NONTRADITIONAL TOOLS OF MARKETING ON THE INTERNET

Journal of Information, Control and Management Systems, Vol. 6, (2008), No. 2

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NONTRADITIONAL TOOLS OF MARKETING ON THE INTERNET Milan KUBINA University of Žilina, Faculty of Management Science and Informatics, Slovak Republic e-mail: [email protected] Abstract The each company tries to obtain the customers with various untraditional ways today. The companies use the traditional tools of marketing communications, but the alternative possibilities, which Internet brings, are used too. The Internet is a tool of presentation of the products and services, but it is also used for presentations of each company. The new tools and equipments supporting targets of the companies are created on the Internet. The mind share, the behavioral targeting, the WEB 2.0 and social networks belong among these tools. This paper briefly refers to these new marketing tools. Keywords: marketing, virtual world, customers, users, Internet, marketing communication, WEB 2.0 1

INTRODUCTION The rating of the Internet users in the sphere of considering given products and services available for them is especially interesting from the view of the company marketing. The task of the Internet when shopping for specific products has been deeply anchored for already a long time. More and more Internet users do their shopping through this media. The impact of the Internet as a source of information as well as the task of consumer views and opinions about particular products or companies are not omissible. Therefore the Internet is getting into the position of the other communication canal between a company and its customers as well as customers mutually. Today we can observe a boom of new services on the Internet. They have become very popular in a short time and they are used by millions of people all over the world. We talk about the WEB 2.0 phenomenon or the virtual world co-created by its users /individuals or companies/. It brings other possibilities for the new company marketing activities. The Internet is becoming a company’s tool for its self-presentation and it also is an opportunity to learn about them.

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The Nontraditional Tools of Marketing on the Internet

WEB 2.0 In a connection with a customer who actively participates in the content creation in a specialized sphere on the Internet, we talk about the second version of so-called WEB 2.0. The strength of the active Internet users was intensified last year by the Time magazine award which was given to the Internet user mainly thanks to the video records shown on YouTube.com. Has not it arrived to Slovakia, yet? Yes, it has. About 124 thousand registered users on booom.sk or 12 622 unique IP addresses on MyUbo.sk portal prove it. What does the WEB 2.0 mean? From the practical point of view it can be considered as a set of services which became popular after the year 2000, especially blogging /blog.sme.sk/, community or social networks creation /booom.sk, azet.sk/, video sharing /myubo.sk/, - subcasting /radiofm.sk/ or virtual worlds /secondlife.com/. According to this we can assume that the Interner WEB 2.0 concept is based on the Internet users who not only use it but also cooperate in the content creation. Thanks to the WEB 2.0 each person can become a “celebrity”. Each has the same chance to publish his or her own story, views, experiences and each has the same right to give an opinion more or less on anything. Thanks the services offered by the WEB 2.0 today it is possible to share various stories which can become interesting for the large surroundings. The WEB 2.0 presents a specific individualism personification by which the present world is considerably marked. Therefore it represents a new way for the trade marks how to address their present and potential customers. Despite the individualism phenomenon it is necessary to respect a target group of people when choosing and using the communication tools. By the means of the WEB 2.0 ordinary people managed to take over a part of the communication power from the companies. Thanks to the new web generation they can tell their stories and participate in the Internet content creation. Apart from above mentioned blogs, video and community portals, it is also possible to do thank the new generation services, e.g. dig.com, Slovak vybrali. sme and many others. There is a big boom of the WEB 2.0 phenomenon today. The experts in new trends like to use this term and it often shows up on the front pages of the world marketing magazines. What can we expect from it? The WEB 2.0 popularity is a signal for the businessmen that there again is a certain possibility to revive the Internet interest. Foreign investors clearly expressed their interest in the newly created services. For e.g Google company has bought Blogger.com /a system for blogs showing/, Writely.com /text documents sharing/ , and lately YouTube.com /video sharing/. Then Yahoo.com has bought Flickr.com /photo archive filing/ and now they are interested in Facebook web. Skype /Internet telephoning/, Viacom iFilm and Sony service Grouper.com /video sharing/ have been bought by eBay. The well known community web MySpace.com is owned by the News Corporation /Rupert Murdoch/. It is possible that these investments start up a new internet boom from which a new investor bubble can arise. On the other hand changing media and the whole economics functioning is


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not a bubble but a real evolution which can change a view on the Internet and its usage not only for the marketing purposes. 3

BLOG The Internet users publish their short stories, opinions, and comments mostly through blogs or the Internet diaries. The blogs are simple text pages without typography, which is a clear example of the content victory over the form. The blog success is mainly based on the people’s need to communicate, to draw information and to confront their opinions with the surroundings. And the Internet is the easiest way how to fulfil these needs. Nowadays millions of people all over the world use blogging. It is most popular in Italy, Spain, France, Russia, South Korea, and China. People are mostly interested in so-called personal blogs, that is blogs with a personal content /family, friends/ and the blogs full of comments on quality or low-quality products, opinions about the companies and the surrounding world and current happenings there. The blog enables a large group of people to be almost immediately informed about experiences, comments, and attitudes of the writers. For the people working in marketing more interesting is that the Internet users read blogs or consider creating their own blog. It can be the other opportunity for communication with customers, influencing their opinions and views, and last but not least, it enables the companies to improve their understanding of customers´ needs and thinking. Large companies allow blogging on their websites or they use this phenomenon for marketing activities, usually in communication sphere. 4

VIDEO AND PHOTO SHARING Today probably the most popular and entertaining service provided by the WEB 2.0 is Video sharing through YouTube.com, Grouper.com or MyUbo.sk in Slovakia. The web enables the amateurs to become a part of a mass culture. Millions of people can watch their videos in a relatively short time. YouTube.com portal recently held YouTube Video Awards competition where the best videos in various categories were awarded. The photo making and sharing is surprisingly the most common way of content sharing. It is thanks to a mass digital camera expansion. As many as seventy percent photos are made public according to the Net Magazine /2006, September/. Photo sharing changes the concept of privacy, openness, and connection with unrelated people. Thanks it the Internet is becoming a mass “storage” for experiences and memories. The whole world is becoming visible and visually accessible. From the marketing point of view this new service is usable for communication with its users, for advertisement placement, or for sending a message to a known and frequently visited website.

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SOCIAL NETWORKS Everyone can find a place in the so-called “social networks” as MySpace.com or Second Life. It is the place where we can virtually meet our friends and share information, photos, and videos, make friends and create relationships. It is possible to build up a virtual career in a virtual world. Therefore MySpace.com is frequently used by the beginner actors, musicians, models, and even by the world well-known trade marks. Second Life can be compared to Slovakia because up to six million people are registered there and almost two millions visit it regularly. A few universities offer their courses on this website. The Reuters has its own reporter in Second Life and you can join the lectures of the world’s biggest authorities there. The world trade marks and various companies rush to get there. Lively and growing virtual economics, a new interesting market and the increasing population number create a big enough motivation for the individual companies. How do the marketing people view the virtual worlds? Repéres, not very well known research agency, prepared the inquiry about trade-marks among 1085 avatars /virtual inhabitants/ in the Second Life in spring 2007. Very few people could spontaneously name the real world trade marks. Addidas took the best position with 69 percent and 19 percent avatars mentioned that the company has its own virtual island. IBM Company was mentioned by one per cent less people. Dior, also known in Slovakia, took the worst position with one per cent only. As some marketing analysts stated this weak knowledge is caused by everyday expansion of the new people on one hand. And the real world companies have not acknowledged the communication possibilities of the virtual worlds yet, on the other hand. 6

MIND SHARE Reaching the mind share is one of the main targets when promoting a product or an advertisement message. For better understanding I will try to explain it on an example. When you ask about the most important IT companies, someone might answer IBM, HP, or Microsoft. It means that these companies have a share in our minds and they automatically occur when our mind concerns related problematic. This mind share is varied and depends on how big our interest in a company is and how deeply this message is anchored in our subconsciousness. Not all the companies, products or marks cross our mind when talking about related subject matter or problematic and their number is restricted for that reason. Therefore the companies try to get their products into the customers’ minds as first when thinking of a specific topic or fulfillment of a concrete need. It is very important because if a product occurs as first in a customer’s mind , there is a big probability that the product will be bought. In this sense the Internet seems to be an ideal tool for mediation of appropriate information for customer and about products and a company itself. Specialized


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information sources enabling companies to present themselves on various levels have developed very quickly. Zoznam.sk is well known in Slovakia and DMOZ.org in the world. The basic presentations with the links to the internet companies’ websites, socalled catalogues are generally free of charge. They inform about the companies and their products. Every single letter, word or thought that imprints into the consumer’s mind is very important when talking about the mind share. 7

BEHAVIORAL TARGETING There is a new kind of advertisement that makes its way on the Internet. It observes an Internet surfer who, for example, going through cars websites and taking care of children safety, is consequently offered by a nappy advertisement on the other site. Technology for monitoring, interpreting and predicting your movements on the Internet appeared already at the beginning of the century and its popularity has been dramatically increasing and it has become a gold mine for the web servers and their advertisers. Behavioral targeting is based on the idea that if an advertiser is able to follow you when surfing among various websites and record what you read, he pictures your interests and offers you in the right time the right product you would like to buy. According to experts the behavioral targeting is interesting not only for the advertisers/companies/ but it also satisfies the internet surfers who used to come across unnecessary and uninteresting advertisements and promotions. Through the behavioral targeting they are straightly addressed by services and products of their interest and so there is a bigger probability of a successful bargain. 8

CONCLUSION The number of the Internet virtual worlds, 3D presentations and others tools has been regularly rising. The virtual worlds of Mattel or BarbieGirls.com /in beta version only/ are the latest members. They follow a well-tested habit of already existing virtual worlds and they created a space for the game with no restrictive rules. BarbieGirls.com shifts real activities to the Internet and it is also an open space for their residents’ creativity. The generation of the children of today will stand behind the biggest virtual world boom on the net. Both, the ability to move and the ability to co-create a virtual world are very important, too. The companies must to use these new tools of marketing because the new generation of customers expects it. Twenty year old are quite successful in it, but still they grew up more on television than the Internet, and still they are very clumsy. But go and sit with five or ten year old children and you will observe how smart they are in the virtual world of games and on the Internet. Then you will see the media and marketing future a bit brighter. The Internet future belongs to the virtual worlds, 3D presentations, new services and technologies, and the development of the wideband Internet connection.

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