LEVERAGING THE WEB: A BASIC PRIMER

by Jason Miletsky

I don’t think many marketers really understand the power of the Internet and everything it can do to help both build a market and bring that market closer to their brand. So the best answer I can give to this question is, learn. Learning about the online space is the best way to leverage it. And by “learn,” I don’t mean watch the evening news on TV or eavesdrop on co-workers when they talk about who they’ve reconnected with on Facebook. I mean really get to know the Net. Read up on it. Surf. See how other brands handle their online campaigns. Talk to an agency that gets it and see what they know. Whatever it takes, marketers who really expect to make an impact with new or existing audiences can’t just skate by with the bare minimum of Net know-how; they need to really get it to get the most out of it.

But I’m sure you want something tangible. Nothing sucks more than a book that only talks in generalities. So even though there’s no single way for every brand to take advantage of the Internet – how you work into your overall marketing strategy will depend on your unique needs, budget, audience, and situation – here is a run-though of some important specifics.

The Site

Clearly, if there’s one element that deserves significant attention, it’s the brand’s Web site – the home base for any marketing effort and the first place consumers will turn when they want to find information about your brand. The trick is to create a site that reflects the brand while maximizing retention and encouraging return visits. That said, sites may be visited by large numbers of people and it’ll be impossible to please every one of them – which is why it’s especially important for marketers to understand who their audience is. Marketers must make certain that the retention techniques they put in place speak directly to their core demographic to ensure that the highest possible number of people within their target market come back regularly. There are many ways to do this, but the real keys to increasing brand loyalty on the Web are the same online as they are offline: striking the best balance of quality customer service, value, and product selection.

Encouraging users to return to a site begins with strong design that both reflects of the brand and is organized in a way that makes content easy to locate. An attractive design gives users a sense that the site is established and professional, and that a solid, legitimate company is behind it. At the same time, quality design specifically geared toward the target audience will help to establish the brand personality through images, color, and general layout. Successful site layout will accomplish the following:

• Make the purposes of the site clear, letting the visitor know what they can expect to find there.
• Promote the brand.
• Provide easy access to information.
• Lead the user to specific areas of interest or areas that the site owner wants them to see.
• Provide an attractive, aesthetically pleasing environment for the user.

Similarly, navigation requires careful consideration during site development; content on the Web is presented in a manner unlike any other media. Most media tend to be fairly linear. Sunday newspapers have different sections, and news is found by turning from one page to the next. Television is similar – a show is selected, and the viewer watches, scene by scene, in the order that those scenes are presented. Web sites are quite different. Aside from the interactivity that the Web provides, Web sites allow visitors to review information in a non-linear fashion, jumping from one page to another in any order they wish to find the information in which they are most interested.

Unfortunately, though, the information that visitors are most interested in isn’t always the information you want them to see, which is information related to sales. Because of the non-linear nature of the Web, marketers have a dual responsibility when it comes to site organization:

• Creating a navigation and hierarchy of content that makes finding information easy for site visitors.
• Serving information in such a way that visitors are led to pages that the site’s owners most want them to view.

Finally, marketers must take advantage of social-media tools – such as blogs, ratings, reviews, polls, comments, avatars, Wikis, social networks, and more – to keep users engaged. The Web is no longer a brand-to-consumer one-way street when it comes to information. Using these social media tools, marketers can create an online environment in which the market becomes more interactive with the brand and in which consumers can even become more interactive with each other – all of which facilitates a more secure community of users and heightened brand loyalty.

Using the Net to Build and Know Your Audience

With the popularization of social media, the Net has transformed from an advertising medium into a global conversation – a platform for exchanging ideas. It’s energized people across practically every demographic boundary to interact with each other and with the brands they’re in contact with. Marketers can use these tools to better understand consumers’ frame of mind, keeping a pulse on how the market perceives their brand and what new buzzwords are gaining popularity.

The blogosphere is a particularly valuable resource for gaining these insights, as are product reviews on retail sites. Consumers are eager to discuss their feelings and experiences with particular brands. Indeed, various research firms claim that as much as 30 percent of all consumers don’t feel that the shopping process is complete until they have left a review on a Web site. Marketers should stay constantly aware of online market sentiments as they relate to their brand, making changes in product of strategy based on new information they uncover.

At the same time that the Web acts as global forum, intermingling demographic categories, it also gives marketers a powerful vehicle to pinpoint particular audiences with measurable precision. The word “measurable” is key – one of the most valuable aspects of the Internet is how easily almost any marketing campaign can be tracked and measured for cost-efficiency. It’s impossible in this limited space to review all the opportunities for driving measurable traffic that the Web offers, but marketers should consider at least some of the following:

• E-mail blast campaigns: Whether it’s company news or information your customers can use, e-mail blasts speak to each user directly and can play a big role in building brand awareness and pushing new and returning visitors to your site, with open rates and click-through rates easily measured. Personally, I haven’t found a good list provider yet, so I’d recommend either growing a list organically or working through consumer-based print publications, which usually offer blast services to the subscriber base.
• Pay-per-click advertising: Google may not have invented this, but they sure as hell did perfect it. Offering one of the best arguments for abandoning print advertising, PPC ads allow marketers to target specific Web users by placing ads on specific sites or by having them appear when surfers search for particular keywords. Best of all, you only pay for the clicks you get, so budgets are controlled and waste is minimized.
• Streaming video: Did someone say TV? Who needs television when users can get video content on demand through any one of a million sites? Video can capture attention more powerfully than any other medium, and while streaming Web video hasn’t replaced television yet, it’s starting to show signs that it could soon reign as the new king. One of my favorite statistics from eMarketer is that among viewers who already had a favorable opinion of a brand, consideration to purchase rose by 61 percent after a viewing an online video of the brand in question. Even more amazing is that consideration also rose by 21 percent among viewers who had pre-existing unfavorable opinions about the brand. ’Nuff said!
• Building your network through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., and continuing to interact on a regular basis.  But don’t be too quick to sell – there’s nothing wrong with letting your network know what you or your company is all about, but temper that information with useful content that people can actually use.  Provide links to interesting articles, personal anecdotes and responses to others people’s postings. Use the computer to show your human side.

Lastly, while I’ve really only skimmed the tip of the proverbial iceberg, I don’t think any discussion about the best ways to leverage the online space would be complete without talking about measuring traffic. Analytics tools like Google Analytics track and measure site usage, including the average length of time people spend on your site, how many people come back regularly, which pages are the least and most popular, the average number of pages people see per visit, geographic locations of all visitors, and so on. If the saying is true that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, then with the right tracking program and a real understanding of how to use the information it collects, marketers can be downright lethal.

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LEVERAGING THE WEB: A BASIC PRIMER