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Report #2 from Tom Vassos and Jacqueline Fortin
WARNING:  Long Append

Ok, it's Monday morning at 9:30am and the Tutorial sessions
have begun.  Tom is attending Kim Bayne's tutorial called
"Internet Marketing Plan:  A Practical Approach" and
Jacqueline is attending the "Introduction to the Internet"
session.

Here's the highlights of Kim Bayne's session (a fellow forum
participant):

If you would like to see a full copy of the entire presentation,
go to:
http://www.bayne.com/wolfbayne/
(go to "WolfBayne in the News" and you will see this presentation)
You will also be able to download all of her PowerPoint slides
shortly.

The following summary will just give you some of the highlights
to wet your appetite...

Tiers:  In traditional marketing, you can qualify people before
you give them certain kinds of info.  You can simulate this
effect on the WWW by allowing everyone to get to a certain
point on your site, and then to get beyond that point you can
ask for specific info....name, company name, etc.

Many more companies are using the WWW as a vehicle for
presenting their annual reports.  This, along with the
distribution of brochures, could save you thousands of
dollars.

The Internet can be a key vehicle for market research.  Four
key areas with research to support the use of the Internet are:
http://www.gatech.edu/gvu/gvutop.html
ftp.isoc.org
e-mail to    info@internetinfo.com
http://www.nw.com/zone/www/top.html

Kim also referred to the books:
"How to Advertise on the Internet" by Michael Strangelove
as being a nice resource for marketing on the Net.
Send e-mail to    mstrange@fonorola.net
and
"The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries and Jack Trout
(this isn't specific to the Internet, but a lot of the rules seem
to apply)

Marketing Communications Strategy goals may include
attracting investors, being first, meeting customer needs,
improving corporate image, making sales, etc.

Budget considerations include equipment and software, access
costs, hiring Internet expertise, Web Site Development (HTML
coding costs, etc.), presence building costs, etc.

Kim mentioned a company called the Web Factory which is in
the business of creating Web Home Pages.  For more info, see:
http://twf.com/factory/
Prices range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars
depending on the complexity of the site.

Integrating your Internet strategy with other marketing approaches
includes putting your WWW address in your ads.  For example, an
Oracle ad includes a photo of several babies with Oracle's WWW
address spelled out on the kid's butts...one letter per butt...kind
of cute.  Other companies may simply put the URL in small print
along with their copywrite notices.

Get added to all of the directories in existence.

Your e-mail response to online inquiries should be less than 24
hours or you're considered non-responsive.

Kim sent a note out when she ended a discussion group she
started called Martech.  When she sent out a note with the
subject line:  "Martech died"...she got a message back
from someone on the Internet which said:  "You may be
interested in a new site we created called Grief Net...."
She believes that e-mail filters are used to find this type of
note and then you get targetted directly by companies...probably
not good netiquette.

Your domain name is an important part of your strategy.
Consider including your address on business cards, brochures,
ads, and even on your stationary.  Include the Internet address
in your corporate style definitions.

To search for common law occurances of a word in USENET
newsgroups, send a note to the netnews filter at:
netnews@db.stanford.edu
This will tell you how many times that word has occurred.
(Note from Tom:  You can also search WWW sites for the same
word by using some of the WWW search tools like Lycos,
WebCrawler, the WWWW (World Wide Web Worm), etc.)

To get info on patents in existence you can send a note to:
patents@world.std.com

Set up your "finger" info to include info about your company
or upcoming events, etc.

To get a general media list of several e-mail addresses for
editors of publications, send a note to:
adamg@world.std.com
Be careful about how you use this info....do not spam them.

Additional sources for editor's e-mail addresses include the
following e-mail addresses:
567-5021@mci.com
or
mediamap@village.com
or
71344.2761@compuserve.com

List Server advantages include:
Not requiring approvals and startup delays (ala USENET newsgroups)

Don't forget to post your list to the NEW-LIST group who will
announce it for you. (see Kim's WWW site for details)

List ideas include newsletters, media relations, historical
data, product support, lists to focus on beginners/intermediate/
advanced users, event hotline, field/employee communications,
dealer communications (closed list), etc.

To get the entire list of lists, send a message to:
mail-server@sri.com
and in the body of the note, type:
send internet-groups

Coffee Break....pretty good coffee....drank 3 cups of the
real caffeine loaded stuff....should keep me going for the
rest of the day.

Quickly stopped into the Introductory Internet session in
the other room where they were demonstrating several
critical USENET newsgroups like alt.jokes, alt.legos, etc.
oh well, gotta get back to Kim's session and marketing...

Some companies with leverage in their industry (such as
NASA) are specifying Internet access as a mandatory
requirement for doing business with them.

Next was a demonstation of Yahoo which includes some
search capabilities for finding specific keywords.  You
should make sure you add your company to this list.
(Demo then timed out and had to be cancelled...)

A recent article discusses a recent marketing campaign
to appropriate USENET newsgroups which led to 500
leads.  This company did the appropriate research to
determine where to market.  They posted into a USENET
newsgroup where you can post info on free offerings from
your company.  (It was a toothpaste company that offered
a free tube of toothpaste.)

Patron Philosophy:  Think about donating something back
to Internet users such as good content, free storage for
users, free Web development, a free service, etc.

Zig Ziegler quote: "focus on serving others"

Create an Internet marketing task force to coordinate your
Internet approach.

Consider using a software package to create your Internet
marketing plan such as:
EZ Write Marketing Plan Writer   by Force Marketing in
Champlain, NY.

Sources to discuss your Internet marketing approach include:
comp.internet.net-happenings

Next slide included several more upcoming Internet Trade
Shows.

To get more info on HTML and the WWW you may want to go to:
http://www.w3.org/

To get a free primer on HTML coding go to:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/general/internet/

Well, that's it for now....gotta go to lunch.


Ok, it's 1:30 and I've decided to join the session called
WWW Development.  The presenter was Jim Sterne (consultant
and fellow forum participant) who can be reached at
jsterne@targeting.com

This session talked about lots of innovative approaches
at different WWW sites.

Lego:  Great site which allows people to submit photos
of what they have created using legos.  MIT students
have submitted very sophisticated items that have been
created using Lego building blocks.  Great site for getting
involvement by users.

The first thing they ask for is user feedback.  Very informal
and comfortable approach to the users.

Incredible fact about this site is that it has nothing to
do with the company that makes the Lego building blocks.
It was created by a university student that loves Legos!
Yes, this creates lots of copyright issues since he is
using the Lego logo (say that 3 times fast) without
permission, but it would be crazy for the Lego company
to do anything about this.

Silicon Graphics:  Good use of involvement from Internet
users.  Allows them to submit uses of SGI equipment as
well as enter into SGI's Web Wax contest.  Contest for
free equipment used to generate interest in the site.

General comments:  Some sites ask for info about yourself
before they will allow you into the site.  This would be like
walking into a store that won't let you come in to look
around until you give you name and credit card number
so they can determine if you have any money.  Build trust
by providing them with something of value before you ask
users for something.

Next Speaker was Michael Bauer from (You've probably
seen his comments on a few forums).
No URLs were given but the following sites were discussed.

StoliCentre uses a shift'm puzzle which changes everyday
to attract users to the site.

Valuable sites are starting to pop up focussing on summarizing
links to several other sites.  For example a site exists which
will point you to several sites that talk about snow skiing.

Catalogues are starting to pop up where several companies
with compatible offerings creating one catalogue for users.
For example, ON Technology (providers of Netware Solutions)
has created a catalogue which includes several company's
offerings.

IBM has launched a contest for a free ThinkPad if the user can
answer several questions (the answers of which are in IBM's
catalogue).  Good way to get people to spend time looking
through your catalogue.

Contests on the Internet also tend to ask some basic information
of the user which gives the vendor some demographic information
about their users.

Consider adding disclaimers such as "void where prohibited by law"
if you are running a contest.

Some vendors are starting to offer free downloads of demonstration
software.  Once again, users must enter some basic information
about themselves which will allow vendors to follow up as sales
leads.

Catalogues should offer search capabilities for specific products,
as well as an option to simply get the hard copy catalogue in
the mail.

When you get users to fill out a form on the WWW site, you
can program it to not accept the entry until all fields have
been entered.  You can also make it more sophisticated.  For
example you could make it so that the phone number field will
only accept a numeric entry as opposed to garbage info.
One drawback of the WWW is that each time you reach another
form, you have to fill out all of the info out again.  As these
servers become "stateful" you can make it so that once the
info is typed in once, the same info is used for several other
forms on that site.....no retyping needed.

Black Box are looking at reengineering their entire catalogue
production process, both hard copy and online version.

Right now they do the initial creation using Microsoft Word.
That then gets moved to a Quark platform.

To restrict access to certain parts of your WWW pages
you can implement some password protection, but be
aware that sometimes users can choose an http address
beyond your password, in effect, bypassing it.

Here's some approximate costs for creating an online catalogue
of approximately 50 pages including graphics:
$25,000 for site development and a high speed connection.
$15,000 per year for ongoing maintenance.
These costs could also be spread across all parts of the business.
These costs will vary dramatically depending on what you mean
by 50 page catalogue.

The demographics of various online services tend to vary.
Compuserve tends to be primarily males, 30-35 years old,
using the system for professional reasons.  AOL tends to
be much more evenly split between males/females.

The next question related to sizing of server requirements
for a WWW site.  The answer related to:  an estimate of
the number of people that will likely visit the site, the
size of the files that will be downloaded, the timing of
any special contests that might attract a lot of visitors, etc.

The next speaker was from Microsoft.

The Internet is the world of Burger King.  Users "want it
their way.  They want personalized info which is customized
to their exact needs.  The demonstration had a few technical
difficulties which were a little embarassing.

There are still several issues outstanding.  No one's getting
rich yet.  You must be in this for the long term.

There are various approaches to security.  One approach
encrypts the credit card number.  The other apprach sets
you up on a central database and assigns you a number.
This number can then move across the Net without the
same security concerns.

Non-repudiation is also being worked on.  This means that
a transaction that occurs on the net will be verifiable....you
will not be able to refute the fact that you were the one
that placed the order.

Computer to computer communications promises to bring
down the cost of processing transactions.  Microtransactions
on the Net will become affordable.

The WWW may become the killer application that will propel
the use of ISDN.  A more likely short term scenario may be
the growth of 28.8bps modems.

Kaleida is bringing several object oriented multimedia
development tools to the market.

Well, time to call it a day.....hope this info helps.....

Oh, one last thing.  Watching the 6 o'clock news there was a
live report from the Internet World exhibit floor.  The reporter
talked about how incredible this Internet and WWW technology
really is.  He demonstrated with his mouse that with a few
clicks he could access a computer in Russia like this.....oops
"Name Server busy"  Well so much for this thing just being
a few clicks of the mouse.....Well, it ended ok.  After they
showed a few video clips he was able to get into Russia....yeaaay.

Talk to you later tonight.

Tom Vassos                         Jacqueline Fortin
vassos@vnet.ibm.com

ps. For those that are not interested in all of these details
(especially if you're on the digest option) our apologies for
the length of this note.

From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Tue Apr 11 17:12:56 1995
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