BUS599: Marketing Plan

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will soon block your email as spam, and if enough people do that, email filters will block your messages to many larger servers.

Online Advertising Even if you find most online ads bothersome, it’s a good bet that there are others you’re happy to see. For instance, if you’re looking for environmentally sensitive products — solar-powered heating, energy-efficient lights, recycled building materials, and so on — and come across a website listing and describing suppliers of such products, you’ll be thrilled. You won’t care that these companies paid to be listed; you’ll just be glad to find all of these resources in one location.

What’s important is that you design your own online ads to attract (not annoy) your target customers and then place them where potential customers are most likely to see them.

Some major types of online website advertising opportunities are:

■ Portal Sites/Directories. Portals and directories serve as online hubs — usually grouped around a common theme, topic, product, or location — where users come to look for information, products, and services. As such, portals can provide effective (and affordable) places to advertise your product or service.

■ Website Ads. Banner ads typically include graphics or photos as well as text, and are placed adjacent to the content of the webpage itself. Interested viewers can then click through to the advertiser’s website.

Another form of website advertising is interstitial ads — that is, ads that appear between (or before) other content and websites. With this type of ad, viewers become a captive audience. After they type in a website address, an ad appears before the actual site they want to visit opens.

■ Sponsorships. With a sponsorship, an advertiser pays to support a website, portion of a website, content within a website, or the organization behind the website. In return, the website gives the advertiser visibility and recognition. Often, this visibility takes the form of a static banner ad; however, it can also mean displaying the sponsor’s name, logo, or tagline in immediate proximity to content.

■ Online Classifieds. Some of the most effective ads are pure text (or, perhaps, text augmented with a few pictures) — the equivalent of online “classified” ads.

The best known is Craigslist (www.craigslist.org). While most people look for jobs or used goods on Craigslist, many businesses also use the site to advertise their products or services. Advertising on Craigslist takes time (you have to continually update your ad to stay visible), but, in most cases, it’s free.

■ Affiliate Auction. Online auction sites, such as eBay, are more than just places for individuals to auction off used goods to the highest bidders. Representing huge online marketplaces, such sites have created myriad marketing opportunities for entrepreneurs. Since you can set up “stores” on these sites or list products as “Buy It Now” without conducting an auction, you can use auction sites as an advertising medium — just as you would online classified sites.

■ Affiliate Programs. You can advertise your products or services on other people’s websites by setting up an affiliate program (which can also be thought of as pay-per-sale advertisements, since the hosting website only gets paid if the ad results in a sale).

Affiliate advertising offers incentives for others to place your ads on their sites in exchange for a piece of the action. For instance, if one of their site visitors clicks your ad, goes to your site, and makes a purchase, the originating site gets a commission on the final sale.

“What’s your ‘go to market’ plan to let potential customers know you exist? If people don’t know you exist, you’re not going to scale. How will you let people know you have a solution to their problem?”

Lauren Flanagan Cofounder and Managing Director, BELLE Capital USA

Online Marketing Tactics

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Marketing Globally In today’s connected world, it’s far easier to find and serve customers worldwide than ever before. While your domestic market may seem like a large enough target market to pursue, especially if yours is a young company, you should also at least consider expanding your potential customer base internationally.

Even if you don’t directly target global customers, it’s likely that you’ll have customers throughout the world, especially if you have an online presence. International customers may find you even if you are not actively seeking them.

Before you decide to market your products or services internationally, you must determine whether there’s likely to be market demand from other countries, and if you can affordably and effectively fulfill orders should you receive them. After all, there’s no point in marketing a product if it’s going to be impossible or unaffordable to ship. So begin your global marketing evaluation by determining which — if any — of your products or services are appropriate for global sales. Are there customers in other countries who are likely to want or need your products or services? If so, in which countries?

Keep in mind that you do not necessarily need to have a physical presence in another country to be able to market to customers. You might, for instance, find a locally based company with which to partner that can import and market your products or that can license your products or intellectual property, adapt your offerings to meet the needs of the local market, and market them under either your name or its company name.

For most businesses, however, their online presence — particularly through their website or their sales through other websites — is going to be their major global marketing vehicle. So as you build or redesign your website, keep international prospects in mind, with considerations such as:

■ Making your website friendly for international customers (for example, the use of multiple languages, prices in other currencies, use of the metric system for measurements, customer support for different time zones).

■ Creating special websites or landing pages for each country or region you’re marketing to. ■ Making an attempt to understand cultural norms. For instance, in some countries, comparison advertising (e.g., taste tests of

Coke versus Pepsi) is not done. In many Asian countries, red is a symbol of good luck. ■ Using social media. Participating in social media — blogs, and social networking sites — where many or most users are from

your target countries. ■ Buying ad words to appear when searchers are from a specific country. Some search engines allow you to target particular

countries. Keep in mind that in some countries, other search engines may be dominant — such as Baidu in China.