The Internet Second
By Nancy Vinkler, WSI Internet Consulting & Education
Are your prospects and clients using the Internet to research, learn about, and purchase products and services? In fact, Internet users are not only using the Internet to purchase catalog-based products via a credit card and a shopping cart, but they are also using it to do comparison shopping of features, benefits, and competitive differentiation, and to communicate with vendors. They are doing comparison shopping (surfing) to help them determine if they should do business with one specific firm over another firm.
However, a more relevant question is: Are your prospects and clients using the Internet to communicate with experts like someone with your level of expertise? Users are finding that the Internet provides quick and cost-effective ways to communicate with firms that they want to do business with. It helps reduce expenses spent on travel, time, and energy spent on voice mail tag, and budget dollars on marketing costs. It provides them access to intellectual capital and timely resources such that they can solve business problems, get questions answered, and remove the barriers to market for their products and services.
So, the most significant question is: are your competitors using the Internet to fulfill the above needs? Some facts about the Internet marketplace to help you decide are:
- The number of people actively using the Internet in October 2005 was 310,038,240 people and in June 2006 the active users rose to 317,938,289 people, an increase of 2.5 percent.
- The average duration a user viewed a Web page was 43 seconds in June 2006, up from 42 seconds in October 2005.
- In the month of June 2006, the term “legal services” was searched for about 125,000 times; the term “catering services” was searched for about 220,000 times; the term “accounting services” was searched for about 159,000 times, versus about 135,000 times in September 2005.
- In the U.S., in June 2006, the average time spent on the Internet was approximately 2.7 hours per day at work and approximately one hour per day at home.
- 10-15 percent of potential Internet users are disabled and not being served by the Internet.
- The amount of the average marketing budget allotted for the Internet is between 18 and 39 percent.
As the universe of Internet users grows larger and more active, and the technology becomes more affordable, more and more firms are ensuring that their operational budgets include money for Internet marketing and communications methods to reach active Internet users. These four factors, 1) more users, 2) more active Internet usage, 3) affordable technology, and 4) operational budget, create a synergistic circle of influence positively sparking the Internet as a communications vehicle. The result is that Internet marketing and communications methods are evolving rapidly beyond “brochureware” Web sites (which communicate information in a single directional) as follows.
- Blogging: Instantaneous, daily sharing of information and opinions via a Web site.
- Collaboration community: A group of people with common goals sharing information, resources, and expertise via a Web site.
- Web conferencing: Multiple viewers sharing audio and PowerPoint presentations at the same time.
- E-learning: Creating online learning units, curriculum, and student communities to train employees, clients, and prospects on company policies and benefits, ethics and diversity compliance, pre-requisite training and testing, new products and services, and on-the-job assignments and testing.
- Intranets: Private online work areas where files and directories can be shared, and projects tracked.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software: Documenting prospect/client activities such as when contacted, what was discussed, depository of proposals, contracts, presentations, spreadsheets, and documents provided.
- E-Newsletters using Advanced Targeted Marketing Technology: Regularly sending personalized information to targeted niches using email within the CAN SPAM law requirements.
- Video e-mail: E-mails delivered in a multi-media format of audio and video picture.
- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP): Using the desktop as a telephone with audio sent via the Internet.
- Podcasting: Allowing the user to download audio and video information into a portable device and then listen detached from the Internet.
- Instant messaging: The ability to send text messages from one desktop to another and communicate real-time.
- Web accessibility: ensuring that your Web site and Internet communications can be used by everyone regardless of ability, disability, or device mobility.
The above methods can help firms communicate more often with their prospects and clients. They can also make it easier and more cost effective for their prospects and clients to communicate with them. Internet marketing and communications methods originally focused on brochureware are moving from:
- Informative to interactive
- Static photos to multimedia
- One-way read only to multi-directional communications with the user
- Open to both the public and private
- Simple structure to database driven
Prominent reasons that firms are using Internet marketing and communications include:
- New customer lead generation
- Brand awareness and recognition
- Improved customer relationships
- Cross-sell and up-sell to existing customers
- Web traffic generation
- Customer education and support
- Content distribution
- Event promotion
- Partner channel education
- Competitive messaging and communications
- Product sales and to move excess inventory
All successful businesses continually plan and re-invent themselves. As the Internet marketplace evolves, both product- and services-oriented firms need to take a hard look at the communicational trends in this new marketplace. In this age of the Internet second, a stagnant Internet strategy equates to your competition moving light years ahead in the Internet marketplace.
Nancy Vinkler, a certified WSI (We Simplify the Internet) eCommerce Internet Business specialist, works with small/medium companies who are frustrated because their Web solutions are like billboards in the desert. E-Business solutions include Web design, development, hosting, optimization, conferencing, e-Learning, e-Marketing, e-Information delivery, and e-Commerce. Visit www.WSIsimplyROI.com, write ngvinkler@WSIsimplyROI.com, or call 610-650-0227 for more information.