your site within 24 hours or less!
And, be sure you have contact information easily available
on your site, i.e., name, address, telephone number, etc.
10.
E-Mail Marketing
Targeted is one of the most effective methods of online
marketing. You can expect a 15-35% return. But don't
go out and purchase one of those A1 million e-addresses
for $1.98" lists. They are spam! Instead find companies
who sell "opt
in" lists and preferably double opt-in. An opt-in list
means I signed up to receive something from you (i.e. I
opted in). Double opt-in means I supposedly opted in, and
to be sure I did it, you send me a confirmation, to which
I respond. Hence double opt-in.
There
are many resources available for e-marketing. One is
Shannon Kinnard's book "Effective
E-Mail Marketing"
available at
Amazon or at
http://www.ideastation.com And there are
discussion lists covering the subject, like The
E-Marketing Digest
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