Экономические науки/ 6. Маркетинг и менеджмент

Daria Chernysh, Anna Melnik

Scientific adviser: assistent O.A. Matsera

Vinnytsia Institute of Trade and Economics KNUTE

Digital age as a source of new direct marketing technologies

The newest and fastest-growing channels for communicating and selling directly to customers are electronic. The Internet provides marketers and consumers with opportunities for much greater interaction and individualization. Soon few marketing programs will be considered complete without a meaningful online component.

Direct marketing consists of connecting directly with carefully targeted consumers, often on a one-to-one, interactive basis. Using detailed databases, companies tailor their marketing offers and communications to the needs of narrowly defined segments or individual buyers[3].

Early direct marketers - catalog companies, direct mailers, and telemarketers – gathered customer names and sold goods mainly by mail and telephone. Today, however, spurred by rapid advances in database technologies and new marketing media - especially the Internet - direct marketing has undergone a dramatic transformation.

A company chooses which forms of interactive marketing will be most cost-effective in achieving communication and sales objectives. Some of the main categories, discussed next, are: (1) web sites, (2) search ads, (3) display ads, and (4) e-mails. After summarizing some developments in mobile marketing, we’ll describe social media and word-of-mouth effects[1].

WEB SITES. Companies must design Web sites that embody or express their purpose, history, products, and vision and that are attractive on first viewing and interesting enough to encourage repeat visits. Jeffrey Rayport and Bernard Jaworski propose that effective sites feature seven design elements they call the 7Cs. They are:

•Context - layout and design;

•Content - text, pictures, sound, and video the site contains;

•Community - how the site enables user-to-user communication;

•Customization - site’s ability to tailor itself to different users or to allow users to personalize the site;

•Communication - how the site enables site-to-user, user-to-site, or two-way communication;

•Connection - degree that the site is linked to other sites;

•Commerce - site’s capabilities to enable commercial transactions [2].

To encourage repeat visits, companies must pay special attention to context and content factors and embrace another “C”—constant change.

Visitors will judge a site’s performance on ease of use and physical attractiveness. Ease of use means: (1) the site downloads quickly, (2) the first page is easy to understand, and (3) it is easy to navigate to other pages that open quickly. Physical attractiveness is assured when: (1) individual pages are clean and not crammed with content, (2) typefaces and font sizes are very readable, and (3) the site makes good use of color (and sound).

SEARCH ADS. A hot growth area in interactive marketing is paid search or pay-per-click ads, which now account for roughly half of all online ad spending. Thirty-five percent of all searches are reportedly for products or services. In paid search, marketers bid in a continuous auction on search terms that serve as a proxy for the consumer’s product or consumption interests. When a consumer searches for any of the words with Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, the marketer’s ad may appear above or next to the results, depending on the amount the company bids and an algorithm the search engines use to determine an ad’s relevance to a particular search[2].

Advertisers pay only if people click on the links, but marketers believe consumers who have already expressed interest by engaging in search are prime prospects. Average click-through is about 2 percent, much more than for comparable online ads. The cost per click depends on how high the link is ranked and the popularity of the keyword. The ever-increasing popularity of paid search has increased competition among keyword bidders, significantly raising search prices and putting a premium on choosing the best possible keywords, bidding on them strategically, and monitoring the results for effectiveness and efficiency.

DISPLAY ADS. Display ads or banner ads are small, rectangular boxes containing text and perhaps a picture that companies pay to place on relevant Web sites. The larger the audience, the higher the cost. Some banners are accepted on a barter basis. In the early days of the Internet, viewers clicked on 2 percent to 3 percent of the banner ads they saw, but that percentage quickly plummeted to as little as 0.25 percent and advertisers began to explore other forms of communication.

Given that Internet users spend only 5 percent of their time online actually searching for information, display ads still hold great promise compared to popular search ads. But ads need to be more attention-getting and influential, better targeted, and more closely tracked.

A popular vehicle for advertising is podcasts, digital media files created for playback on portable MP3 players, laptops, or PCs. Sponsors pay roughly $25 per thousand listeners to run a 15- or 30-second audio ad at the beginning of the podcast. Although these rates are higher than for popular radio shows, podcasts are able to reach very specific market segments, and their popularity has grown[1].

E-MAIL. E-mail allows marketers to inform and communicate with customers at a fraction of the cost of a “d-mail,” or direct mail, campaign. Consumers are besieged by e-mails, though, and many employ spam filters. Some firms are asking consumers to say whether and when they would like to receive emails. FTD, the flower retailer, allows customers to choose whether to receive e-mail reminders to send flowers for virtually any holiday as well as specific birthdays and anniversaries. E-mails must be timely, targeted, and relevant[2].

MOBILE MARKETING. With cell phones’ ubiquitous nature and marketers’ ability to personalize messages based on demographics and other consumer behavior characteristics , the appeal of mobile marketing as a communication tool is obvious.

With over 4.1 billion mobile subscribers in the world in 2009—there are more than twice as many mobile phones in the world as personal computers—cell phones represent a major opportunity for advertisers to reach consumers on the “third screen” (TV and the computer are first and second). Some firms are moving fast into m-space. One mobile pioneer in the banking industry is Bank of America[2].

Mobile ad spending was almost $1 billion worldwide in 2009, most of which went into SMS text messages and simple display ads. With the increased capabilities of smart phones, however, mobile ads can be more than just a display medium using static “mini-billboards”[3].

With traditional coupon redemption rates declining for years, the ability of cell phones to permit more relevant and timely offers to consumers at or near the point of purchase has piqued the interest of many marketers. These new coupons can take all forms; digital in-store signs can now dispense them to smart phones.

List of literature:

1. Cate Farrall, Marianne Lindsley. Professional English in Use Marketing / Farrall C., Lindsley M. // Cambridge University Press. - 2009. - 132 p.

2. Kotler, Philip. Marketing management / Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong. - 14th ed.p. cm. // Copyright © 2012, 2009, 2006, 2003, 2000 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. - 812 p.

3. Kotler, Philip. Principles of marketing / Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong. - 14th ed.p. cm. // Copyright © 2012, 2009, 2006, 2003, 2000 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. - 740 p.