Internet Marketing

Examining the use of Internet for marketing research and how the Internet can be used for promotion

Internet Marketing

Assignment #1 Vit Horky

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Student Class: Semester: Due Date:

Vit Horky Internet Marketing Spring 2008 Sep 30 2008

Lecturer : Program: Actual

Jeff Buehler HND Business Sep 30 2008

Submission Date:

Evidence Produced Eg. Report

Location Handed to Lecturer/ emailed to Lecturer

Student Declaration I declare that the work contained in this assignment was researched and prepared by me, except where acknowledgement of sources is made. I understand that the college can and will test any work submitted by me for plagiarism. Note: The attachment of this statement on any electronically submitted assignments will be deemed to have the same authority as a signed statement

Signature: Date:

Sep 30 2008

A separate feedback sheet will be returned to you after your work has been graded. Refer to your Student Manual for the Appeals Procedure if you have concerns about the grading decision.

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Sep 30, 2008 FROM: Vit Horky, a Student of Prague College TO: Jeff Buehler, a Lecturer of Prague College

Author: Vit Horky Date: Sep 30, 2008 Word count: 2,732 Lecture: Internet Marketing Semester: Spring 2008

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Table of Contents What is the internet marketing.............................................................................................6 Internet versus traditional media................................................................................... .......................6 What is a market research.......................................................................................... .........................7 What is a marketing research............................................................................................................. ..7 How information about existing customers can be captured through Internet......................................7 Market research benefits on potential new customers.......................................... ...............................8 Market research for International markets.................................................................................. ..........8 Internet promotion opportunities....................................................................................................... ....9 Examples of product and service internet promotion.................................................................... ......10 Product website...................................................................................................... ........................10 Search Engines records............................................................................................................. .....10 Online catalogue record............................................................................................... ...................11 Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising....................................................................................................... 11 Partnerships and sponsorships.............................................................................................. .........13 Advertising models..................................................................................................................... ........13 Affiliate models........................................................................................................................... ........14 Why to be member of affiliate advertising?............................................................ .........................14 Google AdSense................................................................................................................. ............15 What are the benefits for small businesses?............................................................................. ......15 Social Media marketing and social networks............................................................................... .......16 What is social marketing............................................................................................... ..................16 How the small companies can benefit?................................................................................... ........16 The options of social marketing.......................................................................... ............................16 Using advertising on social networks.......................................................................... ....................18 Where you can target Czech customers?................................................................. ......................19 Conclusion................................................................................................. .........................20 References............................................................................................................ ..............21 Bibliography.................................................................................................................... ....22

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EXAMINING

INTERNET FOR MARKETING THE INTERNET CAN BE USED

THE USE OF

RESEARCH AND HOW FOR PROMOTION

A situation: I am a Internet Marketing consultant hired to provide my work to a group of venture capitalists interested in investing in a social networking Website. They need to know how to arrange marketing research and promotion using internet.

What is the internet marketing Internet marketing is built on the principles of classical marketing. Internet marketing is, according to Dave Chaffey et al, 2006, using Internet and related digital technologies in order to achieve marketing objectives. The same rource explains that Internet Marketing benefits are among offline media especially on the opportunities to: a. Sell - Grow sales a. Serve - Add Value (extra benefits) a. Speak - Get closer to customers a. Save - Save costs a. Sizzle - Extend the brand online

Internet versus traditional media Internet as an online medium has variety of characteristics that other media, the offline ones, can not compete with. Some of them are: 1) High interactivity 2) Easy to update 3) Easy to link with other information and to create a networks 4) International character, accessibility 5) Low degree of censorship 6) Personalization – an opportunity to let the visitors to say or see what they want

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Every benefits have also their negatives and the Internet is not a exception, therefore there are some of the CONs among the offline media mentioned as well: 1) Unsufficial reliability of information from some online resources 2) Accessibility only on places where internet signal is available 3) Unstructured Internet content; difficulties to find relevant information

What is a market research A Market research is usual and essential part of every marketing plan because the market research helps to get to know the customers, their needs and expectations as well as it helps to identify factors on the market that influences the business performance. Market research are activities undertaken by an organization to determine the characteristics of its customers and competitors, as well as the demand for its products or services.

What is a marketing research A marketing research is basically such a research that will provide any information that can be used for marketing purposes of the particular organization. It is a research conducted in the name of producing better marketing results. It usually includes market research, consumer research, and product research. Marketing research covers a wider

range of activities. While it may involve market research, marketing research is a more general systematic process that can be applied to a variety of marketing problems, according to Internet Center for Management and Business Administration, Inc., 2007.

How information about existing customers can be captured through Internet There are several ways how to capture such information about our existing customers that can be used for further improvement of business performance. There is high importance to evaluate which of the technics should be used. There can be for example following technics for information gathering about existing customers used: 1) Enterprise resource planning system automatically connected to Internet website of the organization

7 2) A connection of electronical shop on the organizations website to ERP system of the organication 3) Extranet sections for the existing customers on the corporate website. Any move can be monitored and evaluated. 4) Connection of electronic shop or extranet sections to the Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) 5) Primary research (questionnaires) conducted by the organization using contacts with existing customers. 6) Polls, online discussion, online technical support – everything connected to CRM system

Market research benefits on potential new customers The biggest benefit of well-conducted market research is the informational outcome that the research gives the organization. The research can find important information where to look for new customers, which customers should the company avoid or how to better target marketing campaigns in order to acquire new customers.

Market research for International markets The market research can be prepared not only for domestic market but also on the international market that covers markets in more than one country. The basic structure of the market research is usually the same, however the market research conducted on the international market have some differences. Information about the customers has to be divided according to the countries they live/work, however there has to be also used statistics that cover the international market as one entity. Other information about the market sizes, market characteristics, environmental differences and other facts are usually gathered and evaluated both individualy and together in order to extract such information that can be used for shaping successful marketing campaigns.

Internet promotion opportunities There are several tactics and opportunities how the Internet can be used as a medium for promotion. Here are some of the opportunities identified:

8 1) A corporate website with overall information about the company and its products 2) A product website 3) Online electronical shop 4) Search engine marketing (SEM) including Search Engine optimization (SEO) 5) Online catalogues 6) Portals and vertical portals (vortals) 7) Banner and video advertising 8) Pay-per-click and contextual advertising 9) Affiliate programs 10) Viral marketing 11) Social media marketing 12) E-mail marketing 13) Partnerships, sponsorships

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Examples of product and service internet promotion The products and services are on the Internet communicated usually by the promotion ways that has been identified in the list above. There are examples of promotion of products presented below:

Product website For a wholesaler of optical frames

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:11 on www.svetovebryle.cz

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Search Engines records For webdesign services

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:09 on www.google.cz

Online catalogue record For an architectural studio

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:14 on www.firmy.cz

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising For webdesign companies

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Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:19 on www.seznam.cz

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Partnerships and sponsorships Of a webdesign company

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:20 on www.inspiro-solutions.cz

Advertising models Advertising opportunities on Internet have different characteristics according to specific technics that has been used. There can be following types of advertising identified: 1) Banner advertising 2) Video advertising 3) Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) 4) Contextual advertising (can be part of PPC or banner and video advertising)

13 5) Link swaps and partnership icons 6) Email advertising in newsletters

Affiliate models An Affiliate program is an e-commerce program under which owners of one website (for instance, a website about mountain biking) send users to another website (such as an on-line bookstore) to purchase related items. The owner of the target site shares its profits from the sales with the owner of the referring site (The Marketing Association of New Zealand, 2008)

Why to be member of affiliate advertising? You can increase sales of your products:

Start to provide affiliate programs with information on your website how to join to the programs where members will advertise your products/services and get fee from each of the sale that has been processed because of their websites. However, the affiliate programs are sophistical systems where lot of potential problems has to be proactively avoided or minimalized and therefore the idea of starting the affiliate programs should be supported by detailed analysis of opportunities and competition that is usually created by professional internet marketers of webdesign consultants. You want to increase income by offering place for an affiliate adverts:

The affiliate programs has no affiliate network on the Czech and Slovak market and therefore to find an appropriate affiliate program that can be beneficial for you website is difficult to find. However, the administrator of website Webtrh.cz, Czech web market blog, started to list the maximum of currently active affiliate opportunities distributed to different categories, like a Travelling, Webhosting, Lifestyle, Electronics etc. More information on: http://webtrh.cz/16-ceske-affiliateprogramy?s=57acda051583254d4c0b44509578848e& Czech language only; Last edited by tracy : 27.5.2008

Google AdSense

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AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful. Resource: ()

What are the benefits for small businesses? You can put the Google Adsense bar to your website within couple of minutes and not to take care much about what kind of advertising will be placed on your site. The ads are usually relevant to the business area your website is focused. But, the Google Adsense has also couple of CONs: 1) The ads can compete to your business 2) The ads will increase the exit rates of your visitors/potential customers 3) The placement of Google Adsense to your website is not ensure an income – your website has to have substantional visit rate and focus to such an industry where adverts can be effective and attractive for the visitors of your website

Generally can be said that lot of start-ups or sole traders placed the Google Adsense to their sites with hopes that the incomes from the affiliate programs will increase their profit. The praxis is usually that the adverts on the web with traffic up to 200 unique visitors a day will not even pay for the webhosting costs of the website. Therefore the placement of Google Adsense or similar affiliate program should be discussed with professionals who can analyze objectively if the affiliate program is effective way for your business.

Social Media marketing and social networks What is social marketing Social marketing has its roots in the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviors. Kotler and Andreasen define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society." ()

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How the small companies can benefit? The small business can be in an advantage ahead of large companies in the area of social media marketing. What has to be the input of small company into socialbased internet activities? You need to invest such time and effort that will be at least equal to the return of investment. The return of investment can be shaped into increasing brand awareness, website traffic or search engine optimization, that has also an impact to the previously mentioned traffic.

The options of social marketing A small business or self-employed person can use following tactics how to increase business success: Resource: based on () 1. Comment on other blogs. –

You have great chance to increase direct traffic to you website when you comment by putting interesting and professional opinion into a discussion. It is always important not to forget to add after your name the website address or short sentence about your company.

2. Make and share videos –

The current phenomenon of watching and uploading videos on Internet can be beneficial to your business as well. Shoot a short video (usually up to 3 minutes) with usage of your products in interesting way and put it on video-sharing servers like Youtube.com (www.youtube.com) or Stream in the Czech market. The video can be easily seen by large number of visitors that will recognize your brand, your product and they have a chance to get a positive opinion about your company which can potentially conclude in a purchase.

3. Take and share photos

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Using Rajče (www.rajce.net); Flickr (www.flickr.com) or similar sites for presenting interesting photos of your products that shows an unique selling proposition can increase direct traffic to your business website

4. Join groups & mailing lists

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Building a network of contacts that knows your company and your products means consequently that these people can easily consciously or unconsciously prefer your company before others, because simply they know you. Moreover, people in groups can share their opinions on your products and increase the positive branding impacts.

5. Join social networks such as Facebook or Lide.cz –

Social networks can be defined as a network that refers to a number of websites designed to create online communities. These communities can be focused on different goals, areas of interests or just with a focus to let the people interact.

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What is the potential benefit for small companies? You can create your own group on Facebook and present your product, publish interesting news and build a community of interested people. These people can increase the number of your potential customers as well as to broaden positive opinions on your products. These social networks also offer usually a space for advertising that can be highly targeted as the social network providers usually knows a relatively detailed information about their members.

6. Start a blog As McGee notes to this issue, to start blogging is a great way to open up a dialogue with your customers, and that connection is the reason social marketing exists. The blogging servers are usually provided for free – an example is Wordpress (www.wordpress.com), where you can create your own blog and start to publish a content almost immediately. But the one eternal truth exists – you have to publish on Internet something interesting that will build a traffic to your site and raise a positive opinion on your company otherwise a blogging for business purposes will be probably only waste of time.

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Using advertising on social networks In addition, there are a variety of social network types, including sites where the main purpose is social networking, sites where social networking is one of several activities and vertical social networks. Additionally, there are marketer-specific social networks, according to (). The table below shows the rapid progress in social networks advertising within four years.

Image 1 - Worldwide Online Social Network Ad Spending, 2006 & 2010 (milions), according to ()

Where you can target Czech customers? There are different social networks, where Czech citizens are getting used to browse on regular basis. The list below provides the basic overview of the most visited social networks by Czech people. Examples:

1) Facebook Facebook is a global social network site that connects people – it allows them to interact between each other; people can find their friend from real life or join existing groups of their workplace, school or hobby related groups. The Facebook interacts with application for uploading and sharing photos, videos or other media content that makes communication easier. The Facebook has been launched in Czech localization in the 2007 that created more open environment for joining of Czech people into a Facebook network.

2) Libimseti.cz

18 The Czech server libimseti.cz has been created as a site for meeting new people and for rating photos of other people. The server provides its own radio station, video chat rooms and it organizes face-to-face parties in variety of Czech cities. The community has around 950,000 members – daily logged-in users around 180,000 persons, according to ().

3) Lide.cz The young generation of 12 – 19 years makes a majority of members on the Lide.cz, as the () presents,the social network site provided by Seznam a.s. The server website is divided into a number of categories including a chat, discussion boards, dating and blogs. The Seznam, The owner, offers a variety of advertising spaces on the website; the product list portfolio is provided on O nás, link: http://onas.szn.cz/onas/files/pdf/prod/prod_lide-hry-spoluzacihoroskopy.pdf?2007-01-31

4) Spoluzaci.cz It is a popular community site on which the users find a database of school classes of primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities in the Czech Republic. Therefore, the target group is structured into different age categories. The attendance of the website was in the year 2006 around 400,000 users.

CONCLUSION Internet as a worldwide online medium is accessible for anybody anywhere and social media marketing gets people together more than ever. However, the business opportunity of social network development is influenced by variety of very important factors that makes the topic difficult to evaluate without indepth research. Therefore a sophisticated marketing research should be conducted and its outcomes should be used for marketing plan and business plan of the Website. Assuming that the Website will be

19 accessible from more than just one country there is high importance to conduct a market research for international market as well as to evaluate every opportunity how to promote the Website on Internet.

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REFERENCES eMarketer Inc. Accessed: September 28,2008 Available on: [http://www.emarketer.com/ ]

Google Inc. Accessed: September 28,2008 Available on: [http://www.google.com/ ]

Internet Center for Management and Business Administration, Inc. Accessed: September 28,2008 Available on: [http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/research/ ]

Inspiro Solutions website Accessed: September 28,2008 Available on: [http://www.inspiro-solutions.cz/ ]

Seznam, a.s. Accessed: September 28,2008 Available on: [http://www.seznam.cz/ ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY Dave Chaffey et al, 2007, Internet Marketing, 3rd edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, United States of America

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Edexcel HNC & HND Business, 2004, Marketing. BPP Professional Education, London

Edexcel HNC & HND Business, 2004, Organisation and Behaviour. BPP Professional Education, London

Kotler P & Keller K L, 2006, Marketing Management, 12th edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, United States of America