With the dot-com bust, most investors and even some users are ignoring anything that is related to the Net. Vivek Bhargava says that by doing that they are also losing out on the benefits of Net-based e-marketing

Chuck Martin, author of ‘Digital Estate’ and founder of the Netfuture Institute, says, “We stand at the cusp of a new era where most traditional business models will disappear and where the wired consumer and the wired organisation will function in harmony.”

Yet, after the dot-com boom and bust many people think the Internet doesn’t have a future—pretty much saying that it’s not viable for business anymore. But saying that the Internet is of no use is equivalent to stating that electricity is useless because Edison went through many failures before he finally invented the light bulb.

The Internet has always been a means to an end, and the dot-com bust does not mean that we stop exploring the macro benefits that the Internet can bring to the country and to the economy. In fact, the dot-com failure and the devaluation of Internet stocks are perhaps even influencing the masses against using the Internet. In my interactions with CEOs, I’ve been bluntly told that with tight budgets accompanied by low Net penetration and the failure of dot-coms, they can’t really spend money on Net-based activities at present.

The most exciting part of the Internet for businesses is the fact that they have an opportunity to open a new branch in this virtual world, which can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Marketing on the Internet for an organisation is the process of using the Internet as a medium to market themselves, their products and their services.

Understanding your customers and how their behaviour drives revenue or costs is the Holy Grail of customer analytics and business intelligence. As the Internet allows one-to-one communication, it enables one to create specialised content for a specific target audience. There are a number of aspects to customer and business intelligence, ranging from online tracking tools to enterprise data warehouses, that are integrated with online analytical processing tools. Expect analytical tools to become more strategic as competition for profitable customer segments intensifies.

For example, a pharmaceutical company marketing an antibiotic for a specific disease. If the company had to advertise in a medical journal, all it would be able to focus on would be benefits of the product, but it may not be able to address the concerns of health practitioners through this mode of communication.

But if the pharmaceutical company built a community of doctors, thereafter it would be able to build one-to-one communication with each of the doctors. Thus, if a doctor was not prescribing the product because he felt that the price was too high, the company would be able to address that concern. If a doctor was not prescribing the antibiotic because of safety concerns regarding the product, he could be shown communication that addressed that particular issue. As each heath practitioner can influence sales worth lakhs of rupees, the cost of building that one-to-one relationship would be well worth it.

Similarly, paint companies in the decorative segment can build a community of interior designers, furnishing companies and architects. There are a many advantages a company can derive by using the Net.

• Microanalysis on RoI: The best thing about the Internet is that it gives comprehensive feedback on the marketing strategy. Each impression of the communication is noted, each click recorded—thus enabling microanalysis of RoI.
• B2B marketing: 95 percent of companies who sell to business customers cannot use any mass media like television, radio, print. Thus, the only options that remain are institutional sales, direct marketing or exhibitions. The Internet can be extremely effective in nearly all B2B marketing as most business users are connected to the Internet.
• Immediate feedback: Each marketing strategy and communication can be done on a dipstick study basis, and based on the feedback, the strategy can be scaled or shelved.

Thus, the cost of marketing can be greatly reduced by exploiting this new media effectively. But companies wanting to use online marketing need to ensure the following:

• Simplicity: The site should be user-friendly or else chances are that the customer will not hang around for too long. Good business sites make it easy for the user to find what he’s looking for, and quickly at that.
• Quick response: A fast response time is one of the most important aspects that any user expects to see in all his dealings with the company—whether he’s clicked on the search facility or sends an e-mail about a doubt or complaint.

The battle to provide more value than the competition (and still make a profit) will become ever fiercer. In an age where machines talk to machines, the consumer will become empowered as he finds value in a proliferation of choices. The Internet is a leap in communication, empowered by technologies that require professional development of e-marketing strategies, tools to reach the target audience, and personalised messages that are tailored to that audience’s need. The solution will require management understanding of and focus on processes such as name acquisition, maintenance, campaign execution and measurement.

Ultimately, winning organisations will harness the power of online marketing to reach their clients efficiently and also effectively.

Vivek Bhargava is the managing director of Communicate2. He can be contacted at vivek@communicate2.com