[thelist] Web Marketing (was RE: Old Browsers old Software, cut bait and move on.)

[Bill Haenel]

> Part of the reason for this is that there's little value for a repeat
> visitor - you go there once (and they have a *very* loyal consumer
> group - if one of their consumers is online, it's a pretty good bet
> they'll have been to the site), had your brand experience, downloaded
> the goodies... and then what? There's no motivator to come back.

I’d be interested in opinions on what does make them come back.

We’ve done some pretty intensive work directly with our visitors and
potential visitors by means of focus groups, etc. and have concluded
something that I think we probably already knew: they want to see a “little
piece of themselves” online. This has always been true when attempting to
get people involved in something. It has to be interesting or meaningful to
them in a very personal way before they’ll actually consider coming back,
and especially before coming back over and over again.


> ..."This
> is the overall journey we want the consumer to take as a wholistic
> relationship with the brand. How can you support that by this site?"

Very eloquently put. Perhaps it is important to consider a site as a tool
that a marketer uses to help them enjoy the product/service, rather than
just to sell it. In the end, they still spend money or time in your
direction. Get people involved with the thing you have to give them.


> A core direct marketing approach is that targeting an offer
> correctly gets better results than almost any other variable,
> including varying creative, product and timing.

Hasn’t this always been true? You don’t see many ads for “Baby Bottle Pops”
during the ball game broadcast, and you don’t sell carburetors in Fortune
magazine, even if they’ve got a red bow around them.


> otherwise you're just the crazy web guy who's still living in drug-crazed
> reverie of the dot-com good times.

I’m not sure I understand exactly what the problem is there.(!)


> Nobody says it's easy - but that's where you as an
> adviser/agency/contractor/
> consultant add value.

The very fact that we even have these conversations amongst each other and
consider these ideas is what they pay us to know.


BH