| See also:- |
Press Release FAQ's - How to
write them, where to distribute them etc
article:- PR
Strategies: Remember, the web has no memory!
article:- What's a Good
Click Rate for a Banner Ad?
article:- Aspects of Web
Advertising
article:- Are Sun
Microsystems' Days Numbered?
news on MarketingViews,
news on STORAGEsearch,
news in the SPARC
Product Directory, |
In the
early 1990's we did some brand awareness surveys in the Sun Microsystems server
market which threw up some surprising results about magazine readership. People
did read a lot of computer magazines (typically 5 to 10) but the so called #1
Sun title was not read by most readers. That's because the readership of each
print publication was small relative to the size of the market it addressed. And
cost factors led to "islands of publishing."
During the last
6 years, the web has changed computer publishing forever. But many marketers
have not changed their thinking to reflect the new media model. In any given
segment, like the Sun market or storage market, the number of "significant"
publications has declined. That's because readers drift towards the top 2 or 3
best web sites. The others, as we've already seen in the Sun market (and are
starting to see in storage now), eventually disappear. The successful portals
will have much large readerships than any of the publications which preceded
them in print. Think of it as "continents of publishing."
Readers have also changed their habits. Most of them only use 1 portal
for any given subject.
For you as an advertiser, or PR person or just someone who wants to
know how to promote your company better, here's what it means. If you focus
your advertising and PR communications on just one publication, you have be very
sure that it's the #1 in your vertical segment, and even that may not be enough.
Because the #2 may also represents a lot of people.
Nowadays you'll typically find dozens of "vertical" portals
covering a focused subject like computer storage, CRM or Linux. But the #1 site
may have a readership which is larger than the next 10 sites added together.
You're not going to find out about the other vertical sites in your target
market without doing some research, and if you're getting good results from your
promotion activity on a portal which may be the #2 or #3 in your industry,
there's a whole mass of people out there who aren't seeing the effort you've
invested into promoting your business.
If you're familiar with the
concept of segmenting your market, into segments defined by how you market to
them, such as end-users (by market, size and geography), resellers, new
customers, lapsed customers, etc, then another new segment model you should
think about is segmenting your market by the portals they use.
When
you communicate to a user via a traditional marketing method like a mailshot or
trade show, then readers of a portal who see a lot of advertising from your
company are going to react differently to readers of another portal who rarely
see anything about your company. If that 'invisible' segment represents 500,000
or more potential customers, then the consequence of ignoring them is a major
hole in your potentially available market.
Fortunately, there is an
easy cure:- invest in more advertising. But you'll have to start with some
market research and create your own database of vertical portals in your market
and rank them according to readership size.
see also:-
Storage Portals Directory |
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