Online marketing for textbooks, tech support issues

From: Michael Martinez <Michael_at_xenite.org>
Date: Mon 19 Mar 2001 11:42:00 -0600

* New thread topic - previous posts under
  "Is online advertising accepted as a valid
  advertising media"

ROBBIN ZEFF <robbin_at_zeff.com> WROTE:

>In terms of education in online advertising, it's going
>to take a while for the college and university programs
>to fully integrate online advertising, marketing and
>e-commerce into their curriculum.

ROBIN LASHER <robinlasher_at_hotmail.com> REPLIED

>In addition to providing consulting services to small
>business owners through the Tarrant County College
>Small Business Development Center, I teach marketing,
>advertising, and retailing classes at a local university.
>Although college marketing textbooks are starting to
>acknowledge internet advertising and marketing as a
>legitimate medium, the content is often outdated by
>the time the textbook hits the classroom. I just received
>the newest edition of a popular marketing textbook and
>find the "success stories" focus on companies such as
>Buy.com, Garden.com and eToys. Hits are described as a
>way to measure traffic and advertising is basically
>limited to the discussion of banners. I think a
>semi-annual paperback update to the hardcover textbook
>would be a better approach to keep up with the rapid
>change of online advertising and marketing. Otherwise,
>a new edition would be necessary at least each year.
>The cost of textbooks make universities hesitate to
>switch each semester. After all, it is the used textbooks
>that the campus bookstores make a profit on by reselling.

I wonder if such examples wouldn't work better as
case-studies within specific contexts. That is,
trying to keep the textbooks updated, even with biannual
supplements, would add a tremendous burden to the
publishing/distribution channels. And the information
would remain of marginal value.

But educators who write these books might better serve
their student readers by looking at the dynamics which
produced successful campaigns, and which gave the
appearance of producing successful campaigns.

Within the context of, say, 1998, what marketing
campaigns worked online? And if they were successful
for 1998, what became of the companies which used them?

How do you measure success? Should marketing success be
deemed as more fleeting on the Internet?

It's easy enough to look at break-in campaigns where
marketers who haven't done the Internet before are making
some mistakes, missing out on viable research, etc.
But suppose you've done your homework for six months
and you launch your first campaign (or set of campaigns).
You're getting user feedback, you're adjusting the
advertising as required, and you're evaluating the impact
on sales and services.

Is whatever you're doing today going to work as well
in six months?

Also, and this is probably a little off-topic for this
list, does marketing look at support issues? Should it be?
I ask this because a few years ago I worked for software
firm which had aggressively marketed a package for a
few years that was more-or-less put on a backburner when
a new president took over the company. He had no real
idea of the value this product brought to the company's
overall product line, and the sales staff adjusted their
promotions accordingly. Unfortunately, the product had
one tool which benefitted the general customer base
tremendously as they upgraded their software.

To make a long story short, one of the sales people
literally gave away hundreds of copies of these $1000
packages just to put the tool into the hands of customers
who needed it. He was thinking about how this enhanced his
(and the company's) sales, as well as helped the customers.
But he didn't realize that the customers were tinkering
with the full software package until I raised the support
issue at a sales meeting. Our tech support people were
getting swamped with calls about this product, and they
were passing on the more difficult questions to me. I
saw a significant increase in support costs which weren't
being paid for.

So, given that many eBusiness projects are streamlining
and retrenching, what are the marketing people doing to
allow for increased costs of successful promotional
campaigns? Does marketing ever get brought in on this
sort of issue? After all, unmet customer needs have an
impact on the company's image, and any negative impact
there makes the marketer's job more difficult.

I have noticed that Amazon.Com has paid some attention
to addressing its customer service issues. If any company
needs to keep its marketing campaign on track, it would
be Amazon. They have lots of money to work with right
now, but they are still not profitable. The clock is
ticking. They don't need to have people dissing them,
do they?

Michael Martinez
Science Fiction and Fantasy info_at_xenite.org
Visualizing Middle-earth, a book for all Tolkien fans
http://www.xenite.org/



Received on Mon Mar 19 2001 - 11:42:00 CST