This article first appeared in Internet-on-a-Disk #34, February 2000. Comments welcome.
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Internet startups that are playing the venture capital game can find themselves in a position where time is more important than money. They need to show immediate results -- in terms of hits, or members, or downloads. They need to get traffic to their site quickly, no matter what it costs. Hence they are willing to spend a large part of the money investors have handed them on Super Bowl ads, other TV and radio ads, billboards, banner ads -- anything and everything.
Let's reflect on what they are trying to accomplish and whether the Internet might provide better ways of doing it.
Marketing consists of three major elements: the vehicle, the message, and the substance. You need a way to reach your audience (the vehicle). You need something to tell them (the message). And once you've got their attention and motivated them to act, you need something that pleases and satisfies them (the substance).
Traditional marketing presumes, with few exceptions, that the vehicle already exists in a fixed and predictable form: print publications, radio, TV, billboards. Direct mail is a bit different, because you can, if you wish build your own list. But in most cases, advertisers rent lists or include their messages in the mailings of others. Telemarketing is also different, because you can have your own people make the calls using your own lists; but many, once again, engage the help of specialist firms, both for lists and callers.
Traditional marketing, typically, neglects the substance. Marketers presume that products and services are developed or chosen by other people in the company. Their job is to get the message out, to bring the products and services to the attention of the target audience. In some cases, their campaign might include events, contests, and offers that have little or nothing to do with the substance but have been created solely to draw attention to the message and motivate the audience to act now.
People who are used to this traditional perspective at first might think of the Web as another medium -- analogous to radio and TV and print. They might also equate marketing over the Internet with the creation and placement of banner ads, since that's the form of marketing most likely to get their attention first. And just as they turn to ad agencies to help them with ad creation and placement for radio, TV, and print, they turn to the same agencies for help here.
Eventually, they become familiar with other pre-packaged Internet marketing services: link exchanges, affiliate programs, opt-in email (AKA permission email), and search engine optimization. They may even know about specialists they can turn to for help putting together games, contests, and gimmicky offers. By then they've learned a whole new set of buzz words and sound like Internet marketing pros.
So given a large marketing/advertising budget, a short time frame, and goals which probably do not include revenue, they put together a plan that includes traditional and Internet-based ("new media") elements, craft their messages, and start racing.
But this approach masks the differences between how the traditional world works and what is possible with the Internet.
In many cases, the substance is what visitors find at a Web site -- not a physical product that can be purchased in traditional ways. The goal is to get traffic to that site where visitors will find useful or entertaining content or services or experiences. Unlike a traditional product or service, a Web site can be changed immediately and repeatedly and can be made to look and feel very different for different visitors. Yes, a Web site can be a carrier or repository of marketing messages -- a place to post brochureware or other content written for print. But it also can become a place where visitors interact with one another and with your experts, where what they have to say is added to the content of the site and where the experience of conversation is part of the substance that makes people want to come back again and again.
And thanks to search engines, if the site contains useful and interesting content in a simple form that can be retrieved by search engines, the content itself can drive new visitors to a Web site.
In other words, the substance can become an important vehicle for attracting an audience, without the need for separate messages and motivating gimmicks. The substance is the message and the substance is also the medium or vehicle.
In other words, the focus of Internet marketing should be not the message, but rather the substance: the complete experience offered by the Web site, the value that you provide to visitors, not just words crafted to describe it and make it sound interesting.
Also, while in the traditional world you often have little choice but to use packaged services to deliver your message, on the Internet you can far more easily build your own vehicles. Yes, links are important; but links exchanged with handpicked sites that are complementary to your own are far more valuable than random ones picked up through link exchange programs. Likewise, you might want to build your own affiliate program rather than piggyback on pre-packaged and shared programs. And you might want to build your own electronic newsletters, with their own opt-in email lists, rather than using ones developed by others. Yes, all these activities take time and effort, but by doing them yourself, you can tie them closely to the substance of your site.
Likewise, it's very important to be well indexed by search engines; but that's not a matter of metatags and key words -- the factors that search engine optimization companies typically focus on. Rather, the full text of all the content at your site helps draw audience; so you are much better off generating more content, and better content that is better matched to the interests and needs of your target audience, rather than carefully crafted key words.
Above all -- remember that on the Internet, substance is everything. It's not enough to get visitors to click to your site once. When they get there, they need to find content, services, and experiences that truly engage them, that they value. Ideally, they'll want to return and will want to recommend that others go there as well. If there is a serious disjunction between the messages that attract visitors, and what they actually find at the site, these people won't come back and may even actively discourage others from coming.
With sprint marketing, yes, after the first, very expensive, hundred yards, you may lead the race, having induced large numbers of people to come to your site once. But when you disappoint an Internet audience, the price of getting them to return gets higher and higher; and when you satisfy them, they'll come back on their own and bring their friends.
So if you have money to spend and a very tight schedule for showing results, you'll probably have a much better chance of success if you invest in the site itself -- in the substance rather than the Super Bowl.
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