Issue 6

Managing Marketing in the E-World
Professor Merlin Stone (IBM), Tess Moffett (IBM), Paul Crick (PwC) & Barry Jerome (IBM) discuss how many companies have started using new customer-facing technologies to complement their classic marketing communications. This e-business technology also enables companies to share their knowledge and initiatives with intermediaries, and with their own staff. The result is that it is achieving the same status within the company as classic marketing management information.

E-marketing strategy - Dr Dave Chaffey
The importance of developing an effective e-marketing strategy is indicated by Michael Porter (2001) who has said: 'The key question is not whether to deploy Internet technology - companies have no choice if they want to stay competitive - but how to deploy it.' An e-marketing strategy is needed to provide consistent direction for an organisation's e-marketing activities that integrates with its other marketing activities and supports the overall objectives of the business.

Sticky Content as a Promotional Tool.
The mantra of the net, Content is King, will no doubt continue in to the next era of the new economy. Simply because it's true. The only amendment you could make to this saying is to put the word sticky in front of it. These days having good content also means have content that is sticky i.e. visitors are stuck to the site with special Net glue so will stay on the site for longer periods of time, return and tell their friends about this site that they are drawn to.

Viral Marketing
By common consent, the first ever viral marketing campaign was the one initiated by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith to advertise their free email service in 1996. They made sure that every time someone used their service to send an email it automatically included the company's website address at the foot of the message. Using this simple device, Bhatia and Smith managed to build a customer base more rapidly than any company in the history of the world, signing up 12 million subscribers in only 18 months. As you've probably guessed, the name of the service is Hotmail.

Manning an Exhibition Stand
When you have invested a great deal of money and time into preparing, designing and constructing an exhibition stand, the return on investment is dependant on how well you have prepared those manning the stand. This article gives some sound advice that you may wish to share with those who will represent you at your next show.

Best Practice - Marketing Drives the Bottom Line
Peter Fisk from PA Consulting Group explains how marketing can create more value than anything else a business can do. However, marketers typically fail to make the connections by which this can be achieved.

Targets just waiting to be hit?
Marketing revels in its metaphors of hitting someone, and in its belief that it is in control of what it does. But, in doing so we are making some very big assumptions, most importantly that people are consistent, remaining quietly in those segments that our complex studies put them in.