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Planning for One-to-One Web Marketing
Challenge
The key to a successful advertising campaign is repetition. The same is true for a successful Web site. Marketing managers know that repeat contact with prospects develops an affinity for your products and services - and therefore, greater revenue.
The techniques used by successful Web sites to generate repeat traffic are those that build a community among members of their Web audience. The reason that one-to-one Web marketing techniques have proven to generate more revenue is that everyone has a need to be recognized as an individual and to belong to a community - and one-to-one Web marketing satisfies those needs.
Sales and marketing executives have always searched for economical ways to create a one-to-one relationship with each of their prospects and customers. Today, the challenge is doing that through the Internet. Like most marketers looking to maximize your Internet investment, you are probably looking for solutions that will help you:
- Personalize a Web site to make it easier for your customers to do business with you
- Create "online communities" to provide a one-to-one experience between your sales team and your prospects and customers
- Conduct sales presentations and conferencing over the Web
- Present audio messages to make maximum use of the bandwidth limitations of today's Internet
The challenge, of course, is how to increase sales while maintaining control over expenses - all with an eye to improving profitability.
Today's One-to-One Web Marketing Tools
There are a number of personalization techniques that are being used successfully to motivate people to return to a Web site time and time again, and we strive to cover those techniques.
When implemented properly, one-to-one Web marketing techniques can be entertaining, informative, and engaging while they build relationships on your Web site. These include:
- Web site personalization
- Interactive discussion communities
- Presentation, collaboration, and audio/video conferencing
- Integrating a Web site into order processing
Planning for Success with One-to-One Marketing
The path to improved productivity on the Web is to have a clear plan of action that leads you through the maze of technology to solutions that work. That's where planning for personalization can help you:
- Assess your needs and determine how you can use technologies the best
- Develop an Internet Marketing and Sales Plan
- Prepare standards for measuring the success of your personalized Web site
- Monitor progress (e.g., length of Web visit, number of inquiries, sales revenue, decreased call center activity, etc.)
First Step to Success
The resournces here can help you identify opportunities to use one-to-one Web marketing techniques effectively - without wasting valuable resources on features or functions that don't produce specific added value. The first step is to assess your existing marketing and sales strategy to determine opportunities where the Internet can provide significant return on the investment.
In order to do this, we recommend following a well-defined process in developing an Internet Marketing and Sales Plan:
- Review marketing plans for next 12 months
- Prioritize opportunities for using one-to-one Web marketing techniques
- Prepare a written report with plans for implementation and measurement
Cliff Allen is the co-author of the book One-to-One Web Marketing; 2nd Ed., published by John Wiley & Sons, and has consulted with companies on strategic marketing for 20 years.
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