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" 10 Critical Things to Know If You're Marketing on the Internet "
1. Who you are marketing to.
Someone who would open an email with "president of South Korea" for
the subject line, that began ... "Dear Friend, My name is JANG DOO-HWAN,
The brother of Mr. Chun DOO-HWAN, former President of South Korea who seized
power..."
You recognize those emails from a mile away, but they wouldn't still be sending
them if someone wasn't opening them and responding to them. What they're seeking
is the tens of thousands of people who enter the Internet for the first time
every day.
2. Whatever your market, it's far from saturated on the Internet.
In no other medium is there such movement. If you repeat a snail mailing within
6 months to the same addresses, what percenage of names do you think would be
new? How many people tune in to "Law and Order" for the very first
time each week?
3. It presents unique marketing challenges.
If you have a product or service that "hasn't taken off yet," you
must figure out whether more time and the constant stream of new people would
make a difference, or whether it's just terminally a bad idea.
4. This means you can repeat yourself, but this also means you must repeat yourself.
If a train left the station at ... Okay, say you have an eZine that's doubling
every six months, and the average open-rate is 30 percent. If you get lazy and
repeat the first issue at the end of the first year, how many of your
subscribers could your predict would be seeing it for the first time?
5. Every day someone toddles onto your website who's never
heard of PayPal ...
...who doesn't know to scroll down, or how to reset the text size for their
browser, who's afraid to put their credit card on the Internet, and who wonders
why that print is blue, i.e., it isn't just your site that's new, it's the
Internet that's new to them.
6. We can count on the fact that every day there will be more non-US individuals
surfing the web and more individuals whose first language is not English.
Keep this in mind as you write copy, talk about holidays, and make references
to statistics. We are used to saying "the divorce rate is 50%." We
mean "in the US," and it's generally understood to mean "in the
US," but those days are disappearing fast.
7. It's multicultural and global.
Start checking on how US-centric you are, i.e., Thanksgiving Day is October
13th ... in Canada. Labor Day is May 1 ... in Mexico. New Year's Day is lunar,
late-January to mid-February ... in China.
And for those people of those cultures who reside in other countries.
8. While we're hunkering down for winter in the US, it's spring in New Zealand,
and each has a very different energy.
That teleclass you schedule at 8 pm CST, US, won't be attended by a lot of folks
in the UK because it's the middle of the night over there.
9. Remember co-evolution. Don't be alarmed at the changes.
Yes, the spam got out of hand, and yes, "they" came up with spam filters,
and yes "they" found a way around them, and yes "they" called
it something else and came up with something different. Staying ahead of the
pack has always been necessary to stay competitive. Same game, different playground.
10. So, whether you're anticipating Thanksgiving Day or Eid al Fitr this month
(November), or both, que vaya bien.
About the Author:
Susan Dunn, MA, Marketing Coach
http://www.webstrategies.cc. Web strategies, web design, article-writing, eBook
writing, marketing plans and consultation, multicultural. We offer the services
you need to succeed. Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for FREE eZine; put "Checklist"
for the subject line. |