STANFORD,
Calif.- Feb. 21, 2000
How to Develop Brand, Traffic,
and Distribution on the Internet
- In in one of the first comprehensive books about online
marketing, Principles
of Internet Marketing, Stanford Business School faculty member Ward
Hanson lays out the strengths and weaknesses of Internet technology, how it can
generate immediate benefits, and how it can cause a company to rethink its
entire marketing organization. Now in use at MIT, University of Chicago, and
Stanford among more than 40 colleges, the books is also aimed at anyone in
business trying to harness the power of the Internet for their organization. "The
person I had in mind when I wrote the book was really the VP of marketing,
anyone responsible for knowing what is fundamentally new and different about the
Internet and its use in marketing," says Hanson, who teaches MBA courses in
Internet Marketing at the Business School. "My goal is to explain
systematically why and how Internet marketing is exploding and how it can create
value and profits."
Hanson's book covers the commercial
evolution of the World Wide Web, the definition of a digital world and the laws
that govern it, and the specific characteristics of networks and how they
operate. He outlines the chief tasks at hand for the Internet marketer: Building
traffic and brand name, achieving personalization, and creating an effective
online retailing environment. Creating a brand presence on the Internet is
crucial, says Hanson, because the growth of Web content has outstripped Web
usage in the past year, making it more difficult to get noticed and have people
stay around a site than was the case three years ago. Marketers must not only
get people to their site, they must make them comfortable enough to place an
order. As a result, marketers must focus on creating strong brands such as EBay,
Yahoo or Amazon that achieve an image of quality, trust, and familiarity.
Beyond that, Hanson instructs on the problem of generating traffic. Part of the
issue is figuring out how to spend advertising money...
Distribution
can be a problem for established companies. While Dell Computer has used the Net
to its advantage, older companies such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard are
struggling between developing direct relations with customers and keeping
longstanding middlemen happy. The Internet is changing the very structure of
many marketing organizations, says Hanson. Instead of a portfolio of products,
marketers of the future will have a portfolio of customers. Principles of
Internet Marketing is published by
Southwestern
College Publishing. It is available now.
CeBIT 2000
(February 24 – March 1) CeBIT NEWS Online
-
CeBIT is the world's largest exhibition of information technology, computer and
communications products and services. CeBIT NEWS Online provides pre-show
coverage of news and technology taken from the editorial pages of CeBIT VIEWS,
the official CeBIT preview publication. During CeBIT, CeBIT NEWS Online is where
you'll find up-to-the-minute news from the show floor, as reported by the
editorial staff of CeBIT NEWS, CeBIT's official daily English-language media
source.
February 18, 2000
/dmnews.com/
- Tower Records doubled its online
customer purchases during the past eight months by tweaking its e-commerce
search capabilities. As of May, 1999, the site's customer conversion rates
dwelled around 2 percent — a full percentage point below the online music
and video average of 3 percent. What the site discovered, especially in the
classical music section, was that its product search engine functioned poorly.
"We started the site in 1996 using Informix, which is a wonderful
database engine, but it's not designed to handle search results we wanted for
our Web site. Consumers needed an exact match or they would get a 'Sorry,
nothing to find here' message." That's not a good message to get,"
said Kurt Foy Booker, Webmaster at Tower Records, which is owned by MTS Inc.,
West Sacramento, CA. The biggest concern was that not only was the site losing
customers, it was losing long-term customers who were making purchases and
forming relationships at other sites, according to Booker.
See article.
RALEIGH,
N.C.-Feb. 16, 2000 - /BUSINESSWIRE.com/
-
ITworld.com, the IT problem-solving network(TM) and an IDG online resource for
Information Technology (IT) professionals, and TekSell.com, provider of
business-to-business auctions of high-end data, video and voice equipment,
announce an agreement that names TekSell.com
as the exclusive IT auction provider for the ITworld.com
Web site launched yesterday. The agreement gives serious IT professionals an
unmatched online resource, combining ITworld.com's valued editorial content with
TekSell.com's position as the "trusted intermediary" in B2B auctions
of high-end IT equipment.
According to John Carpenter, vice president of business development at
ITworld.com, TekSell was selected as the exclusive auction provider because of
its trusted position in the IT equipment vertical. "TekSell is the only B2B
auction focused solely on high-end IT equipment and will add considerable value
to our site," said Carpenter. "They auction high-end routers,
switches, servers and the like from some of the biggest names in the business.
This is a natural synergy benefiting the serious IT professional."
Tadley, UK Feb 16, 2000 -
SPARCproductDIRectory.com
Most
Sun resellers are invisible on the web
- In a "View from the
Hill" article published today, ACSL publisher of the
SPARC Product Directory
claimed that 84% of SPARC systems resellers in the UK do not have web sites
which can be easily found on the web. The corresponding figure for the USA is
65%. The shocking thing is that these are not the historical figures for 1998.
They are actually based on February 2000.
"Most Sun resellers
think it's a good idea for their own customers to race ahead into ecommerce,
because that's a significant source of revenue for them. But when it comes to
their own companies they are intimidated by the perceived high entry cost and
steep learning curve." said Zsolt Kerekes, the publisher. "Poor
marketing is another factor. Marketing training companies should be minting
money in the IT channel, however most resellers probably aren't aware they need
it. The web site is simply the most visible aspect of marketing culture inside a
company. No web site, means that companies don't care if it's hard for
their customers to find them."
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