How do I determine my marketing plan?

The purpose of the Web site - The purpose of the Web site will greatly influence where, when and how it should be promoted. A Web site does not necessarily have to reflect every aspect of the company; equally the promotional plan may focus on only one aspect of the Web site. A company may choose to develop more than one Web site, and some sites will be ‘live’ for just a short period of time, for a particular promotional purpose. For example, www.unilever.com is the corporate site for a particular multinational organisation. It is predominantly an information site, aimed at shareholders, providing a mass of information about the organisation including its various global brands. Dove is a major brand of Unilever, and has its own Web site www.dovespa.com completely separate from the Unilever site. Dove’s target audience comprises users of the range of soap products, therefore promotion of this site would be very different from that for the parent company. Examples of sites with clearly different promotional objectives are listed below. It is important when thinking about Internet Marketing that the business objectives for the Web site are clearly defined and the target audience is understood, so that a suitable strategy for promotion may be put in place.

Site Description	Target Audience	Some Examples of Potential Promotional Locations
UK Self Storage company including location map, storage advisor, and shop for purchase of packing supplies	Small to medium-sized businesses and individuals requiring office or home storage or removal	Online: Any site involved in the home move market: mortgage companies, estate agents Offline: Yellow Pages under Storage Services
Market Calendar dates, stallholder contact details	Local customers, suppliers, other farmers to widen the network	Online: Scottish Food Portal Sites, Scottish Tourist Board Site Offline: Farming Magazines
Provides up-to-date information on service disruptions, fares, journey planning	Londoners, visitors to London from the UK and abroad	Online: Other travel Web sites with customer destinations to London. Offline: Billboard advertising on the underground

Online and offline promotion - Essentially, there are two ways of attracting your target audience to your Web site: the first is online promotion using the Internet effectively, and the second is offline promotion using more conventional methods of advertising and marketing. Each has its own associated costs and will need specific skills to take full advantage of the benefits that each option offers.

Using on- and offline techniques in support of each other - Both techniques can often be used to complement each other. For example, during 1999/2000 Epson ran an ‘offline’ radio teaser campaign to promote the quality of a new colour printer. To demonstrate the quality of the print they encouraged listeners to log on to their Web site to take a look at a photograph generated from the printer. Promotion of the Epson Web site was not the primary objective; in this case the Web site was being used to provide a greater volume of information about a new product than could be put across using other traditional promotional techniques. Using the two media together radio and the Internet worked very successfully for Epson.

New offerings are possible on the Internet - While the business strategy should lead the way in determining online objectives for promotion and development of a Web site, the Internet and the technology behind it also offer businesses the opportunity to create customer services and develop promotional opportunities that would be impossible in the ‘physical world’.

For example, collation of data on a massive scale to allow users to specify their particular requirements has seen growth in many previously unobtainable services. Three companies provide travel information in this way: http://bahn.hafas.de, http://www.a2b.com and http://www.thetrainline.com. The services provided by all three sites are very comprehensive but one company in particular may be more familiar to the reader: www.thetrainline.com has been extremely well promoted both on- and offline, to encourage potential users to visit the site.

Permission marketing - The term ‘permission marketing’ was coined by Seth Godin, Vice-President of Direct Marketing for Yahoo! Godin feels that most traditional forms of marketing can best be described as ‘Interruption Marketing’. He proposes an alternative to the constant barrage of poorly targeted interruptions we receive each day through TV, radio, advertising, mail shots and so on. He describes permission marketing as the careful cultivation of a relationship with a particular customer, gaining permission from the customer through a process of developing an understanding of their needs and buying patterns. www.amazon.co.uk do this extremely well on their bookstore Web site. An example of permission marketing in action is the way in which the Web site suggests a personalised list of new books you might want to purchase based on your previous buying history. The list created is unique to the user. The technology on which a Web site sits  the databases that store customer information, product ordering patterns combined with the use of e-mail to carefully target customers (business or consumer) directly, creates the perfect environment for permission marketing to take place, something that has not been possible in the past.

The various tools that are available to create a unique marketing plan for a particular product, service or for your whole business on the Web are outlined in the remaining sections of this Guide.