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E-Business
Issues
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EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE NET IN REACHING OUT TO THE MASSES
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To
quickly summarise the advantages of the Internet as
seen from the point of view of the user as well as the
marketer:
To the user:
Internet gives more control in choosing customised content
l It offers a variety of options for information and
entertainment i.e. a wider choice.
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It
offers tremendous convenience to the user not only in
delivery of information, but also in allowing him to
transact — often in a seamless manner. To the marketer
:
The Internet offers several options to a marketer trying
to target a particular community
It serves not only as a channel of information, but
also of product distribution
l It offers a highly interactive medium that sometimes
(e.g. chats) is almost equal to one-to-one interaction
with the audience.
It offers a higher level of identification of the user
to the marketer.
It allows the marketer to actually link his spends to
action, and pay only on action—this action could be
a click on the banner or even product purchased. In
this ability Internet is, in fact, unlike any other
media.
Given the payment options and high interactivity, the
Internet offers a medium for high level of experimentation
at a low cost. e.g. one can change creatives within
hours and increase the effectiveness of the communication
on the Internet. Imagine doing the same with a television
advertisement. Therefore, though the Internet with its
present limitations may not be able to match other media
in actually reaching out to large numbers of people,
the benefits of this highly customisable and interactive
medium can be used effectively to target niche audiences.
This can be elaborated a little more by answering the
following questions:
1. Who are the people who can be reached through the
Internet?
2. Which are the products that can possibly benefit
from marketing on the Internet?
3. What are the options available to the marketer to
reach out more effectively to their audiences?
4. Are there ways for monitoring effectiveness of this
medium in order to control it better?
Indian Internet Users—Who Are They?
According to the data available with NASSCOM, about
60 per cent of Indian Internet users are chiefly found
in the age group of 19-34. Almost 80 per cent of Internet
users are males. It is estimated that the Internet user
spends an average of 10 hours per week on the Net, and
usually earns over 6000 per month. Almost 53 per cent
of Internet users belong to SEC A1/A2. More than 55
per cent of such Internet users live in towns with a
population of over 40 lakhs. Even today, Indian users
are most likely to use the Net for sending and receiving
emails. However, information- and entertainment-seeking
are also growing. Which products are likely beneficiaries
of the Internet?
Given that the usage of the Internet is highest amongst
young, male audiences belonging to the larger towns
and who belong to higher SEC groups, for this medium
to be cost-effective, products having similar target
groups would benefit the most from this medium.
The most likely examples that come to mind include telecom,
financial products and services, products related to
entertainment like movies (promotions and tickets),
plays, contests etc, FMCG products where the core target
audience is younger (deodorants, soft drinks), consumer
durables to some extent and high-end services like tour
operators, airline services, hotels etc.
Advertising options available on the Internet
The Internet offers a variety of options for the marketer
to advertise her/his products/brands. These include
1. Banner ads and their variations
2. E-mailers and their variations
3. Sponsorships
4. Search Engines
In India, banners still remain the most popular option.
However, wider options are now available to the marketer
which, even at the cost of being intrusive, serve to
enhance the visibility and effectiveness of the banner
— for example banners which can float across the screen
of the website.
Given the highly interactive nature of the Internet,
and the also fact that unlike other media it offers
a higher level of identification of the user, simple
direct marketing tools such as email can also be used
more effectively. For example, a high-end car seller
can today easily send an offer to persons earn ng over
Rs 25000 per month at a very reasonable cost and within
a very short period.
Then again there are sponsorships, which can be effectively
used to increase brand salience and even change image.
The other tool on the web with enormous potential, and
which has possibly not been used to its optimal level
yet by marketers in India, is the search engine. Marketers
can own either popular keywords or make use of meta-tags
(these are similar to the keywords which the search
engines uses to catalogue various websites/products)
in order to go higher on the search lists.
Monitoring Effectiveness of Internet Marketing
It can be argued that it is here that the Internet scores
the highest amongst all media. A marketer can experiment
with Web-based communication and monitor the same almost
immediately. Moreover, corrective action, if required,
can be done within a few hours. And all this at a relatively
low cost of experimentation. Use of the Internet
for customer acquisition—some examples
An online share trading website had an objective of
generating awareness of its services as well as of acquiring
customers at a very low cost. The target audience for
this product included persons who invested in shares
and also accessed the Internet. In demographic terms,
the profile of this core target audience fitted in well
with the profile of persons accessing the Internet.
The customer acquisition drive on the Net was initiated
through various ways ranging from plain vanilla banners
to sponsorship of financial sections on other websites
to the use of emails to focused audiences. Efforts were
made to constantly monitor each activity and re-allocate
spends between them to remain cost-efficient. By the
end of the period of activity, around 15 per cent of
its customers were acquired through this medium. The
cost per acquisition through the Internet was found
to be approximately a fifth of that through other mass
media.
Another financial information website was a late entrant
in the marketplace, and therefore had an objective of
creating awareness and traffic to the site within a
given time frame. In this case, search engines — as
compared to banners or other tools — were used as a
mail tool to generate awareness, and this option had
almost no associated cost. Meta-tags were constantly
monitored and changed in an effort to put the website
high up on the search lists. This was done on 40 search
engines. At the end of the period, this website had
a much larger number of users as compared to its core
competitors.
To conclude, it can be said that the Internet can indeed
be an effective medium in many cases. However, if the
Net is treated and used exactly like any other medium,
it is unlikely to yield major benefits to the marketer.
Its effectiveness is dependent not only on the target
audience one is talking to, but also largely on the
ability of the marketer to make use of the real advantages
of the Net (interactivity, flexibility, ability to monitor
etc). If used to its full potential, and amongst the
right target audience, the Internet without question
would be both an effective and a cost-efficient medium.
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