NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Day One - Web Marketing '98
ONLINE-ADS>> Day One - Web Marketing '98
richard_at_tenagra.com
Wed, 14 Oct 1998 10:39:08 -0500 (CDT)
Below is a special mailing to The Online Advertising Discussion
List about Web Marketing '98 in Washington DC, written by Ann Handley,
editor-in-chief of The ClickZ Network. You will receive these
reports in addition to your normal Online Ads posts/digests.
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Web Marketing '98
Day 1 Coverage: Turning Browsers Into Buyers
Ann Handley
Editor in Chief
The ClickZ Network
http://www.clickz.com/
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Any web marketer worth his or her salt has to love a keynote
speaker who compares the evolution of the internet to be as
critical to the cycle of life as blue-green algae. Just as
the spawning of blue-green algae billions of years ago
subsequently begot the birth of a host of life forms
inherently more familiar to us, so the internet is similarly
at the tip of a of a different kind of sea change, says
Netscape Webmaster Omar Ahmad.
The 'net is as fundamentally important a technology as fire
and the wheel - "good solid technologies that have been
around for a while," Ahmad deadpanned during his speech, the
45-minute kick-off to Thunder Lizard's Web Marketing '98.
The energetic Ahmad set the tone for Thunder Lizard's
two-day conference in Washington, D.C., a sort of boot camp
for those on the front lines of internet marketing. Unlike
conferences organized by the likes of research companies
such as Jupiter or Forrester, Thunder Lizard offers up a
wholly different agenda and attracts a wholly different
crowd.
The some 400 attendees didn't come to hear visionÖnor did
they get it. Instead, they were fed the kind of raw
block-and-tackle they could bring back to the office and
apply to their own web marketing efforts. Think of it as a
sort of boot camp with hotel amenities and a cocktail hour.
Web Marketing '98 offered nuts and bolts from those with
some skin in the game. People who live and breathe web
marketing day in and day out. Come to think of it, it ClickZ
were a conference, it would be a Thunder Lizard event.
"These are marketing people who suddenly find themselves on
the web, or IT people who suddenly find themselves in
marketing," said Jim Sterne of Target Marketing
(http://www.targeting.com) , who moderated day one and
functioned as the Greek chorus following each speaker
presentation.
But back to Ahmad. His real job onstage was to show
marketers how to best exploit the short attention spans of
web users - what you can show them in about 6 minutes is
their entire impression of your site, he says. And since the
web is here to stay, as knitted into the fabric of our lives
as the DNA of algae, how can we embrace the medium and make
it work for us?
First, it helps to remember that marketing on the web really
is still evolving into something much larger than the sum of
its current parts. It was born as a "lab experiment that has
gotten wildly out of control," Ahmad said, and populated
early on with military top guns, scientists and geeks.
Certainly, no marketing applications were designed for the
web. So when we ask whether sites are really delivering
users the kind of experience they want, we are indeed
forging new ground.
What can marketers do to be sure that those 6 minutes offer
up a quality experience?
-Pour over your server logs for clues on who is visiting
your site, and from where.
-Draw a site map for a sense of
what page goes to what page, and how your users are
getting there. Put it on the wall and study it several
times a day.
-Time your page downloads. "If a page takes 30 seconds to
download, and someone is only at your site for 6 minutes,
that's 12 pageviews total you have to sell, push, market,
or inform".lightweight pages are key," Ahmad said.
-Make allowances for special events. When the Starr report
hit the streets on "Monica Monday," CNN reconfigured its
site to feature a single gif. The result: 185 million hits
in a single day, plenty of satisfied users.
Real Life Answers
ClickZ's own dynamic publisher, Andy Bourland, rolled up his
sleeves with an hour-long presentation on the best of web
marketing campaigns.
Light on flash but heavy with real-life examples of what's
bringing in buyers on the web today, Bourland highlighted a
dozen campaign workhorses that are really producing. Not
just cool banners - but subscription models, lead-and
sale-generation programs, traffic-building plans and
branding campaigns.
Yeah..yeah' so like what?
-In the flash category: a series of interactive IBM
e-business banner campaigns, produced by Narrative's rich
media Enliven technology.
-Postmaster Direct's (http://www.postmasterdirect.com)
opt-in email lists.
-Reel.com's (http://www.reel.com) Titanic loss-leader,
which offered the video for the below-wholesale price of
$9.95 but gave Reel.com a rich list to market future
products to.
-Cdnow's (http://cdnow.com) tailored messages and Dell
Computer's (http://www.dell.com) opt-in email marketing
lists.
-Fork-in-the-Head's "fork-o-gram"
http://www.forkinthehead.com , which allows frustrated
users to "fork" offending web sites and generate potential
leads for the owners of the Fork-in-the-Head site, who
specialize in web site trouble-shooting.
Bourland reminded us all of the true power of the web when
he recalled how his father, Roger, bought a suit twice
yearly from the proprietor of a local men's shop in Green
Bay, Wisconsin. The shopkeeper would telephone Roger with a
personal invitation to view the latest line of men's wear.
"The web can offer that same level of personalization,"
Bourland said. "It's one of the clear and inherent strengths
of this medium."
Classic Screw-Ups
Later in the day, Rick Bruner of IMT Strategies highlighted
five classic web marketing mistakes punctuated with plenty
of entertaining examples. Big problems for web sites are
content that is less than compelling (or laughably
unrelated), domain oversights, slow design, poor navigation,
and privacy pitfalls. Of course, he also highlights what
DOES workÖincluding Tide's inexplicably popular Stain
Detective interactive service on its site, UPS's package
tracking program, the expert advice offered by Dr. Barry
Sears on his Zone Diet site, and the parenting forum created
by Pampers.
Admittedly, though, the screw-ups are a whole lot more fun. Some classics:
-The Burger King site (http://www.burgerking.com) which
eatures the tag line: "But the taste only comes in one:
HUGE" and is accompanied by an equally huge (3.5 MB) video
file of a BK Whopper. "The taste only comes in huge, but so
does the download," deadpanned Bruner.
-The romance theme of the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
(http://www.icbinb.com), which among other nuggets contains
extensive photos of Fabio, a chapter-by-chapter romance
novel, and love-note interactivity. "What's the
association?" questioned Bruner adding, "I mean, I don't
know if any of you have seen Last Tango in Paris. But for me
that's the last word on butter and romance."
-Design hogs that take forever to download and offend the
user. Like the puzzling Ag-Bag http://www.agbag.com and
messy Southwest Airlines http://www.southwest.com.
-Poor navigation and frames that make information hard to
use or hard to find, like: The Internet Tourbus
(http://tourbus.com) and New Balance
(http://www.newbalance.com.)
And The Oscar Goes To...
* Amtrak. The No Tolerance Award http://www.amtrak.com, for
its lack of foresight in not registering the incorrect but
easily adopted misspelled version of its name, amtrack.com
* The I Can't Believe It's Not Butter site, which sports the
so-easy-to-recall (?) domain of http://www.icbinb.com
* The Ray Ban site, for failing to register www.raybans.com,
for failing to take into account that lots of folks think of
its brand in plural
* GM cars 9http://www.gm.com), for failing to register
generalmotors.com (http://www.generalmotors.com), allowing
it to reside with a lunatic 'net hobbyist with radical views
* Charles Schwab http://www.schwab.com for being wise enough
to register schwabsucks.com for itself
Get Out The Toolbox
Eric Ward of The Ward Group, the master of 'net awareness
and p.r., gave a highly informative session on promoting
your site for free (or almost free). I would offer some
highlights hereÖbut why bother? The full text of Eric's
speech with lots of practical how-to advice is located
online at:
(http://www.netpost.com/speaking/wm98/session1.html)
Here's one Ward-ism, about search engine placement:
"Ultimately, it's hopeless to expect that you'll maintain
top 10 listings at all search engines all year round. It's
not like painting your house, where you paint it and come
back five years later. The truth is you have spend some
time, every day or every week to keeping those rankings". I
won't say don't do it. But let that be one part of your
marketing plan."
Lizard-speak
"wetware" - a live relative of hardware and software; a
gender-neutral term that refers to the actual people
involved in the care and feeding of a web site
gateway content" - outbound links from a site that take
visitors to related content or sites
"niche-ification" - the narrow targeting of the web
Quotes of the Day
"Everyone says that when the 'net comes to television, it'll
really kick. And I say no, it won't. It'll probably just be
really annoying TV." - Omar Ahmad, Netscape
"In a direct mail campaign, a response rate of ‡ to æ
percent would make you think you'd died and gone to heaven.
On the web, the parameters are different." - Andy Bourland,
ClickZ
"Log analysis is painful, it's ugly, and it's a real vile
thing. If you are responsible for log analysis, be prepared
to get yelled at a lot." - Omar Ahmad
"The United banners] are all really based around JavaÖand
Java sucksÖ. I'd argue that you develop a least-technology
architecture. There's a problem with too much technology.
Don't be technology-drivenÖlet your audience be your guide."
- Bill Gallagher, iPUB interactive
"It's both the most frustrating and more appealing aspects
of web promotion. There's no way any two or three outlets
will satisfy all requirements." - Eric Ward, The Ward Group
"It's one thing to have an ad campaign that generates
interest. It's another to develop a subscriber base to use
to market to over a very long time." - Andy Bourland
"There's a serious business mistake with sites that loop
around and don't let the user out. I want people to control
their experience." - Bill Gallagher
"In my mind, email is really the killer marketing app,
because it's what brings you right into your customer's
faces." - Andy Bourland
"Cache-busting will drive you nuts. For all I know, AOL is a
single person." - Omar Ahmad
"I'd recommend that you go sit on a 28.8 modem, dial in
through AOL, and download your pages. If you get ticked off,
go back and redesign your pages." - Omar Ahmad
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Copyright (C) 1998 ClickZ Corporation. All rights reserved. May
be reproduced in any medium for noncommercial purposes as long as
attribution is given.
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