Most marketers are taught certain ways to target markets using television, radio, newspaper, magazine, billboards and direct contact. Though some marketers a starting to recognize the web as a possible new advertising tool, they still don't think of it as a now thing. Traditional marketing people need to change their perception of Internet Marketing and Research. One example of this is a statement by Kathleen Riordan, director of media planning and technologies at Kraft said, " I personally believe that, at some point in time, the Internet is going to be an advertising medium in its own right, especially as televisions and PC’s converge."

Marketers must now learn how to use your business objectives to set up a good marketing and research strategy based around your Web site. Using the company's objective companies should then come up with what is their objective for their Internet marketing. Many non-Internet savvy marketers do understand that the Internet objective for your marketing must fit your company's objectives.

The Company as a whole may have to adjust its marketing strategy, research and service to fit the new realm. They will have to look at the external influences, internal influences and situational influences. Companies must recognize that they may have to get over consumer fears, organizational behavior and lack of regulations but still meet high customer expectations. At the same time the company must realize just what kind of impact a good Internet marketing strategy and research can bring to the bottom line.

Almost all large companies have an IT, Information Technology, department. Many of the people that work in these departments may be able to write programs to assist with tracking inventory or keeping the books but doing same task for things for Internet selling and marketing takes a totally different thinking and idea. These programmers will not usually know what it takes to attract consumers to the web site and persuade them to possibly buy or at least consider buying a product from the site.

Some people believe that the normal thinking of large companies is that they don't have to compete with smaller companies already on the net. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, put it best saying, " I may be only 2 years away from going out of business." He was talking about there is always a company out there that is on the net and it may well have a better marketing strategy and be more appealing to possible consumers. So it comes that Microsoft must be constantly being innovative in their strategy to compete. In Fortune magazine it was put that a business may not have to do exactly what these small companies are doing on the Internet but they must not ignore them or else one day that little company may be a large company ready to buy out the older large company.

Companies must realize those traditional sales and marketing may not disappear, but the Net is growing faster then any other means of selling and marketing then any of the traditional platforms. If companies do not start revving up their marketing toward Internet marketing research and learn how to do so they may be one day the company with much lower sales and profits. Many manufacturing companies also fear that their current consumers (large retail stores) will cut them out as the manufactures maybe viewed as a new competitor of that store. Particular areas of real conflict are franchise or other legal agreements. Companies must be willing to adjust their marketing as the web and its technology change.

The company and its marketers must learn how to handle their marketing strategy differently from traditional marketing. With research and a mix of technology and marketing skills a full strategy must be produced. This strategy will include what type of environment they are working with. They must learn what it is that people on the Internet are looking for, how to attract them, how to track their browsing habits and how to get possible buyers to their site. The marketing strategy must focus on how to educate and make the sale. Finally, once you have gotten them to try the service and buy a product, you must provide for possible repeat customers.

I will now present a formal working market strategy for a company that is looking at Internet marketing. First, I will present some basic facts that may help persuade why a company should go toward Internet marketing and research. Next I will show what to look for that makes up the global community. Then I will present how to get people to pay attention to your advertising and make a visit to the web site. From there we will look at how to keep your possible consumers interested and willing to come back and even buy a product or service. Finely I will present some of the ways to track your success and tools used to succeed.

The Internet is quickly growing to become a very important tool for doing well in business. In an article called "Marketing in Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations," by Donna Hoffman, it provided several reasons why. It is very important consumers and firms are conducting business on the Internet in proportions that dwarf the commercial provider base of other types of media. The worldwide Web provides a broader context. The Web offers a versatile laboratory-like environment in which research hypotheses may be developed, explored, tested and refined. They also pointed out that you could have online catalogs that save a firm up to 25% in processing costs and reduce cycle time by up to 62%. Also some other benefits include the ability to introduce a new product that a tested and receive feedback on them and adjusted to customers wants all within 2 weeks. It is said that a good marketing strategy may not always produce immediate changes in bottom line but in a matter of time, significant increases will be noticed. The company will not only reach people in the region or country but around the world. As of now there are still no strict regulations on importing products for sales on the Internet. One last point is that the Internet is now the second most used media and growing, people that use the net are doing so in preference to watching television. These benefits plus more are excellent reasons why company should focus more on the net

So you may ask what to look at as a marketer and researcher when marketing on the net. Lets look at external influences, internal influences, situational influences and information searches.

Since the web is international you may want to look at producing web sites in several languages and adjusted to each culture. Unlike traditional marketing platforms, the Internet is not highly demographically driven, but more on the products driven with a high level of service. As computers get cheaper, the Internet becomes more available to more people. Marketing on the net can bypass social stigmas and social conscience. Internal influences are made once you get consumers to your web site. So this should lead to the question of how to get them to the site.

In a article in web marketing today, "How to Attract Visitors to Your Web site," too many web marketers work on the if-you-build-it-they-will-come model but this is wrong and you must also give a clear reason to come. The article says you should do the following:

• Advertise your web site to web search engines that index the Web.
• Give a good reason to come by offering valuable information.
• Find industry-wide linking pages and negotiate reciprocal links.
• Purchase web advertising in the form of a web banner.
• Include e-mail and Web addresses on all your company's print literature, stationary and display advertising.

Once you have gotten them to the site you have just started on you way to a successful web site but there is much more to do at this point. Some of the keys are:

• Don't keep your shoppers waiting. Most shoppers on the net are trying to save time and will not stay long if your site is bogged down and slow.
• Do not hide the goods; offer them multiple navigation options.
• Build Trust with these tools:

1. Make it easy to contact you by phone.
2. Display testimonials.
3. Provide a privacy policy.
4. Provide a return policy.
5. Allow customers to view the products.
6. Join a company that you are trustworthy.

• Don't hide prices, people do not like surprises.
• Make human contact. Give a phone number, live chat rooms, and showing pictures of employees and personal information.
• One last thing is if you collect information on customers do not sell the information.

I find that Internet marketing and research if not already will soon be as important as all other forms of marketing and research. As the fastest growing, changing and evolving media. It is possible that in the near future, televisions and computers will be one machine and traditional advertising used for the television will be replaced by the type of advertising used now for the Net. Traditional Marketing will become the minor form and a new species of marketers with both marketing skills and higher computer skills will be necessary to provide good marketing strategies for the companies of the future. A few companies have already recognized this and have full Internet marketing and sales departments. To be successful in the future companies that have not yet started preparing for Internet marketing better get started or be left behind.

Marketing Research on the Internet has become an extremely useful tool for various industries. In a study by LEXIS NEXIS it found the more then 80% of market researchers used the Internet in one form or another to do data collection. Marketing Research Online has increased the success of data collection and predicting future directions for companies. The Internet is still a fast growing media and has been estimated that in the time between the years 1997 and 1998 the rate of growth on the Internet was 32% in the US. As of 1998 this was 32% US of the population. If you used this as a guide this would mean that 44% of the US population has access to the Internet on a regular bases in one form or another in 1999. This has researchers doing various methods of both primary and secondary research online. A true Internet Marketing Researcher can see the big picture, where as a traditional marketer working with a graphics designer and web developer may miss what is really going on.

Marketing Researchers use the Internet to learn several things. Each study varies depending on what the company is trying to learn or do with this information. One of the first things researchers are interested in is how their products do in the realms of Awareness, what people's Attitudes are to their product, and how and when it is used. Market Researchers also want to learn about how their products do in Brand Equity and Brand Positioning, and use Brand Tracking to see what happens in the life cycle of one unit of the product. Also they can learn how Business - to - Business communications on products are successful, Competitive Analysis and see Customer Satisfaction. A marketer may want to know if a New Product will be of any interest to their customer base. The want to use it for Packaging, Design, and Name testing. They may want to learn what consumers see as a fair price and how their prices compare to their competitors. Basically, what the traditional marketers learned with traditional marketing research, they can and will learn with Internet research. The only exception is in Web evaluation, Web site tracking and finding what will be the best sites for banners.
 
 

Primary Research

The next type of online research used is Primary data collection. With this topic it is interesting to look at how to compare traditional research techniques to it possible online counter part. By the technological view anything can or will be done by the Internet that is now done my traditional Research Marketing.

1. You can take pulse of audience.
2. You can validate new products or service concepts
3. You can get consumer feedback.

Questionnaires can use both structured and unstructured questions, it can be used for disguised or undisguised research, also is can be used for various types of Longitudinal studies.

Another type of primary research comes from what is known as log file Analysis. This is when a researcher takes a running record of several things surrounding the websites.

• How many daily users and is it growing?
• What paths do these visitors take?
• What cities, states or countries did they come from?
• When are the websites most active?

Secondary information is one of the most common and easiest to use forms of research tools. With great amounts of information, almost daily it is published and available for others to use in their research. It is readily available, faster, and less expensive than acquiring primary data. But it is not meant to meet your specific research.

Much of this is through manual research using:

Search Engines

Alta Vista, DejaNews(The Discussion Network), Excite, Google!, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, Northern Light(Search the Web plus journals, books, newswires), snap(Includes local search), Time Warners's Pathfinder Network, Webcrawler, WebSiteZ Directory (Find any web address), and Yahoo

Combined Search Engines

Accufind (Search by category and keyword), ALL-IN-ONE Search Page (Compilation of forms-based search tools), Dogpile, Go2NET(Metacrawler), iSleuth.com, SavvySearch, search.com(CNET), and Starting Point

Business-Specific Search Engines

FinanceWise and Livelink Pinstripe

Directories

Magellan and NetGuide Live

Also some good places to collect secondary data include:

Georgia Tech's Historical Internet survey, O'Reily and Associates RDD, Netcraft, Find/SVP's, Maritz Ameripoll, Nielsen's, and VALS 2 Internet survey

Advantages

Some of the most noticeable advantages include:

• Surveys can be completed in weeks rather then months.
• With response quality the Internet allows great flexibility in targeting audience
• There is a high response rate. The traditional marketing research response rate has been going down every year. In ten years, phone surveys the response rate went from 6 out of every 10 to only 4 out of every 10. This is not including non-response and hang-ups.
• Painless Outsourcing: A lot of the marketing research can be done by companies specializing in marketing research online for a fraction of the traditional marketing research.
• Lover Costs: often 30 to 50% of mail or phone survey.

• Web Survey

1. Only respondents will be individuals with websites access.
2. Only respondents will be individuals who visit the site.
3. Only respondents will be individuals who wish to be surveyed.

• One of the biggest complaints is bias factors, but as most good analysts would see an individual who does not have the money to have access to the Internet may then well be the ones that do not buy their product. Most things researched on the Internet should not be low-end items such as condiments, and no name brand items.
• Also, they mention that it is not a true cross-reference of the market and can not be a true random sample. To this it should be said the people online are usually the trendsetters and should be paid attention to and receive appropriate attention.
• Another argument is that if you are doing group sessions you cannot see their non-verbal expressions. While this is true, many fluent users use a non-verbal form of expression called Emoticons, these are text-based pictures that can relate to you how they feel about something (example: :p is like a smile with tongue out or being goofy).
• A question of validity comes up, do not know whom you are really talking to? Marketing researchers mention that due to the more relaxed feeling of privacy, people are more willing to be honest and non-truths do have a way of being weeded out.

"Effective Use of On-Line Research"
By Ruby Nadilo, July, 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=356

"Internet Focus Groups are not Focus Groups -- So Don't Call Them That"
By Thomas Greenbaum, July, 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=355

"High-Tech Surveys Have Arrived"
By Chris Kuever, July, 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=350

"On the Front - Line of On - Line"
By Joseph Rydholm/QMRR editor
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=348

"Is 'Internet Focus Group' An Oxymoron"
By Jill Falk, July, 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=3884
 
 

"Internet Surveys: Does WWW Stand for 'Why Waste the Work?'"
By Bill Eaton, July 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=244

"On-Line Research: Playing to the Web's Strengths"
By Amy Yoffie, July, 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=358

"The Top 10 FAQS about On-Line Research"
By Bill MacElroy, July, 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=354

"Internet Surveys: A Description of the Demographics"
By: Daniel C. Lockhart and Fred R.J. Detwiler, July 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=353

"The Future of On-Line Research",
By: Jeff Rosenblum and Chris Grecco, July, 1998,
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=357

"The 10 Commandments of Electronic Market Research"
By: Jon Buchwald, July, 1998
www.quirks.com/CGI-BIN/SM40i.exe?doci+3000:58911&%70assArticleId=360

Surveysite.Com
www.surveysite.com

"The Wired Bung: Online Surveys and focus Groups Might Solve the Toughest Problems in Market Research. But Cand Internet Users Really Speak for Everyone?"
American Demographics

"Online Market Research: Too Good To Be True?"
Market Research

"Targeted Internet Marketing Research Now Available Through Audits & Surveys Worldwide and CyberGold"
www.surveys.com/grfx/cyber1pr.htm

Speedback Marketing Research and Consulting
http://speedback.com

"Internet Marketing"; MBA Marketing Research Project
By Edward Sollbach, Sept. 5, 1996
www.yellowpage.com/yellowsp/internet.html

"Marketing Research on the Internet"
http://reinart.com/mroti.htm

"Conventional Wisdoms About Women and Internet Use:
Refuting Traditional Perceptions"
Prepared by Katie Hawfield and Emily Lyons, April 1998
http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/Student.Projects/Women/conventional_wisdom.html

"Website Architecture: The Key to Online Purchasing"
By Kimberly McGill, Lisa Glufling, Kiattisak Lertsukkijwatana, Eric Jewett, and John Gould
October 12, 1998
http://www.nashvillebusiness.com/research/index.htm

"Internet Privacy: Government Regulation Vs Current Practices of Self-Regulation"
By Kim Anderson , Kathryn Brookfield , Mani Kulasooriya , and Walton Smith
http://mba.vanderbilt.edu/student/mba99/mani.kulasooriya/privacy/privacy.htm

Project 2000
"Marketing in Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environments:
Conceptual Foundations"
By Donna L. Hoffman, and Thomas P. Novak (Revised July 11, 1995)
http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/cmepaper.revision.july11.1995/cmepaper.html

"10 Ways to Target French-Speaking Markets "
By Bill Dunlap, Euro-Marketing Associates
Web Commerce Today, Issue 15, October 15, 1998
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct2/981015frenchmkt.htm

"Brand Interaction: the Oft-Neglected Element of Online Branding "
By Rob McEwen of M2K, Inc.
Web Commerce Today, Issue 15, October 15, 1998
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct2/981015mcewen.htm

"The Integration Imperative "
By Wayne Cummings, President, Reliant Software
Web Commerce Today, Issue 14, September 15, 1998
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct2/980915integration.htm

"How to Attract Visitors to Your Website"
By Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/attract.htm

"The Web Marketing Checklist: 23 Ways to Promote Your Site"
By Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Web Commerce Today, Issue 39, December 1, 1997
http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm

"Testing, Testing 1,2,3: A New Spin on an Old Concept"
By Dave Shackleton, CEO, Concept Test Inc.
http://www.searchz.com/clickz/011598.shtml

"Who’s in Line to Log On"
By Brad Edmondson
Forcast, October 1997
http://www.demographics.com/publications/fc/97_fc/9710_fc/fc9797101.htm

"How to Do Marketing Online (and not get flamed)"
By Wade Leftwich
July/August 1994, Marketing Tools
http://www.demographics.com/publications/mt/94_mt/9407_mt/mt202.htm

"New Analysis Tools Gauge Impact of Online Ads"
By Jim Kerstetter, PC Week
November 09, 1998
wysiwyg://106/http://www.zdnet.com/icom/e-business/1998/11/ad.analysis/index.html

"Web Ads That Work"
By Annella Wynyard and David Snow
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/moneymachine/smallbusiness/story/0,3666,2163399,00.html

"Flash Forward: Sound and Motion"
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/monymachine/smallbusiness/story/0,3668,2163660,00.html

"Proven Ads, Developing Strategies"
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/monymachine/smallbusiness/story/0,3668,2163594,00.html

"P&G Holds Banner Day For Internet Advertising"
By James Tenser
Brand Marketing, September, 1998

"Kraft Foods Testing Internet Ads"
By Richard Turcsik
Brand Marketing, September, 1998

"The e-Corporation: More then just Web-based, it’s building a new industrial order"
By Gary Hamel and Jeff Sampler
Fortune, December 7, 1998

"Schwab Puts it All Online"
By Erick Schonfeld
Fortune, December 7, 1998