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Some developed countries have taken adequate steps to remain at the forefront of its development. Countries like Singapore have made it mandatory for its citizens to have a personal computer in every household each with high speed broad band connection. In all continents particularly in countries like United States, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, India, Japan, South Korea, Hongkong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Russia, Israel, China and in the middle east- hundreds of thousands of people are using internet- every single day. No other media is as powerful and interactive as the internet. It is even thought that in the very near future standard cable TV will be replaced by interactive internet TV where users can actively participate in TV programs and be able to customize TV programs and view them. The best part of using the internet is that it is cheap compared to the amount of benefit that it can provide. Since the begining of 90's Advertisers have started using the internet as a medium for promoting brands and improving market sales for their products and/or services. More and more people are now turning to internet to advertise their products or services, not only because it is cheap compared to other media but also because it is very effective. Where can you find so many targeted potential customers at one place ready to know more about your business ? Internet provides many unique tools to advertisers and brand promoters to promote their brands and undertake effective marketing. You may be amazed to know that there are many websites in the internet in which the numbers of active members have crossed 10 million.So much so that, there are sites where the membership number exceeds 66 million. Can you believe ? Yes it is true. As internet is intercative, more and more people and organisations are participating in forums, blogs, chats and similar programms.At current estimate there are more than 10 million websites and more than 6.6 billion web pages. Search Engines and Profile searchers are having a ball so much so that every new website have to wait between 60 and 180 days for being indexed by search engines, that too if they are lucky. Users visit the internet in search of information.Most users are ready to accept as much information as you can provide provided the information relates to his or her matter of interest. Therefore, advertisers have to be careful in the manner in which they promote their brand or sales. Unsolicited pop up ads or emails are very annoying.They do more harm than good. For every click through that a pop up advertisement gets one can be sure there are at least 100 which gets rejected instantly and not only that statistics have indicated out of every 100 rejection 10 user will never consider buying the same product ever again- just to punish the advertiser being insensitive to the feeling of the person. Moreover, advertisers must remember that the innocent internet users are having to spend their money and time while downloading annoying, unnecessary and unsolicited pop up advertsiementsis and they have every reason to get annoyed. Imagine you are attempting to buy emergency tickets for an urgent railway journey and the website you are attempting to visit for the ticket is more interested in promoting pop up ads for a bank than sell you your railway ticket or provide railway information. While you wait for your page to load you are thrashed with 8 pop up ads, one after the other, each with large image slowing down the entire process even with broadband connection at both ends. Imagine the trouble and harrassment it causes to innocent users particularly with dial up connection whose only interest is to get some important railway information. Just think about it. How would you feel if you are subjected to such torture for no fault of yours ? Should a government railway website do such thing ? Does anyone visit a railway website for opening a bank account ? In fact the advertisers themselves should be careful before taking up such unethical practice.In fact such type of advertisements should be banned and the offender severely punished. As long as any regulatory authority does not take up the matter users have the right to boycott such products or even such companies, permanently. There are several methods frequently used by advertisers to promote a brand or conduct online internet markeing campaigns for increasing sales of a product or service. These methods are : blog marketing, viral marketing, banner ads marketing, email marketing, link marketing, search engine marketing, directory listing marketing, paid inclusion marketing, website campain marketing, e brochure marketing, ebook marketing, online fair marketing, affiliate marketing, freebie marketing, pay per click marketing, celebrity marketing, pay per impression marketing, keyword marketing, article marketing, review marketing, rank marketing etc. While each of these methods are very powerful and stand alone, researchers have found that a combined marketing strategy comprising of three or four methods are far more penetrating in various market segments and more effective both vertically and horizontally. It must also be remembered that some product(s) or service(s) has its own marketing requirements which must be kept in mind while forming an interet marketing strategy for the product or service. Many people confuse Internet Marketing with Brand Promotion.Internet Marketing is not the same as Brand Promotion even though the method of promoting them are more or less the same. While Brand Promotion Services focuses on promoting a brand and not a product internet marketing services focuses on improving the sale of a product or service as the case may be. Brand promotion promotes the entire brand of the company while internet marketing is for promoting the sales of one or more product(s) or service(s) of the company. For example Brand Samsung has over hundred products. While promoting brand "Samsung" advertisers will focus on the brand "Samsung" and not on individual products even though the brand logo may display a few of its products whereas while promoting an airconditioner advertisers will certainly focus on the air conditioner itself stating all its features and benefits in details with a brief touch of its brand name to give it the mark of quality. Online Brand promoters normally uses the same methods or processes for Brand Promotion as Internet Marketeers would use for Internet Marketing.However, Brand Promoters would like to call them slightly differently and use the word brand promotion more often than internet marketing. For example expressions like blog promotion, viral promotion, banner ads promotion, email promotion, link promotion, search engine promotion, directory listing promotion, paid inclusion promotion, website campain promotion, e brochure promotion, ebook promotion, online fair promotion, affiliate promotion, freebie promotion, pay per click promotion, celebrity promotion, pay per impression promotion, keyword promotion, article promotion, review promotion, rank promotion etc are more common to brand promoters than the internet marketeers. However, it must also be said that there are people who think differently and not everybody agrees to these fine differentiations. To many advertising agencies it doesn't really matter since both are more or less the same and promoting a product also promotes the brand. There are many advantages for online promotion of a brand or product.Online promotion campaigns are not restricted by time or space as much as other methods of brand promotions such as TV or radio or print media are. For a TV commercial the time is restricted - for a few seconds to a minute or two - and that to at a very high cost depending on which time of the day the broadcast is aired. However, for online promotion there are no constraints of time.The same promotional material is available for constant viewing day after day after day- as long as the advertiser would like to keep it there. Moreover, internet web site pages are accessable to millions of users simultaneously. For a media like TV or radio space is also severely constrained. By space I mean the quantity of information that can be put in the promotional advertisement. Again, no such restriction is there for online internet media. You can put in as much information as you want, particularly text information.With the advent of broadband this is much more true.Now a days dazzling flash movies are being used for promotion and marketing of brands and products. Online media is cheap compared to any other media for the amount of time & space that it is able to provide.Where most TV commercials take tens of thousand of dollars to make and much more to get them displayed by purchasing expensive air time on TV or radio online advertisement of similar nature costs less than 25 % and covers much more geographic area and reaches many more targeted homes and targeted businesses. Moreover, online media can be targeted and focused accurately where as radio or TV can be targeted only upto a certain extent. Online promotion techniques are very flexible and can be modified easily. Just imagine how much would it cost to modify a TV commercial ! Online advertisements (excepting unsolicited emails and pop up ads) are much more user friendly compared to TV ads or even Radio ads. Online ads can be placed silently and simultaneously giving the rightful option to the user to choose to view or ignore the details where as TV ads force itself upon the viewer whether he or she likes it or not and this creates a lot of disgust and backlash on the advertised product. Businesses should therefore be very careful while advertising in TV or radio in what they show and for howmany times. TV viewers may like one or two properly made ads but if the same advertisement is forced upon the viewer 6 times in 30 minutes in combination with other ads for similar times every day, it is bound to create disgust.which may have the opposite effect and in disturbing cases bring down brand image as well as sales.This is too common a phenomenon today. What more can you say about a TV channel that shows advertisements for 16 minutes and self propaganda for 5 minutes for a programme of 30 minutes duration and not only this.The same pattern is repeated 24 hours. Disgusting ! Isint't it ? Keep observing, and soon you will identify many such channels on your own TV. From the quality and the amount of time some of the TV channels provide for repeated broadcasting of the same advertisements again and again on a dialy basis, many consumers strongly believe that neither such TV channel nor the advertiser (manufacturer as well as advertising agencies both included) care much about the feelings of the TV viewers. If this is true.... surely sooner or later the advertisers and such TV channels both are going to pay a very heavy price - by loosing viewers and customers. Certainly no business or brand image is greater than the public neither is any business big enough to survive if its products or services are not purchased by customers. Therefore be very cautious in what you choose to do while forming your brand promotion strategy. Advertisements are effective only if the strategy behind it is right. Article By: sumonto@sumonto.com http://www.sumonto.com |
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