Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! by Ping-Ko Chiu

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

To Ms. McDiarmid, To my parents Mr. and Mrs. Chiu, To friends and advisers Thank you for guiding and supporting me through the process of creating this book.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Contents

Introduction ......................................................... 6 A New form of Marketing: Internet-Marketing ............. 12 Customers are the king ............................................................ 13 The Power of Social Media ...................................................... 14 A Both-Way Interaction with the Customers .......................... 15

The Old form of Marketing: Traditional Marketing ....... 17 Internet Vs. Traditional Marketing? ............................... 19 Why do big corporations still apply Traditional Marketing if Internet Marketing is so great? ............................................... 20 The Integration of two Marketing Methods ............................ 21 How do we determine when to tackle the Online Market? .... 22

Goals Determination .......................................... 24 Types of Customers: Buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Personas .......................... 25 Scenario- Local Diaper Company ............................................. 25

Different levels of Internet Users ................................... 26 Determining our Marketing Goals ................................. 27 S.M.A.R.T Goals ........................................................................ 27

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Scenario: Local Diaper Company (Further) .............................. 28

Existing Marketing Strategy: Melt-Me ........................... 29 Case Study: A new business, Pine tree Chocolates ........ 30

Going “Viral” ...................................................... 32 Choosing the “right” type of medium...................................... 34 Five NOTs on the Social Web ................................................... 35 An Official Company Webpage: Allow customers to reach you36

Video/ Audio Publication: YouTube ............................... 38 Marketing on YouTube ............................................................ 38 Case Study: The Unbreakable Nalgene Bottle ......................... 39 YouTube Optimization: Pepsi’s Channel Page ......................... 40

Blogging and MicroBlogging........................................... 43 Blogging: Using WordPress ...................................................... 44 MicroBlogging: Twitter ............................................................ 46

Social Networking Platforms .......................................... 49 Search Engine Optimization: Targeting on Light to Medium Internet Users .................................................. 53 Key word Optimization: Providing valuable content ............... 54

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Search Engine Advertising: Cost-Per-Click Services ................. 56

Reputation Management ................................... 58 Online Reputation Management: Controlling the heat to avoid fire......................................................................... 59 When & How should companies respond? .................... 61 Outspoken Media: You Deserve Your Bad Online Reputation ...................................................................... 61

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!............ 63

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Introduction

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Internet: the technology that has just been publicized around a decade ago is now heavily used in our daily lives. It is not just a database with WebPages full of texts; it is a platform where we Socialize, Communicate, Learn, Shop and more. Viewing only on the teen’s heavy dependence on the internet, there is no doubt that the usage/ application of it in our lives will increase tremendously within the next few years. I believe it is time that we recognize its importance and see it as a beneficial aspect to the business world. I am a Yr.11 student from the New International School of Thailand. This is the project that I am working on to aid me towards looking for my interest in the future. My goal of this project is to fully understand the mechanics of “Internet Marketing”. I have spent roughly two months into researching upon this topic, enabling me to meet with experienced people in the field in Taiwan and Thailand. The topic of Internet Marketing is currently very popular in the business world of Taiwan and most of the businesses are eager to apply this concept. But, some have long been using it. This is also the reason why I choose Taiwan to be my priority in looking for information to write this book. I am very fortunate to be able to meet with people from three different businesses; Feeling 18C (18 度 C 巧克力工坊)

A company that started selling chocolates online that grew into one of the most famous confectionery brand in Taiwan. If you have an opportunity to visit his shop, you will be shocked by what you see. It’s located nowhere near any cities; it has an average counter like Starbucks and a few outdoor seats. The shop alone earns around 3 million TWD (around a 100 thousand USD) per month. ”People tend to stereotype about the location 1

http://www.feeling18c.com/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! of doing a business, but as long as you have something special that people will have a strong desire to consume, the location comes second.” Mr. Jason Mao says- Owner of Feeling 18C. This “something special” is the linking of online and offline “Services” they provide. The company has a very strong marketing team lead by Mr. Shito Lin. He frequently organizes events online through the most popular social networking sites to giveaway goodies to their customers. He points out that this generates a better reputation amongst the web and in turn creates more sales. A Li Lan Village (阿里郎村落)

The owner of the shop Mr. Taki Huang manages a food blog that provides professional reviews on restaurants. His blog steadily gained followers that recognize him as a professional cook. Everyday around 71 people (last checked on 25-Sept-2010) visit his blog to read the reviews and the recipes he provides. As he opened his first restaurant, a large

http://blog.yam.com/hiphopkawaii/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! portion of his blog followers turned into his loyal customers and powerful evangelists. “I write in my followers’ point of view, providing details that they want to know, not advertisements.” says Mr. Taki Huang. His blog has enabled him to generate a tighter relationship with his customers, loosening the shops’ commercial intention. I-Want Internet Company (銀河網路公司)

I-Want is an Internet company that was founded roughly ten years ago and has been constantly providing Internet services such as Internet radio stations and Internet marketing. The company sees the potential of the web and has started to provide Internet marketing services since for 6-8 years. Today, the company provides the best Internet Marketing services in Taiwan. I-Want has a strong team lead by Ms. Iris Chang. The team provides its customers services such as reputation protection, word-of-mouth marketing and test marketing.

Thailand on the other hand is just starting to begin the technology fuzz. In my point of view, when something is popular in Thailand, the whole nation goes crazy to owning/ using it. For example, Blackberry has been popular for the past five months and now, you will be able to see everyone (the young, old, fashionable, unfashionable…) holding the newest model walking on the street, busy sending messages to their friends. From what I am seeing now, I believe the Apple iPad will be next (this is 3

http://www.iwant-in.net/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! written on August of 2010). The point I aim to make is that Thailand has a very unique form of consumerism and some smart business marketers will be able to see this trend and use it as a marketing method. I was able to find a company that I think is very advanced in using technology as a way to market the business. It is the: Oishi Company

Oishi was originally a Japanese buffet restaurant opened in 1999 that grew into a large scale Public Limited Company. It has around 120 restaurants in Thailand and producing many sorts of Japanese drinks and frozen food that are sold in most convenient stores. The company is quite old, but the way it operates has always been creative and new. It was the first that brought microwave food into the convenient store market and now the first to create its own online cooking games using two popular technologies; the QR code and the Augmented Reality (AR) technology. In case you are curious about what those technologies are; QR code is a two-dimensional bar code that contains information, so when the device scans the code it will be able to obtain the information from it. AR is a technology that can obtain a computed imaginary (the QR code and more…) from a real world environment. What Oishi have done is to create a game called “Oishi Café City” (like the Restaurant City on Facebook) that is totally free on the internet but requires the QR code on the container of each drink to be scanned from a personal display camera on the computer to obtain certain gaming materials to continue the game. 4

http://www.oishigroup.com/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! “Oishi is a brand of Innovation” says Mr.Nuttanun Puntuwong – Online Marketing Manager of Oishi. He pointed out that the only way Oishi have succeeded in Internet Marketing was to apply the newest technology to the market.

Different businesses take different steps towards marketing their brand/ product online. As I obtain more knowledge on the topic of Internet Marketing I realize that there is no “one method fits all” but several deep analysis and detailed planning, custom made method for the business. Therefore as I write this book, I am wishing to point out ways that can guide you towards designing your own Internet Marketing plans. Before you read on, there is one more thing that I would like to point out. This book is a combination of what I have heard/ learnt (from people, books, articles and numerous other sources) and my perspective of how businesses can be successful on the web. This is not what I have actually experienced.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

A New form of Marketing: InternetMarketing Many businesses in the US and the world have been devastated during the financial crisis in year 2000. Additionally, customers had become much harder to deal with. Therefore companies began to move their focus onto the web. They created an era of internet businesses. Businesses and WebPages on the web have increased their amount since then and so is the 5 number of users. Within the past ten years, Google entered the 6 stock exchange market, Wikipedia has been created and so has 7 8 9 YouTube , Facebook , Twitter and many other web based 10 11 products by Amazon and Apple . Studies from the Foreseeing Innovative New Digi-services (FIND) show the statistic of the number of people with the access to internet in Taiwan. Figure 1 shows a steady growth of Internet population in Taiwan. It is expected that by at least 2013, 50% of the Taiwanese population will have access to the internet. Within that 50%, most of the users are under the age of 50.

http://www.google.com/ http://www.wikipedia.org/ 7 http://www.youtube.com/ 8 http://www.Facebook.com/ 9 http://twitter.com/ 10 http://www.amazon.com 11 http://www.apple.com/ 6

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Figure 1- % of people using internet in Taiwan- FIND Statistics

Roughly speaking, if your targeted audience is under 50, then there is infinite business oppurtunity for you on the web (if your business is in Taiwan).

Customers are the king On the web, the identity of a company and an average internet user are the same. Everyone deserves the same rights. Standing in the corporation’s point of view, the customer should always be a priority and every action on the web should be made for them and to satisfy them. Customers go online mostly to look for information. The FIND studies also show that 91.2% of Taiwanese internet users in 2009 go online to look for information. Comparing to the 35.4% of people using the social media, it stands in a much higher number. However, this is only the statistics for Taiwan; it may be different in other countries. We can still conclude from those statistics that many people go online to look for possible solutions to their problem. Today, a common term that I hear and use a lot with my peers are “Google this…” or “Google it!”

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Using the power of search engines, customers are able to find solutions to their problems. Correspondingly, corporations are able to receive potential customers (customers who “might” be interested in consuming your products or services). When a potential customer looks for a solution to their problem, a good internet marketer will approach to them with a “free solution” in a friendly manner. With a few techniques, they are able to become fully loyal customers of the corporation. This “free solution” can be information, your product or anything else that can solve their problem immediately. An instant relationship is then built and this relationship can lead to infinite business opportunities. Taki Huang (Owner of 阿里郎 Korean cuisine) said that “I believe my blog has succeeded to cultivate customers. I used the form of blog to share my ideas and communicate with them; in the end we form a good relationship. This has been a very important key towards my success today.” In his case, he provided valuable information to his potential customers, which lead him to build a strong relationship with each of them. Those customers then become his loyal evangelists who help him to attract more and more customers.

The Power of Social Media First of all, the social media is where we socialize on the web. So those famous websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are grouped inside the category of “social media”. The social web is a huge space where people share information around. Some of the time people recommend their friends and families about a brand or a company on a certain social platform. Those may include links, websites, or product specifications. The reason that this trend is important is that normally when they recommend or share what they are

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! interested about; it is most of the time shared to someone that shares the same interest. Just like the “Evangelist” talked about earlier. When corporations produce a piece of information that is worth sharing, people automatically share them amongst their peers. Those who receive the information then pass it on to more of their friends. Imagine a piece of remarkable information that is worth you sharing with your friends on Facebook. You have 100 friends, and all of them will see what you share. Depending on your popularity, the number of people who will take your information and pass it on may differ. Let’s just take 2, so two of your friends passed it on and another two picks it up and does the sharing again. This carries on forever as long as the information stays fresh and interesting. During the process there will also be people who read it but do not participate in sharing it. Those people still received the information, which means that they are somewhat aware about the corporation or the organization where the information is originating from. If the information is a positive subject for the public, then the overall reputation of the corporation will be increased. This may lead to the increase of sales.

A Both-Way Interaction with the Customers Traditional-Marketing is to provide one-way messages to the customers. The companies send out messages through TV advertisements, billboards and the customers receive them and decide if they want to consume the product. However, on the web, the consumer and the owners are equal; therefore as a company we need to do both-way interactions with the customers. What’s a both-way interaction? It is when companies

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! and customers communicate and work together to establish benefits for each other. In Traditional-Marketing, corporations shoot their information to their audiences. The audiences (potential customers) receive the message and choose if they want to consume their product. Many customers are lost this way due to the lack of maintaining/ establishing relationship. In Internet-Marketing, WebPages can be setup to provide answers to any of the questions the potential customers might have. A good internet-marketer will be able to think of all the problems and questions potential customers might have when they are introduced to the company or the product. WebPages or contact information can be provided on the web to maintain these potential customers to establish further business opportunities.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

The Old form of Marketing: Traditional Marketing So, now we have an understanding about InternetMarketing, what is Traditional Marketing then? Well, it is totally different and the way we operate Internet-Marketing might not be appropriate to be used on Traditional-Marketing. Traditional-Marketing is mostly about advertising. Those TV, billboard, newspaper, street sign advertisements are part of it. They are based around creativity, and the more creative you are, the more attention you attract when potential customers spot you. This method of marketing has been very successful within the past few centuries. People were paying attention to what the corporations tell them and believe in the product. Therefore advertisements work for most of the people. However, time has changed, we don’t tend to pay attention to the business messages they give us. Especially to those younger generations, the advertisement just does not work as much as it used to be. I personally love to watch TV and enjoy all the valuable content that they provide, but it seems like advertisements pop up every 10 minutes of the show. A total of 60 minutes for the duration of the show, around 25 minutes are advertisements and only 35 minutes are the actual content. I don’t suppose that this is what happens in most country, but certainly a definite “yes” for the Taiwanese TV channels. What I tend to do is to surf around other channels while the main channel is showing the advertisements.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Each of the TV advertisements are very costly, however many corporations still jump in to invest in this area. This is because Traditional Marketing has been providing them with the increase of sales and brand awareness since a long time ago. In now days, we are able to separate what is an advertisement and what is not. Certainly, a barrier is built between the messages that the corporations want to tell us. The effectiveness of TV advertisements will decrease as the population of the younger generations increase. This is because when you are growing up in the environment where you are constantly being given messages that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been told not to rely on, you will filter out those you do not want to hear or see.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Internet Vs. Traditional Marketing? Until this point, many of you may think that my purpose of writing this book is to introduce the idea of Internet Marketing and urge you to ignore the method of Traditional Marketing. Well, this is not entirely my message. Yes, Traditional Marketing is losing its effectiveness, however it will not vanish totally. Mr. Huang pointed out that “It will not vanish but I believe that the ratios will be different. I believe that Internet Marketing and Traditional Marketing both have their own followers. People who use Internet will appeal to Internet Marketing but people who do not have access to the internet will most likely pay attention to Traditional Marketing.” Looking at the advantages of Internet Marketing, it is more overwhelming than Traditional Marketing now days. It may be the opposite a decade ago, but not in the new era with freedom of thoughts and innovative technologies. The 2009 Neilson Research presented a measure of the Taiwanese population’s trust on different forms of advertisements. Figure 2 shows that for a corporation/ business in Taiwan, managing your online reputation is more effective than Traditional Marketing advertisements. The most efficient form of advertisement is “Recommendations by Friends and Families”. This also relates to Internet marketing; this is because on the online world, it is easier to share experiences with your peers. The Word-of-Mouth phenomenon is established through the spread between friends and families. The one running second is the official websites and internet platforms of the company. I believe that this is because when ever customers follow the company’s activities, they feel

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Figure 2- Population's trust of different Ads in Taiwan

participated. As they believe the company and they are actively communicating with or about the company, then the relationships become stronger. It is always easier to talk and convince people who believe in you.

Why do big corporations still apply Traditional Marketing if Internet Marketing is so great? This is because many of their local target audience still pay attention to street billboards, TV advertisements and messages given out by the corporations. Taking the example of Pepsi in Thailand, the company advertises in the form of TV advertisements, street billboards and even posters everywhere around the city. This is because the internet is not yet fully developed in Thailand, the dependence of it is not as high as countries such as Taiwan and the United States. Their target audience, which is the young and middle aged generations, still focuses on the advertisements from their Traditional Marketing strategies.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Additionally, having advertisements on every corner of the city generates “Brand Awareness”. What we can spot from those Pepsi advertisements in Bangkok is that it does not focus on the taste and the effect of their product but instead they focus on their brand. They tend to design advertisements which focus on the theme of the company and constantly promoting their brand to the audience. To further clarify this point, another example can be provided. One of the recent Pepsi advertisements I have noticed is the Pepsi Max 2010 African World Cup video. The video features six famous football stars visiting Africa and playing football with the local Africans. Through the costumes, setting and story of the video, we can understand the intention behind it. The short clip transfers the Pepsi’s theme of “Energetic”, “Creative”, “Young” and “Local” to the audiences. This advertisement does not only appear on TV, it is also presented in the form of posters and even exists on the BTS (Bangkok Mass Transit System) trains as a moving billboard. By constantly proposing their brand into their customers mind, a strong dependence and loyalty is built between the corporation and the customers.

The Integration of two Marketing Methods Internet Marketing will not work on itself forever, not unless you’re an internet based company or your company is a B2B (Business to Business). If your company provides services that require human to human interaction, Internet Marketing will not be enough on its own when your company grows into a larger scale. Mr. Lin described that for Feeling 18C to grow into the scale it has today, neither Internet Marketing or Traditional Marketing can be left out.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! The integration of traditional marketing and internet marketing is important for the growth of the company. In Taiwan, the company’s strategy to interlink between the two methods is present everywhere. At the very end of new TV advertisements, they say “Go on Yahoo and search for <product’s keyword> right now!”. This action of interlinking provides mutual recoveries of disadvantages for both methods of marketing. Traditional Marketing is less likely to provide enough information for their potential customers. However, Internet websites can do that. Internet Marketing strategies are less likely to attract potential customers who watches TV more frequently than using internet. Traditional Marketing can satisfy that. Therefore the interlinks between the two methods can achieve many benefits.

How do we determine when to tackle the Online Market? Customers from different countries have different dependence on the internet and therefore we cannot give a fixed statement on which of the two methods of Marketing are more effective than the others. However, it is certain that the development of the country is closely linked towards the usage of the internet and also the effectiveness of Internet Marketing. To measure the “Development” we can look at the readiness of online media platforms within the country and the dominant age group which interacts on the online world. First of all, the online media platforms are mediums to operate Internet Marketing (These mediums will be discussed later in Section 3Going Viral on the Internet). Therefore before we kick start the Internet Marketing plan for the company, it is important to look at what sort of resources are available to us right now. Last of all,

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! the target customers of your company should be compared against the type and age range of the internet users within the region (This will also be discussed in detail in Section 4- Goals determination). There will be no point marketing on the web if your target audience does not participate in the online world. So, we may consider the following questions: 1.

Do the media platforms provide language support for my customers?

Are the media platforms blocked in the region due to filtering issues?

Who is/are your target audience/s? Who are the dominant internet users in the region? Are they the same?

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Goals Determination

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! To approach on “how” and “what” to tackle the Online Market, we have to determine the type of target audience/s we’re aiming to reach and our marketing goals. This step is absolutely crucial when designing a marketing plan for your company.

Types of Customers: Buyer’s Personas First of all, we need to think about the type of customers we’re targeting on so that we can design internet contents that meet their interest and know how we can establish loyalty and strong relationships, in other words, grabbing onto them to generate further businesses. We use the Buyers Personas to break buyers into different groups and analyze their needs, their commonly used socializing platforms and their personalities. It is like a profile of different types of people. Whatever a company decides to put onto the market, it has to be checked with the Buyers Personas so that it will have its full effectiveness when reached by the customers in the online world.

Scenario- Local Diaper Company For a local Diaper company in Taiwan, one of their Buyer Personas would be the new mothers who just gave birth to their child. These new mothers do not yet know how, what and when to change their baby’s diapers. They wish to provide their baby with the best comfort possible, but do not know how to choose the diapers. They will be going onto YouTube to search for videos on methods of changing diapers. They will also be going to health forums on the web to find other online customer’s

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! choices of brands or material of diapers. They do twitter and they have a Facebook account. They are more comfortable with daily simple language when it comes to information. The example provided is one Buyers Personas. There are usually multiple Buyers Personas for a company. Contents posted onto the web should be specially designed for each type of buyer’s personas.

Different levels of Internet Users During the interview with Ms. Chang from the I-Want Internet Marketing agency, she pointed out that “There are three types of Internet users; they are separated as Light Users, Medium Users and Heavy Users. Most people like you and me will be categorized as light users, we know how to use the web, but we do not know where to go to forms. The medium users visit forms and Blogs periodically, they have their interest and they focus on the mediums that relates to their interest, but when they have a question that is not related to their interest he/she does not know which forums or blogs to go to. Heavy users are those who are familiar with all types of forums with different topics. They spend much more time on the internet than light and medium users, around 8 to 12 hours of usage time on forums, discussion boards, blogs and knowledge databases. It is not about how much time you spend on the web, but how skilled you are in terms of seeking for information.” This closely relates to the buyer’s personas but a more detailed analysis of where the customers visit on the web to seek for information. Once we find the level of internet users our customers are categorized into, we can operate our marketing

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! strategy targeting on the particular websites familiar for our customers.

Determining our Marketing Goals After the analysis on buyer’s personas, we need to determine the marketing goal/s. So, what IS our goal/s? Is it to increase traffic amount and sell expensive advertisements like Google? Or is it to improve search rankings (ranking of web pages when a person searches for the subject) and to increase sales? Or is it to increase brand awareness and improve reputation management? Or to establish thought leadership (the spread & share of knowledge to establish online reputation)? There may be other goals which haven’t been pointed out. For a company, the Internet Marketing team should have at least one goal to achieve. If there are more than one marketing goals, they should NOT be combined together as one. Each of the goals should stay separate and the methods of achieving the goals should be different to each other. This is to avoid complexity and to make sure that the goal is possible to achieve.

S.M.A.R.T Goals The author of “The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web” Tamar Weinberg pointed out a method to measure if our goals are appropriate. He names it S.M.A.R.T. By “SMART” he means that they should be Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Specific- The goals should include specific details. This will be the only way to measure if the goal is reached.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Measureable- It is essential to analyze “How” you will manage to achieve the goal and “What” are you required for this. Attainable- Goals can be challenging, but it has to be achievable. Analyze what and how you have achieved so far and if it is possible to achieve your next goal. Realistic- Make sure that you have the requirements to achieve your goal. Do you have the money? Do you have the right person to aid you? Timely- Set a limited time for you to achieve your goal. The goal shouldn’t be something that you put your money and effort into forever until it is fulfilled. If the goal is not achieved by the end of the estimated time, then there has to be analysis done before you set onto the next goal.

Scenario: Local Diaper Company (Further) To rewind back a to the diaper company that I carried out earlier, so what are their goals and how do they achieve them? As a local Diaper company’s marketing team, our goals are: 1.

To Establish Thought Leadership. The aim is to develop an online knowledge database for our unique customers (different buyer’s personas) which answers any of their queries on diapers. The goal is to achieve at least 60 pages of information. The projected time period is one year, st effective from 31 December 2010.

To achieve the goal: We understand that this type of customer (the earlier example of buyer’s personas) is eager to learn new knowledge and in the

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! fastest way possible. Therefore we can act as an educator online. We can develop our own knowledge database which includes information on the type of diapers, the materials they are made, comfort comparison of different materials and basically answering any type of questions that they can possibly have in their mind. We can establish our own video tutorials on how to put on diapers. We can also create a YouTube channel for the company and upload these videos onto the web and interlink each of the videos to the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knowledge database. The online knowledge database should be a customer and company interaction center. Questions will be proposed both by the company and the customers. Answers and solutions are replied by the company for the customers. All of the information should be professional, because we need to be trust worthy for the customers to build loyalty and relationship with the company. The scenario provided is just a short summary of how they should look like, but in the case when you are to design the Buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Personas, the Goals and the Method of Achieving the goals, they should be further elaborated to provide detailed description for other people. And again, the example provided only presents one goal; there can be multiple marketing goals for a company.

Existing Marketing Strategy: Melt-Me During the interview with Mr.Nuttanun Puntuwong, he pointed 12 out the example of Melt-Me (opened in 2010 February), the confectionary shop in Thong-Lor soi 10. He mentioned that the first goal of Melt-Me is aimed to achieve the theme of luxury, royal and art. In other words, it is to achieve positive reputation

http://www.melt-me.com/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! amongst the customers. Therefore the first Marketing strategy for Melt-Me won’t be prior to create a content rich website. He decided to use a large amount of flash animation and art work, however if the site is full of animation and artwork the “spiders” (programmed robots of search engines to discover websites and its popularity) sent by Google won’t be able to spot the key phrases and content that links to the website when searched. This will lead to a poor search engine ranking. Therefore Mr.Nuttanun Puntuwong decides to use Traditional marketing to recover what Internet Marketing cannot achieve. When the company has grown and achieved a stable amount of buyers and followers, they will activate the second goal, which is to establish thought leadership. He decides to tweak the website to a content rich website. This is to attract more customers and create a doubling effect with the Word-of-Mouth strategy. The last part of his marketing strategy is to maintain the reputation. He will be actively creating events and give-away goodies to the customer; this final step is a very important factor into building a stronger and tighter relationship he said.

Case Study: A new business, Pine tree Chocolates This article (Figure 3) talks about a new type of business that has been developed in Taiwan. The products are Chocolates that are made with Pine Tree extracts. This is a new product on the market and the inventor is thinking of ways to develop his business. The

Figure 3- Article on Marketing Strategies for Chocolate Business

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! writer of this article exploited this theory of marketing and wrote an analysis along with the experts’ opinions. The inventor’s original intention was to sell his chocolates to the people who know high-quality chocolates. Therefore he is planning on using the top bloggers on Yahoo to advertise his products to the “real experts on chocolate”. He explicitly explained that if he uses the average food bloggers, his products will look not as professional and high quality. However the expert from “Small to Medium Business aiding Organization” from the economic sector of the Taiwanese government (providing financial aid to the owner) disapproves his theory. He pointed out that the company lacks the analysis on their targeted audience and the main product message to be exposed to the market. He said that the main message should be “healthy” but not “delicious”. This is mainly because there are other products on the market that sells “delicious” chocolates; therefore the uniqueness of the product is gone. Additionally, his targeted audience “should” be the average adult citizens; this is due to the fact that in recent years the media has really done a good job upon educating people. Therefore people do know what a good chocolate is. The expert also disapproves his theory on using only the top bloggers instead of average food bloggers. The reason wasn’t specified but I believed that this is because top bloggers and average food bloggers have the same type of followers. The only difference is the number of followers; therefore using the top bloggers doesn’t really differ from the average food bloggers that “actually” have followers that knows food. These decisions are made due to a poor analysis on the product and the targeted audience.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Going â&#x20AC;&#x153;Viralâ&#x20AC;?

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! There are numerous methods to tackle the online market. I prefer to call those different methods as to mediums of operating online marketing. In this section of the EBook you will explore the different types of mediums and their advantages. I will discuss several real life examples to explain what companies/ organizations have done to become successful on the particular medium they are applying. So, what are the different mediums? Social Networking Sites- Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. A community platform to meet new people and to communicate new information. Blogs- WordPress, Blogger. A platform for people to express information about a subject or multiple topics. It is also a mean to share your interest to the world Video and Photo Sharing- Youtube, Flickr. The sites that allow upload of videos and photos and commenting space for the viewers. MicroBlogging- Twitter. Sites that provide services similar to blogs but for a small quantity of text. It also provides updates for their user with whatever they are subscribed to (services similar to RSS feeds). ChatRooms and Message boards- Categorize topics of userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interest and provide online meeting location for a large quantity of people to have a discussion over a certain topic. Listservs- Emails sent to a collection registered subscribers. (What Mr.Nuttanun Puntuwong refers to as E-Blast) Wikis- Wikipedia. Web Sites that are platforms for people to edit and update information.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Social bookmarking- Stumble Upon, Dig and Delicious. They are Websites that allow users to suggest and share information to others and vote for what interests them. Some categorize them in subjects, so users can find information which interests them by selecting the topics.

Choosing the “right” type of medium A company can choose the different mediums to apply to their marketing strategy. However, they should be selecting them based on their buyer’s personas. As explained earlier, a company would normally have several different types of customers. To develop a well rounded marketing strategy, the key is to fulfill your customer’s needs with your area of expertise. And “how” is it that you can satisfy them? Well the best way is to study the buyers’ personas and understand which internet websites they frequently attend to. It is nearly impossible and unbeneficial to use all of the types of mediums. In my point of view, companies Must understand their customers and their own company to design a efficient marketing plan. Only operate your marketing strategy on where your customers exist. To better illustrate this point, I came up with this phrase: “It is easier to snipe a flying bird than to shoot them with a shotgun”. If you come to think of it, sniper consumes a single bullet at a time. They are accurate, powerful and to-the-point. Thinking of shotguns, their damage range is wide, but not as accurate and strong. As a medium/ small business, the money, people and skills are limited. If we use a shotgun approach to the online market, our uniqueness and strength on each of the different mediums would be weak and ineffective. If we gather all of the strength and power to tackle on mediums where our true customers are, we will not waste any time and power but instead we use them effectively.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Five NOTs on the Social Web 1.

Reply with a offensive tone or Forcing people to terminate their comments On the web, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all equal and respect is a very important matter. Whatever goes on the internet stays on there and can be duplicated or enlarged. Any disputes can have the potential to grow large and harm the reputation of your company. Promote personal opinions on the web There are different types of internet users that may follow your online webpage. They may be your customers or just random visitors. Religious or Political views may be controversial, therefore posting opinions towards those sensitive subjects may be harmful towards your own reputation. Let people who are unfamiliar about your company & customers operate your online WebPages People who are unfamiliar with your company and your target audience may not know your marketing strategy and your goals. All of the posts should be written for your target audience. Leave your online WebPages inactive It is important that you keep your followers updated with news and remind them of your existence. Once you stop, people forget about you. Therefore if you have decided to target the internet market, keep in your mind that this is a long term strategy and once you stop, it will possibly ruin your reputation. Operate with a strong commercial intention The online mediums are not a page to promote your product. We want to approach the customers in a friendly manner and establish

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! relationship. Leave the promotion of products to the official webpage. Customers tend to dislike companies if their actions provoke a strong commercial intention.

An Official Company Webpage: Allow customers to reach you A company Must have an official WebPage. For smaller companies, blogs may just do fine, but for medium to large companies, an official WebPage is absolutely crucial. An Official WebPage is the companys own page which reveals their background information, products/ services, contact information, events & activities and serves as a home page for pages outside the official webpage. First of all, all of the content should be clear and precise and designed with your buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personas. Potential customers may visit your website to learn more about your company. However, they are not to read off pages and pages of text. They just want a rough idea to who you are and what sort of services you provide. Background information should provide Who, What, When, Where, Why and How the company started. The product & services section should be design with your buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personas. What do you customers seek for when they visit your website? Graphics or text? Second of all, contact information should be easy to spot. Potential customers may visit your website from a link of other websites to look for ways to contact the company. It is important to make your contact information easily find. This initiates B2B (Business to Business) and C2B (Customer to Business) business opportunities.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Third of all, the home page (Index page) should appeal to your customers and initiate further stay on the webpage. The term “Appealing” should be determined by your buyer’s personas. Last of all, linking of company WebPages should be established. The companys online mediums should link to the official WebPages while it links back to them. This interlinking establishes more business opportunities.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Video/ Audio Publication: YouTube People often go to Google and search for solutions to their problem or just randomly browsing for whatever they are interested for. If you can create interesting ideas and information, people will find you automatically. They will share your stories and if it is a problem or a unique idea, they will try to solve them or to understand them. They are advertising for you. They tend to be more trustworthy for other customers than the advertisements made by the company. 13

With YouTube , companies can easily upload Audio & Video publications. Those publications can be easily accessed by the customers through a few clicks. By clicking the subscribe button, they receive them automatically every once an upload has been made.

Marketing on YouTube Creating an account on YouTube is the easiest thing ever! The only steps are to enter the required information and click on some buttons. This is also the reason why there are so many users on YouTube posting millions of videos every day. So how exactly do we stand out in this huge crowd? As talked earlier, as long as you provide something interesting onto the web, people will maintain their interest on you. However, if you think back to the Five NOTs talked about earlier, there is this last one which talks about how we shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a strong commercial intention. This is true and should be taken into serious consideration when ever videos and audios are to be published onto the web. People go online to look for

http://www.youtube.com/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! interesting videos, not some advertisements to force them into buying products.

Case Study: The Unbreakable Nalgene Bottle Nalge Nunc International is a world known company for its famous polyethylene plastic water bottles. The company publically claims that their Nalgene water bottles are impossible to be destructed. This lead to a continuous wave phenomenon where people all around the world upload videos on how they can or cannot break the water bottles. If you would search â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nalgeneâ&#x20AC;? on YouTube, you will find hundreds of videos each of them with different method to break the water bottle. These videos become a mean of advertisement for your company and your product. If the appearance rate of your product is high and is always bonded with a positive message, then your reputation will improve and will definitely lead to more sales. I do not know if this is truly their marketing strategy at the time, but I can say that it would be a really successful one if it is.

Other company/ organization initiated topics which had gone viral: 14

Diet Coke and Mentos

The Best Job in the World

BlendTec Experiment

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Diet+Coke+and+Mentos&aq=f http://islandreefjob.com.au/about-the-best-job/ 16 http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=BlendTec&aq=f 15

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

YouTube Optimization: Pepsi’s Channel Page YouTube also allows customization of channel pages. Therefore everyone can optimize their background, the header, the avatar and personal profile. As a company’s marketing team, the YouTube page for the company has to be designed for their customers. Pepsi as pointed out earlier (In Section 1- Internet Vs. Traditional Marketing), has a theme of “Energetic”, “Creative”, “Young” and “Local”. Their YouTube channel page has expressed this theme through the use of background, header and personal profile. 17

Pepsi’s Channel page :

Figure 4- Pepsi Channel Page

http://www.youtube.com/user/pepsi?blend=1&ob=4

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! The immediate sense of “Energetic”, “Creative” and “Young” can be felt by looking at the background and the header graphics designed by Pepsi (Figure 4). So what IS the point of showing their theme? Well, we can spot its target audience according to the theme that its brand is trying to present. Obviously, they are the people from younger generations who may/ may not be energetic and creative, but Pepsi wants to promote the idea of “If you drink Pepsi, Your Cool, Energetic and Creative” There is no doubt that Pepsi has chosen a good theme for the company, but the marketing of its products is the force behind it that drove the idea to everyone’s mind. Pepsi’s Channel Profile: Pepsi’s channel profile (Figure 5) is simple and does not include much information. However, they included links to their official website. Why would they do that? Well, the reason is very simple. First of all, the personal profile section on the YouTube channel has limited space for them to express who they are. Second of all, the background and the theme of the channel Figure 5- Pepsi Channel Profile page already hint who and what kind of company Pepsi is, but not so enough. Pepsi WANTS MORE ATTENTION from their viewers. So they choose not to include any more information to extend your stay on this YouTube channel. They incorporated links that links to their website which includes more information. The increase of stay period (period of time that is stayed on the website) on their

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! official website can; lead to a higher ranking on search engines, better establishment of loyalty and creates more business opportunities. However, it is not necessary that you follow Pepsi’s method 18 exactly. There are other instances such as Coca-Cola’s Channel 19 and IBM’s Channel You can decide upon the significance of using this method on your company.

18 19

http://www.youtube.com/user/cocacola http://www.youtube.com/user/ibm

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Blogging and MicroBlogging A blog/ microblog are websites maintained by a person or a group of people sharing and expressing useful information to show their expertise to the world. 20

WordPress is an online blogging platform for internet users. There is no cost required for their standard services. The site provides a very user friendly platform to create, update and analyze your blog/s. Small businesses may choose this type of internet platform to substitute the method of creating their 21 own official WebSite. Twitter on the other hand, is a MicroBlogging platform for internet users. No cost is required to make an account and be actively participating on the website. The differences between a blog and a microblog are the amount of text to be inserted into each post. A Blog allow users to share large amount of text with multimedia uploads. A microblog allows users to share text-only content with a limit on the amount of words. Four ways of using a Blog or a MicroBlog:    

20 21

Monitor what’s being said about you, your products, your company/ organization Participate by Involving in other people’s blogs or replying to people’s comments Working with other known bloggers to advertise your company Shaping conversations said about you by participating in your own blog

http://wordpress.com/ http://twitter.com/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Blogging: Using WordPress Ms. Chang from the I-Want Internet Marketing agency pointed out that Blogs are becoming more popular for business in now days. This is because through the use of blogs, companies will be able to inform a large amount of customers about all sorts of information. This increases customer & business interaction which establishes thought leadership, maintains or improves reputation, builds loyalty and initiates more business opportunities. Some small companies even decide to use a blog as their first official website to start with. As the companies grow, they will consider changing to creating their own website. There are several advantages of using a blogging platform (WordPress) to create a blog as your website for a new born company. Firstly, the blogging platforms host your blog for you, so there wouldn’t be any cost for the server (a computer that hosts websites) that you are required to maintain a website. If your company is new and the fund is limited for you to create your own websites, this would be a preferred choice. Secondly, you will not require technical skills (skills such as HTML formatting, operating WebSite hosting programs) to create a webpage. Again, if your company does not have the fund to hire technical personnel to control and monitor the websites, blogging platforms will be a primary option.

Case Study: It’s happened to be a Closet It’s happened to be a Closet is a local European style café in Bangkok. It now has three branches in three department stores; Paragon, Emporium and Siam Square. The scale of its company is 3 quite small. Each of the shops is about 40m each. They decided to use WordPress to create their blog as a company’s official

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! 22

website. Their blog is built around the same theme that each of the shops has been designed. The blog itself is very personal compared to other average company blogs. I would think that the owner of the company is trying to establish relationships with its customers. This reminds me of how Mr. Huang from A Li Lan Village operates his business. Despite the fact that one is a café and the other is a restaurant they have many things in common. 1. 2. 3. 4.

They used a blog as their official website They avoided the commercial intention in their blog posts They established close relationship with their customers Used a rich-graphics approach to attract attention from the visitors

Blogging: The techniques           22

Information are clean and to the point Use of attractive or relevant visual elements Linking to useful and appropriate Sources Powerful Headlines Use bullet points and lists for massive information Must be Informative Use personal stories as a mean to describe information Incorporate Interview posts (posts that explains information from an expert) Conduct Reviews on Products or services (must be relevant to your company) Pay attention to what your readers say

http://itshappenedtobeacloset.wordpress.com/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!    

Reply your reader’s questions periodically Do not be involved with replying inappropriate or offensive subjects Stay off with sensitive subjects (Religion, Politics) Don’t be absent without informing your readers

MicroBlogging: Twitter Twitter is a microblogging platform for internet users to socialize and share their daily activities. It is also a place for businesses to generate more business opportunities. Twitter allows their user to send and receive instant messages (also known as tweets) with a maximum length of 140 words. Why is it such a good tool for businesses? Keeping your customers informed about your existence (in a positive way) can establish recognition. When the company can manage a good twitter account, it also creates thought leadership, maintains and improves reputation, initiate recognition and leads to the increase of sales.

Why Twitter? 23

Figure 6 (based on the statistics from Exact Target ) displays the internet user’s contribution to the social web. The chart is created with two sets of data; “Daily Twitter users” and “All other Consumers”. By comparing the two contribution percentage, we can come to a conclusion that twitter users tend to share information more than people who do not use Twitter. This means that the information on Twitter is more likely to be 23

http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog/0/0/twitter-why

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! shared around the internet than information on other sorts of social platforms. Therefore it suggests that businesses and companies should be using Twitter. The more spread the better. We also call this as getting “Viral”. Like talked about earlier, if our frequency of appearance increases, then we receive recognition. This recognition can lead us into; maintaining a good reputation and increasing sales.

Figure 6- Social Media Contribution Chart

MicroBlogging: The techniques    

Be short, concise There is a limit to word amount, use a web URL to provide more information Be interesting and lead your viewers into clicking on the URL If there are no URL to be included, be informative

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! 

 

URL should be an article or image on your company’s website. Keep it to yourself, don’t give away the opportunity (to achieve the goal). Reply to your viewer’s question periodically, if appropriate 24 Use bit.ly to shorten your URL

http://bit.ly/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Social Networking Platforms Facebook has become so viral since 2008 that it has become a common term for the average American households and also in many other countries. With so many users, it is the most visited site of 2009. It is a great way for companies and organizations to directly interact with their customers and keep them interested in their product or brand. The graph based on the statistics given by Facebook describes the growth of Facebook by the amount of users within 6 years. It has been said that if Facebook is a country, rd then it will be the 3 largest country in the world. Looking at the growth of Facebook, we can spot the Figure 7- Facebook Users Dec 2004 - Dec 2009 business opportunities available if this medium is used properly. Since Facebook hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t yet developed a platform for businesses and corporations, therefore how it is going to work out is still a variable. On Facebook, the only thing that will interest people will be the ones that are most creative and interesting. There is no doubt that to success on Facebook, you need to prepare the most well-thought creative strategy.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

How to get Viral? The definition of “Viral” on Facebook is determined by the number of fans who are following you. For average Facebook users, a special system of optimizing your own profile is provided. You can personalize your Facebook page with hobbies, likes and many sorts of different things. Facebook automatically introduces your hobby and your likings to your friends. They can simply click on the button “like” or “become a fan” to join the same interest. If you can provide valuable information to your fans then they will be able to influence their friends to become your fan. A successful Facebook managing technique is to avoid talking about your products and services. If it is necessary, slightly introduce about it and provide a link for people to go to if they are interested. This should be done in a third-person’s perspective to decrease the commercial intention behind it. Just like how we share messages with MicroBlogging, we have to be informative but short and concise. Providing links to articles on your official website is a simple yet very effective way to market on the web. Always have your customers within your area of control.

Case Study: Facebook success of Taiwanese 7Eleven The Taiwanese 7-Eleven has used a creative way to get their customers to be involved with the company. This had increased its overall Brand awareness and increased their sales.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! What 7-eleven did was to create an activity called the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Little Angelâ&#x20AC;?. Completing this activity will allow you to send gifts to your friends. The picture shown is a step by step approach for the event. First, you will have to become a fan of the 7-Eleven page. The objective of this is to increase the fan amount of the fan page, thus easier to spread messages to the public afterwards. The

Figure 8- Step by step illustration of the event

second step is to select a gift provided by 7-Eleven. There arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t many options to choose from, but hey, This is free! therefore people share the news around. The third step is to choose a friend to send your gift to. In the end, you friend and you will receive a serial code that will enable you to go to any local 7-eleven shop to obtain a tester of microwave food. This will enable customers to taste the food and so 7-elven will be able to collect the responses can make adjustments to their products.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! Within five months the fan page of 7-Eleven grew by 300 thousand, becoming the fan page with the most fans in Taiwan. The actual event only ran for 10 days and it was estimated that about 800 thousand to 1 million people viewed the event and 60 thousand people joined as a fan. How did they become so popular? Well, excluding the creativeness of the event

Figure 9- Mapping of 7-Eleven Websites

They have their Youtube channel, Blog, Plurk(famous Taiwanese social platform), MSN robot(automatic system that talks to people) and their official website (shown in figure 9). They have used these mediums and provide hyper-links that links them all together, generating inwards linking (linking within the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s websites, like talked about earlier, keeping the customers in your own control), increasing traffic and making people aware of the event that is happening on the site.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Search Engine Optimization: Targeting on Light to Medium Internet Users Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) is the method to increase your search engine rankings. You may wonder “what is search engine rankings?” and “how will that affect my business?” Well, Search engine rankings are the orders of websites which appear when you search for a key word or a phrase. The higher the rankings, the more frequent people (who search for the service or product you provide) will notice your website.

Figure 10- Illustration of the structure of Google's results page

When key words or phrases are entered into the query (technical term for the search bar), there are two different results produced; the Organic results and the Paid results.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Key word Optimization: Providing valuable content Key word optimizations are methods to increase rankings on the organic search results. The organic results are based on the Google’s search engine algorithm which calculates the site’s relevance and importance. Those rankings are best to provide their users with the best searching experience. Therefore basing on the keywords that the searchers enter, the search engine will provide the most relevant and useful site for their users. For Google, the arrangements of the organic search results are only depended on Google’s calculating algorithm, they will not obtain any payments for boosting ranking services. How Google’s algorithm calculates: 



Use of “Web Crawlers” (AKA spiders or robots). Those are the programs that search engines have designed to figure out new web pages. They follow links from pages to pages to discover new content. Information from the web pages are then stored by the search engine. All of the information are indexed and categorized. When the searcher enters a keyword or phrase into the query, the search engine runs through their system and finds the page with the most relevant information and better ranking. The ranking is made when searchers find your website more often. Another words, when you have more people visiting your websites sites from links of other website (visitors from the Google search results can be included as one).

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

How to do Key word Optimization? We contribute our knowledge onto the web for potential customers to view them and get to know about our company. During my interview with Ms. Chang from I-Want Internet Marketing agency, I asked her “How does your company increase the organic ranking of your customer’s website?” she answered as: “It can be produced by customers of Word-ofMouth phenomenon or by the company itself. We can look for Key-Phrases/Words that are related to the product, and we use them to create content. This is so that when people look for the word; our company will appear on the frontier of the list of search results. As more and more people enter the site, the search rankings will improve and bringing more customers. Again we refer back to the three different types of internet users; this strategy is for the light & medium users” “Providing valuable information” is establishing thought leadership and recognition. The analysis of possible “Keywords” of your product and your brand is important to achieve efficient key word optimization.

Building a Landing Page Like pointed out earlier, the best method to bring your rankings up is to create and build valuable contents for your potential customers. So how do we turn those “potential customers” into customers? Those pages of valuable contents should link to another “landing page” of the company which can potentially pull the business together. A landing page isn’t the official home page.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! It can be a subpage under your official website. It is a page that summarizes your company and the services that you offer. Landing Page Guide Lines:       

 

Short Information and graphics enabled A page that offers the same look, feel and tone of your company Written for your audience Communication with your audience not advertisements Provide a happy quote from the customer It is a self-contained website, not your official website Providing a way that your audience can contact you, they should be easy(Provide multiple methods) Only asking for necessary information Following up to them and provide your service

Search Engine Advertising: Cost-Per-Click Services Search engine advertising is when the client of the search engine pays for appearing on the page of results. The applicants of this service will have to purchase the key words or phrases. Those advertisements will appear in small text form along the side and the top of the search results (refer to image provided earlier). The rankings of the advertisements are depended on how much the applicants are bidding for every person that clicks on the link and the click rate of the link (calculated by the number of people who clicks on the link

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! divided by the number of people who sees the link). These are called the Cost-per-Click services provided by the search engines.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Reputation Management

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! One of the facts about the internet is that once something is uploaded, it will have the possibility to stay there and be expanded or manipulated. It could be a user’s comment. It could be a message sent out by the company. One wrong move and lead to a catastrophic disaster. “People have different standards of being the customer; we might not be able to fulfill everyone’s needs. Some will complain, and often it is posted on the Internet. This will definitely cause damage to the public reputation of the company. It is the PR’s job to help and to cool down the dispute.”- Mr. Lin from Internet Marketing team of Feeling 18C. We need to take precautions for these sorts of disasters to happen to us. To achieve this, we should always have an emergency sector within the company to decide how and when to respond. The Internet Marketing team can take charge of this job due to the familiarity of the internet. We should also constantly monitor what is being said about the company. We want to be able to control the heat to avoid fire.

Online Reputation Management: Controlling the heat to avoid fire There are three main keys to maintain your online Reputation: Monitor, Optimize and Engage Subjects to Monitor: The things that you should monitor about your company are your company’s name, your brand, your products and the main executives in the company. Where?

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! They can be searched upon Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts or even twitter search. Optimization: Optimize all of the content your company provides on the web, to avoid any disputes that can be made based on what is written. Places like, Official Website, text site, videosâ&#x20AC;Ś Subjects such as language error, sensitive issuesâ&#x20AC;Ś Engagement: If there is a dispute on the web that has a uprising popularity, steps should be taken to cool down the heat to avoid fire. How: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Measure its accuracy, see if they are legit (determine the truth behind it) If not, provide accurate facts as response If yes, carry it onto discussion If things go serious (if it is spreading outwards to other forums or internet platforms), be ready to write the response on your blog or social page Remember to be honest, show the transparency and listen to your customers

If the disputes are solved, those stories may be positive to the company. People who were satisfied with the way it is solved will become your company evangelists.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

When & How should companies respond? There are certain times to respond:   

When a bad mistake is really made, and needs to be openly apologize They are either misunderstood/ or misstating the facts When the bad comments grow bigger and bigger

And not to respond: 

When people are enraged and say things based on untruthful facts.

How to Respond:     

Listen Remain Calm Be Honest Speak like the customers, not in corporate tone Be sorry and promises for improvements

Outspoken Media: You Deserve Your Bad Online Reputation25 The article from Outspoken Media explains that you made a mistake, thus, you deserve the bad reputation. This is the reason provided on the website:

http://outspokenmedia.com/reputation-management/you-deserve-your-badonline-reputation/

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! 1.

The law has been broken If you have hurt or assaulted someone, you should be in blame for the sins that you have done. Any negative comment is News Worthy Any issue that concerns the customers health, rights and safety is a piece of information that needs to be spread out. The more that it is hidden, the more fascinating it will become when it gets spotted out. Lying to yourself does not solve the problem If the event has happened and you are not taking serious response into it, then you are lying to yourself that what had happened is nothing and shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be taking into consideration. Your businesses will fail due to those reasons. Lack of Quality Control Providing consistent poor-quality service is a major factor that leads to your bad online reputation. The customers gave you a chance for improvement and you did not take it to consideration, it will be your loss. You deserve your bad online reputation.

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds!

Internet Marketing, the Future Beholds! The future of Internet is infinite and so is the future of Internet Marketing. Internet Marketing will come in a huge benefit to businesses all around the world. It only is the matter of time that determines Internet Marketing’s effectiveness. When the country and the people are ready and developed for the Internet, you shall start to tackle the online market no matter what sort of products or services you provide. Ms. Chang from the I-Want Internet Marketing agency describes that every types of business are fit to apply Internet Marketing in their business. She also pointed out that the way Taiwanese people are consuming products have changed in recent years. People seek for instant solutions that can solve their problems. She said that there is no doubt this phenomenon will happen in other developing countries in the following years. In the field of marketing “There is no one method fits all but several deep analysis and detailed planning custom made for the business.” Through the analysis on the buyer’s personas, levels of internet users and goals determination every business will have their own understanding about who they are and most importantly who their customers are. This will definitely help businesses to design their own marketing strategies and achieve their goals. THE FUTURE IS OURS!