Online Marketing Trends

Ever wondered what is being written about you, your company, your competitors or your worst enemies? Then Google Alerts is ideal for you.

Google Alerts gives you real-time, once a day or once a week updates on newly indexed pages that contain your search phrase. Forget checking the search index by hand, just add your alert and choose when you want to be updated.

Some ecommerce sites are so well known that we forgot how they came this far. Probably because they facillitate the buying proces in an optomal way. The buying proces can be described through the AIDA model;

• A : Attention/Awareness
• I : Interest
• D : Desire
• A : Action

To close the loop, add another letter:

• L : Loyalty/Satisfaction

What makes digital marketing superior to regular marketing? You can define these with the six I’s of the e-marketing mix;

1. Interactivity
   • Customer initiates contact
   • Customer is seeking information (pull)
   • A high intensity medium – you will have 100% of a website visitor’s attention
   • A company can gather and store the response of the individual
   • Individual customer needs can be addressed and taken into account
2. Intelligence
   The web and other digital media are relatively low cost methods of collecting information particularly about customer perceptions. A wealth of marketing research information is available through web analytics.
3. Individualism
   Interactive marketing communications can readily be tailored to the individual. Personalisation is an important aspect of achieving online customer relationship management.
4. Integration
   • As a direct response channel, enabling customers to respond to offers and promotions publicised in offline media
   • Generating direct response through a call back or live chat facility
   • Supporting the buying decision even if the purchase does not occur via the website
   • Supporting and reducing costs of customer service
5. Industry restructuring
   • Disintermediation – The removal of intermediaries such as distributors or brokers that formerly linked a company to its customers
   • Reintermediation – The creation of new intermediaries between customers and suppliers providing services such as supplier search and product evaluation
6. Independence of location
   Digital media potentially give you easy reach to the global market.

During my study Certificate in Digital Marketing my knowledge of digital marketing builds up and is being refreshed alot. I want to share the most interesting parts of the online course, like the letter-lists and other facts.

What’s the difference between traditional and digital marketing. You will probaly be able to sum up the most of the points below but whether you are or not, it will certainly refresh your knowledge.

1. From push to pull – Website visitors proactively seek out information. Emphasis on pull rather than push, but usually you will use a combination.
2. From monologue to dialogue – Interactivity through online networks, forums, SMS and the digital television ‘red button’.
3. From one-to-many to one-to-some and one-to-one – Personalisation becomes possible.
4. From one-to-many to many-to-many communications – Individuals can submit content that is accessible to all.
5. From lean-back to lean-forward – Digital media are high-intensity and engaging.
6. The nature of standard marketing communications tools is changed – For example, more detailed information can be provided to backup advertising communications.
7. Increase in communications intermediaries – Most traditional media outlets are now online, along with many others.
8. Integration – A reminder about the importance and challenges of integrated marketing communications.

I am currently doing an experiment with the Active Interstitials advertisements from AdBrite for Madonnashop. These advertisements take over the publishers’ site (the site on which the advertisement is placed). At first sight it looks like a great opportunity for advertisers to push their site to potential customers.

When an Active Interstitials is pushed to the publishers’ site, thevisitor sees a frameset that lives on the publishers’ webserver. The frameset consists of two frames; a small frame telling the visitor they are viewing an advertisement by… with a button ‘Skip this ad’ and a large frame with content from the advertiser.

This is how the current Active Interstitials for Madonna shop on the site DrownedMadonna looks:

This means that I’m showing the homepage of Madonnashop in the Active Interstitial. The visitor is able to click through the Madonna memorabilia shop without first having to click an advertisement.

Active interstitials are usually shown after a visitor’s fifth click on a publisher’s website. Generally, interstitials will be capped at once per user per day.

AdBrite gives you the opportunity to place these Active Interstitials starting at $0.01 with a minimum budget of $5 a day. When you reach this budget, this means that your Active Interstitial has been shown 500 times. If the publishers’ site does not generate enough visits, you only pay for the visits that actually saw it.

Next step for me will be to see if the advertisement actually converts