Selling a tangible product

Businesses who can sell products via the Web should build an online shopping cart and provide customers with a means of ordering merchandise. Businesses that manufacture products, but can’t logistically distribute them through the Web (like our McDonald’s example, or Caterpillar, maker of industrial construction equipment), still need to provide a comprehensive outline of their offerings as well as information on where (and how) to buy it.

Starbucks offers an effective hybrid model. Both the company’s physical stores and its online store sell bags of coffee and merchandise, though its branches generate additional revenue selling freshly brewed beverages. While Starbucks would have a difficult time shipping a double tall nonfat latte to your house, it does offer a comprehensive menu of available coffees on its website ( www.starbucks.com ), as shown in Figure 1-1, along with nutritional information. This is smart offensive design.

Promoting services

The world’s economy is becoming host to an increasing number of service providers. These companies don’t actually sell a physical product, but rather their knowledge, expertise, and opinions. A technology analyst and consulting company like Gartner is the purest form of this business model—Gartner meets and talks with companies, makes recommendations on technology purchases, and then charges for its time doing so.

Some companies offer physical products and knowledge services. IBM, for instance, sells laptops and servers, but it also makes a considerable amount from its network of consultants.

The whole branding thing

A lot has been written about branding on the Web, and how companies can take advantage of the medium to push their corporate presence further into the marketplace. Unfortunately, so many factors of branding are intangible qualities—how something feels—that the move from traditional media like print advertising is not always a smooth conversion.

That being said, the Web presents an entirely new set of tools to sell a company’s brand story to their audience. Design and copy are as important as they have always been, and so is the flavor—or overall thematic feeling—of the presentation, like “professional,” “customer-centric,” “fun,” “engaging,” “family-oriented,” and so forth.

Internet technology allows a deeper immersion into the story through interactive conversations. A few companies—especially in the commercial sector—build complex viral sites to help reinforce their brand.1 Some agonize over the graphical nuances of a button to ensure it matches the company’s established visual motif. Others reinvent their marketing language to appeal to a more global audience.

The ageless problem of brand marketing is the difficulty in quantifying return on investment. Most smart companies know they have to invest in their brand development, and constantly tweak messaging to do so, but never fully understand exactly how that investment is being rewarded. On the living Web—where content grows exponentially, new technology is rolled out every few months, and trends come and go faster than reality shows on MTV—building a brand can be a daunting task for any corporation. It takes time, money, and brio. (It may also take nagging the director of marketing to get the green light.)

Home as advertisement

To build market awareness, a company traditionally purchased advertising space in magazines, on billboards, and in other printed media that they hoped would be seen by their target audience; radio ads that might be heard by the right people; and television spots that might be seen by their future customers. Unless your business is an ice cream stand or boutique clothing store, you can count on few people actually driving by to purchase anything without having seen an advertisement first.

On the Web, the rules have changed. The funnel is flipped. The “headquarters” have become the single most efficient place to advertise. Instead of a physical building trying to cast a wide net of advertising to procure new business, corporations can purchase laser-precise media or write link-worthy content that lures potential customers back to the web-site, where carefully designed pages make the final sale through a shopping cart or push them into making contact with the company.

Few companies have truly embraced the marketing potential of new media. Too many websites are built as static, uninviting brochures that fail to engage the customer; like a corporate office park, the veneer turns people away instead of inviting them to learn more about the institutions. A good website, by contrast, invites prospects in to learn more, poke around, and talk to a salesperson.

1. Burger King, for instance, has several viral sites. www.subservientchicken.com is probably the most famous because it was pioneering in both its content and its subtle brand treatment.

Providing extended information

No matter how simple your business model, product or patented process, someone out there will need a better explanation than your homepage provides. The FAQ page is a great place to start. The FAQ can also straddle the marketing sphere; while it addresses questions, the answers could have a marketing spin.

Beyond the high-level FAQ, a company needs to provide in-depth documentation on its products or services. A software company should provide manuals, security updates, and bug fixes on its website; a restaurant should post its menu (and nutritional information if possible); a company that manufactures wood polish should provide information on how to best apply the chemicals. In other words, your company must discuss the practical use of its products or services.

The community

The community is a public forum or similar environment in which customers of the company can interact with one another and representatives of the host corporation. The goal is for users to ask questions knowing they are in the right place, asking the right people. Sometimes the community is simply a message board; sometimes it’s a rich suite of services.

The goal of the community is threefold. First, it relieves a business from having to predict and answer every single question on their own support section. Second, it alleviates stress on the support team when users can simply ask each other instead of submitting support tickets. Third, when people discover others using the same product or service, their purchase becomes immediately validated, and a network of more confident patrons is born. A strong community not only becomes a powerful first line of defense in helping answer customer questions, but a self-sustaining internal marketing vehicle as well.

Opera Software makes the Opera browser, an alternative to Internet Explorer. The user base is relatively small (an estimated 1 percent of web users), but extremely enthusiastic. Sensing this zealotry, Opera built a rich community portal that has user-authored blogs, downloads for customizing the software, an active forum, and even photo galleries.2 The site boasts over half a million members (see Figure 1-2).

OVERVIEW

2. http://my.opera.com/community

Customer love

As the old cliché goes, “the best defense is a good offense.” That’s partly true. In the realm of customer support, the best defense is a proactive one. Constantly reaching out to your existing client base and showing your appreciation can have tremendous payoff in both the immediate future and down the road. A well-timed e-mail might retain a customer who was about to leave. That same person, with continued customer care, might personally recommend you down the road.

One of the best ways to earn customer appreciation is to make them feel rewarded for being your customer. This can be done through incentives—offering them special discounts, customer appreciation rewards, and so forth—or through special members-only benefits. A customer appreciation newsletter doesn’t just keep them in the loop of the latest company developments, but also contains exclusive offers.

In customer support, the balance between budget and service capability constantly teeters on a fine line. Staffing call centers costs money. A good support section of a website can save money and customers—by offering as much information as possible up front, the likelihood of customers calling with a question easily answered on the website site is greatly reduced.

News and press releases

The concept of press releases goes back to 1906, when an agency working for the Pennsylvania Railroad issued a statement to the press about a train accident before the press had any time to write their own story. Since then, press releases have been used to officially inform media of significant, newsworthy events. Sometimes it’s centered on the company itself—like the grand opening of a new office—and sometimes it’s tied to the company’s offerings, like the launch of a new product or the acquisition of a key competitor.

While the role of press releases has not changed much with the Internet, the means of delivery has. Companies can now archive news on their own website, building a public library of documents that researchers and investors can use for research. In addition, press releases are now distributed to both online and offline media. Besides submitting to the regular avenues, a PR department can cast their net wider with a host of (mostly free) press release websites.

Contact information

It is critical for any company to provide sufficient contact information. This includes the following:

1. Physical mailing address, even if it’s a PO box
2. All public phone numbers—main line, support, sales, and so on
3. A contact form for fielding online inquiries. This is preferred over a plain e-mail address, although those can be important as well
4. Additional contact information for key personnel or departments, such as company principals, account executives, the public relations department, and so forth

A company without clear contact information is difficult to trust. If a business provides only a simple contact form and no phone number or address, visitors might assume they are obfuscating for a reason, and that is never a good way to start a dialog with potential customers.

The corporate blog

For better or worse, the advent of blogs has penetrated corporate websites, and many companies now publish blogs about their company, industry, and competitors. This informal writing style—which can be candid, irreverent, and reactionary—has supporters and detractors arguing both sides of the issue.

It’s easy to see the cons of corporate blogging, or at least predict them. Without an editor, or at least a filter, any employee could regularly lambaste the competition down the street. Unlike controlled writing avenues like press releases, brochures, and speeches, the immediate nature of blogs presents a minefield of legal and professional issues. Despite this, some companies like Microsoft do not use any editorial staff or controlled publishing medium for their employee blogs.

But the pros are equally easy to see. If the right person or team authors the blog, and the writing is interesting and topical, all types of new traffic will be generated—not only from search engines, but from readers passing along a blog post to their coworkers and friends. It is an also a powerful means to demonstrate the company’s expertise and passion for their industry.