VOLUME 2c. April 8th 1999 - The Internet as Media - The New Marketing Mix

By Ian Clayton

I happened to call Network Solutions, the people who assign all .com, .org and .net names. They were very busy having just started a major TV and traditional media promotion of their new "brand" identity as the Dot Com people. They had registered 5000 new Internet names that day. The salesman told me business was up 100% and the TV ads were really working. So it pays to advertise your site with the traditional media, I thought. It is worth looking closer.

Advertising a website with the traditional media advertising.

Look at the back pages of any travel magazine and the chances are that you will find several pages of small display ads for bed and breakfasts, hotels, and tourist attractions. Almost all now feature a website address. The small, low cost ads create awareness and refer to the website for details and order information.

With over half of all North Americans now online, promoting websites makes sense. However, learning to use a website in combination with a traditional promotion, is a new experience for advertisers. It offer a new set of options, new ways to communicate, a new message focus and new opportunities for action. Using the combination, the message on the traditional media can be shorter and more focused, leaving the website to fill in the details and take the order.

For a growing number of small and large companies the website is an indispensable part of business. For some, the website is the sales force. Some have abandoned printed brochures and instead now refer all clients to their website. Many are using the website address on their traditional media. A few are beginning to integrate the website into the marketing mix.

Travelocity, one of the largest travel agents on the Internet understands the importance of integrating the traditional media with its website marketing. Having started life on the Internet using on-line media and PR, the company is now about to expand its options. Historically Travelociy allocated 83% of its marketing budget to promotions and 17% to media buys. As Internet news was always hot, Travelocity was able to obtain a lot of free media coverage. Flight paging, for example (a service that notifies customers when flight schedules and prices change), was newsworthy. Travelocity blitzed the media with press releases, as well as the video equivalent, which it sent to television news stations, and got hundreds of stories aired. A similar Media campaign for its Shop Safe service (which guaranteed purchases) resulted in a 50% increase in on-line purchases.

The strategy worked well and in the past two years, Travelocity has grown from 750,000 to 5 million registered users, and from 9 million to 65 million page views a month. According to Sheryl Gatto, director of marketing, Travelocity first focused its limited marketing budget on public relations and online media, including placing banners on other sites. Now, as media hype wanes and as the Internet becomes more mainstream, the company sees the synergy of adding the traditional media to their marketing mix.

It will be interesting to see how they integrate the message with the call to action on their web.
 
 

Barbados.org and the Media.

The Barbados Tourism Authority started to use the Barbados.org address with their media campaigns in 1998. https://barbados.org was also added to the new family of literature in the same year. In a recent survey we evaluated the effect of these media referrals versus Internet. The results show that the Internet is still the most important media for Barbados.org. This is not surprising as barbados.org is extremely well positioned on the Net. In January 1998, 28,000 websites referred visitors to Barbados.org. They included all of the search engines, the major portals like AOL, CNN and a vast number of other sites such as journalist's reference sites, university libraries and fortune 500 companies. In addition, Barbados.org visitors include many special interest groups (from poetry to architecture) who found out about Barbados from Internet communities relating to their Interest.

Here are highlights of the latest survey:

(see this analysis at https://barbados.org/reports/surveylit-0399.htm):

QUESTION: How Did You Find Out About Barbados.org

· Internet = 87 %
· Print Media = 10%
· TV = 3%
· Travel Agent = 2%

Surprisingly a large number of visitors first discovered Barbados from the Internet.

QUESTION: How Did You Find Out About Barbados

· Friend Family and Repeat = 47%
· Internet = 23%
· Travel Agent = 12%
· Print - 9%
· TV = 8%

(see this analysis at https://barbados.org/reports/surveylit-0399.htm)
 
 

The New Marketing Mix

It seems that advertising on the traditional media is changing to accommodate integration of the message with the web. At the same time websites are being advertised on other websites and on other Internet channels at a growing rate. In North America, this Internet advertising totaled approx. $2 Billion US in 1998, a 400% increase over the previous year. Advertising on the Internet accounts for approx. 2% of the total American advertising market. If you add the actual value of the websites themselves, the total promotional material on the Internet is massive. Advertising on the Internet, they say, is going to be big business (We will discuss this in a future article).

The Internet is a new marketing channel with its own clientele and market segments that present unique promotional opportunities. Unlike broadcast it is not a mass media. Print, radio and TV have firmly established audiences targeted by many different demographic, social and economic profiles. Internet users are not as well defined nor as broadly based. They are generally a more highly educated, more affluent and technically savvy group of people. This is a rather good demographic for tourism and it is the reason why researchers are saying that travel will be the number one business on the Internet.

The Internet is still evolving, and as its user base grows, it is becoming broader. New technologies, such as WebTV and a range of hand held computing devices, are extending the Net to a whole new class of user. One survey in the UK, for example, found that many affluent retirees have purchased WebTV and are surfing for the first time. Many have never used a computer before.

In 1998 it was thought that 55% of USA and 35% of European homes will have computer Internet access by the year 2002. These estimates are being radically revised as Web TV and other Internet access devices have expanded their reach. A recent announcement by Yahoo! and Online illuminates this vision of an Internet wired world: Yahoo! will provide e-mail, personal calendars, weather and stock quotes. Online Anywhere's technology automatically formats the information to fit whatever device the subscriber is using, be it a large-screen television or a pocket-size, hand-held computer "
 
 

Conclusion:

It is clear that the Internet is an important marketing channel. It is also clear that some companies are using the traditional media in new ways to promote their websites. Many now integrate their websites with all marketing campaigns. To be most effective a websites should be an integral part of the marketing mix, working with traditional media to complete the promotional cycle. The Internet is the only media that provides real time tracking, interactive dialogue and the opportunity to close the sale. Those who fail to take this into account when developing a marketing strategy will miss the boat.
 
 

Coming Next - Advertising Options on the Internet: Search Engines Listing