NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> One-to-one
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> One-to-one
Bob Schmidt (schmidt_at_magicnet.net)
Thu, 07 Aug 1997 23:49:09 -0400
Jim Sterne writes,
>How do you reconcile, "Those who seek one to one should
>hire a salesman." with, "No one can afford to rely on
>selling one customer at a time."? Face to face is the
>single most expensive selling/marketing method we have.
Umm. I don't. You are restating my point which was that one to one is the
absolutely most expensive type of sales one can undertake. Perhaps we
disagree when I say the Internet is not an antidote to this. In other
words, one to one is still cost prohibitive on the net.
>Also: the Internet is the exact opposite of "one to many."
>It excels at many to one. It's great for many people coming
>to see your message and it totally sucks at mass marketing
>a message out to the masses. The term for that model is, "spam".
Really? What then do you call banner ads?
And you can;t have it both ways. If the Internet is cost free and one to
one is efficient then spam is also cost free.
Ivan Weltman writes,
>Wrapped up in the notion of mass marketing is selling one widget to
>millions. Maxwell House Instant Coffee. Henry Ford's 1919 Model T
>Ford. Coca Cola (once upon a time). About 30 years ago the notion
>that people are different and have different needs dawned on
>marketers and the age of variations arrived, so that 4 or 5 flavours
>or models were offered - still mass marketing but to smaller masses.
Whoa. Let's be careful here. The message which spurred this thread was
concerned with TARGET marketing, not mass marketing. This is exactly where
the experts would lead us astray and we must be careful to understand the
real issues. Mass marketing vs. one to one has been beaten to death on the
Internet marketing lists primarily by Mary Morris, author of HTML for Fun
and Profit.
But other Internet marketing "experts" (though I don't believe Mary
qualifies in any respect as a marketing expert) have also promoted this
mythical dichotomy. The fact is, as Ivan points out, marketers abandoned
mass marketing long ago-- a lot longer ago than he indicates as any student
of General Motors brand segmentation in the 1930's knows.
Thus, raising the bogeyman of mass marketing is but to throw a red herring
into the discussion-- nobody is doing it anymore, not on the net, not
anywhere. However, to say they were still "mass marketing but to smaller
masses" is a vast oversimplification of today's sophisticated target
marketing and brand positioning strategies and does a gross injustice to
the marketing and advertising professions.
It is reasonable to say that if one takes target marketing to the absolute
extreme, one ends up with niche marketing. But the so called experts make
a giant leap of illogic to assume that:
-- niche marketing is the opposite of mass marketing
-- one to one marketing sounds like it would be good for niche marketing
-- somebody said the Internet is good for one to one marketing so it must
be true
-- therefore the Internet is good for niche marketing only
What they forget to point out is that niche marketing is by and large
unprofitable. Why, even the most famous niche marketer of all time, Saab,
recently abandoned niche marketing. It didn't work.
>Wrapped up in the notion of one to one marketing is the notion of
>satisfying individual needs, a customized product or service which
>delivers exactly what I want - which may be different from what
>anybody else wants.
But more likely, it is exactly the same as everyone else wants. Again, as
any marketer knows (you don't even have to be an expert) while each
individual may perceive himself to be unique, in fact, when looking at the
whole market, customer wants and needs lend themselves to grouping. That is
the whole basis of target marketing. It is what makes target marketing
efficient. And it means that limiting the Internet to one to one marketing
is a wasteful use of the marketer's limited resources. Let's not kid
ourselves into thinking that the BofA would bother selling you something it
can't also sell to millions of its other customers.
> Consider
>online banking - Bank of America is probably the ideal example. I can
>pay my bills, deposit my money, build my investment portfolio. My
>account is uniquely mine. Yet they can handle millions of accounts,
>online, on a one to one basis.
But you are confusing service mix and service delivery with marketing mix.
Not to mention that as long as the Bank of America has been around (long
before the Internet) it managed to provide a unique mix of services to each
customer. The customer managed to "interact" with the bank on a "one to
one" basis and order whatever services were needed. The Internet is not a
magic potion for service mix nor for interactivity. It is very good at some
types of service delivery -- mainly those for which the customer does not
have to be in the physical presence of the service provider in order to
receive.
>Consider computers. If I can choose, online, from 3 keyboards, 3
>towers, 4 monitors, 6 processors, 6 printers, 3 scanners, 4 sound
>cards, 6 RAM configurations, 5 hard drives 3 CD players, and 4
>operating systems, and I include the zero choice (I dont want a
>keyboard) then I can choose one of 65,856,000 DIFFERENT computers.
>
>It's as simple as boiling eggs if one has an interactive form, and my
>unique PC (well named) is on its way in 24 hours.
But what Ivan describes is not selling so much as order taking, and we see
a lot of that on the web, but it's not the be all and end all of Internet
marketing. Not by a long shot.
Bob Schmidt
www.provider.com
Author of The Geek's Guide to Internet Business Success
The Definitive Business Blueprint for Internet Designers, Developers,
Programmers, Marketers and Service Providers
http://www.vnr.com/vnr/geeksguide/
ISBN 0-442-02557-2
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This week's Online Advertising Discussion List sponsor:
Take a stroll down Madison Avenue and see what other planners are up to
Geocities - 312 million page views a month
http://www.geocities.com/MadisonAvenue/
-----------
Reach 15,000 web marketers for pennies per person.
Advertise in Larry Chase's Web Digest For Marketers. (www.wdfm.com)
Email ads_at_wdfm.com for details.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Online Advertising Discussion List To Unsubscribe send UNSUBSCRIBE
http://www.o-a.com/ to online-ads-request_at_o-a.com
