by David Radin
You wouldn't walk into a crowded hotel meeting room, put a piece of paper on the table, and walk out expecting to have reached your audience, would you? No, you wouldn't. Yet that's pretty much what you're doing whenever you practice "Internet Presence."
Internet Presence, simply stated, is when you put an electronic "billboard" on the Internet, either by installing your own World- Wide-Web server, or by renting space on someone else's server. By placing your billboard on the Internet, it becomes accessible to everyone on the net. [The exact number of Internet users is still somewhat speculative. I've seen estimates as large as 30 million. In any case, it's a very large number.]
Sure, when you practice Internet Presence, you make your information accessible. But does that mean that everybody will see it? More importantly, will the most likely buyers of your product see it? Probably not. It takes more than Internet Presence to succeed in Internet marketing. Just like in the real world, you need to target the precise audience that you expect to buy your product.
Putting your information on the Internet is the easy part. It's a straight forward technical issue. The real tough part is getting to the right audience, and getting them to visit your sight. (Remember, there are rules of netiquette in the electronic world. If you break the rules, you'll get flamed -- or worse.)
Finding your audience via Internet is similar to finding it via print, radio, television or other method. When you choose your print media, for instance, you select the types of publications that your prospect is most likely to read, then put forth your most compelling case, hopefully in a portion of the book that is keyed to your audience. You even pay extra for preferred positions in the book, such as inside front cover or adjacent to related editorial.
In the real world and on the Internet, getting to the right audience implies that you know where your audience can be found. There are 25,000 domains on the Internet, and your audience might be lurking in any of those 25,000 locations. Of course, you also have many print choices, too. But your print choices are summarized by printed publications such as Standard Rate and Data Service (SRDS) and the circulation numbers of many printed publications are audited by independent companies. On the Internet, there's no such luck. There are a handful of servers that attract large audiences who want to find pointers to other locations. But those servers are crowded; and your message can easily be lost. There are also timing issues, since most of the information on those servers turns over frequently.
So your game plan for Internet marketing must include a large component aimed at finding your qualified market and drawing your prospects to your site. It's not easy. It takes patience and vigilance. When you submit pointer information to some of the heavily used sites, it may take weeks to get the pointer you want. I know people who have waited as long as 90 days to get their announcements printed in the Mosaic What's New page, although the time has shrunk dramatically, and should now only take you a few weeks. Certainly you should take advantage of the obvious opportunities like what's new [now there are several], CERN, and MIT's Businesses on the Net. But you should also seek out the less obvious places like other WWW servers that attract audiences similar to the one you seek, and newsgroups. On the net, some of the pointers that you can control the best, are placements within the on-line publications like GNN, and Stellar On-line. These and other publications allow you to place your own advertisement within the publications, so you determine the content. They're targeted at certain markets, so you'll be able to purchase "advertising space" within the appropriate section of the publication to appeal to your audience. The publications also pre-release editorial calendars for interested parties. Whenever related articles are published, you gain the added benefit of being easily available to your target reader as soon as he has finished reading the article.
Don't feel that you need to stay on the Internet. Find ways to place your pointers on proprietary on-line services such as CompuServe, America On-line, and Prodigy. Starting in 1995, these services will deliver a large WWW audience. And by all means, include your Universal Resource Locator (URL) -- a.k.a. your WWW address -- in your print advertising, press releases, product literature and trade show booths. The more people you can point to your WWW address, the better it will serve you.
As I said earlier, this requires vigilance. First, new servers are being added daily. So you need to find those that are targeted at your audience. Second, the Internet community is expanding so rapidly that you need to consistently update your announcements to reach new users, even through the same entry points. Expect to spend hours every week to find complementary and competing servers on the net. Add sufficient hours to hold e-mail discussions with the web masters and e-mail list managers.
The goal is to attract individuals and organizations who can buy or recommend your product, not to attract every Tom, Dick, and Mary on the Internet. Use the Internet to target your audience much like you use other media. That's the way to maximize your success.
David Radin is president of
Marketing Masters, a firm that helps companies target their markets via
Internet and via national seminar marketing programs. He is also publisher of
Stellar On-line, a series of targeted World-Wide-Web publications.
Reach
him by e-mail
.
His book, Building A Successful Software Business (O'Reilly &
Associates; ISBN 1-56592-064-3) can be found in most book store chains or in the
O'Reilly catalog.
For information about Stellar On-line or how Marketing Masters can help you make your Internet marketing more successful, send e-mail to sales@mmasters.com or call the sales department at 412-341-1990.