[12229] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Advertising & Promoting on the Internet - My $.02 (article)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel P Dern)
Tue May 10 14:01:09 1994
Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 09:52:57 -0400
From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern)
To: cni-modernization@cni.org, com-priv@psi.com
Given all the brouhaha and discussion lately regarding advertising on
the 'net, I thought I'd share my latest "PR Tips and Techniques" column
from the Computer Media Directory (with permission from its editor).
CMD is a quarterly looseleaf of editorial contacts and other pubs info
(other players here include Media Map); 1-800-WOW-BOOK, 1-415-525-4691
or berlind@mcimail.com for more info (and no, I don't get commissions).
What's here won't be news to many of you; the part I feel is most
valuable is distinguishing between 'making info available' and 'letting
people know about it.'
I'm posting this to both com-priv and cni-modernization, and also
parking a copy in my gopherspace at internet.com (in the "Internet News &
Views" subsection of the "Dern" area). (Feel free to repost or forward it,
but if you want to reprint it, please contact me.) - DPD
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Advertising and Promoting on the Internet
by Daniel P. Dern
(c) Copyright 1994 Daniel P. Dern
originally appeared in Computer Media Directory, Spring 1994
As I've mentioned in other columns, in addition to my PR hat, I also do
a lot of writing and speaking about the Internet (a book for McGraw-
Hill, having been editor of an Internet magazine, beginning to do the
talk show and virtual chicken circuit, etc.).
For this column I'll wear both hats together, and talk about aspects of
advertising, PR and marketing on the Internet, and "in cyberspace" in
general -- an overview of why and how.
A few quick notes and caveats:
1) This is hardly the complete word on the subject. There's entire
articles, brochures, reports, books and seminars (although I don't
necessary agree with everything these all say).
2) What's here is variously pertinent for press relations (PR) versus
customers (marketing/promotion).
3) Tread carefully; your first tactical error in cyberspace can all too
easily be hard-to-undo egg-on-your-face. I'll repeat this caution at
the end.
ADVERTISING ON-LINE:
First, advertising and company presence have been a reality on
traditional on-line services (America OnLine, CompuServe, Delphi,
Prodigy, etc.) for several years now.
However:
a) Many support only ASCII text (although this is changing).
b) The "space" may be constrained, e.g., to short classified-ad
equivalents, making it hard to do press release or brochure size
objects
c) The available types of space, and allowed types of information, may
be narrowly constrained.
d) Pricing is fuzzy to non-existant, making it hard to do comparative
pricing and near-impossible to get generic 'rate cards' in many
cases. For example, when I called CompuServe some months back for a
sense of pricing, their response was "tell us what you'd like to do
and we'll give you a price." No general rate card, as far as I
could determine. Seemed kinda pricey, though.
e) The info you put up is available only to people with accounts on
that service, e.g., only CompuServe users can access information
that's on CompuServe.
One reason increasingly that companies are looking at the Internet as
an advertising beachhead is that, unlike making information available
through specific BBSs or online services, information can be made
available to a larger, and more open, set of communities -- any person
or organization with Internet access, which, depending on your
definition, is anywhere from ten to forty million total people. More
to the point, the Internet reaches a wide number of focussed
communities.
A QUICK'N'DIRTY HOW-TO: MAKING INFO AVAILABLE
To MAKE INFORMATION AVAILABLE to/via the Internet, you need to
a) select the information
b) get it into digitized form (e.g., ASCII text, or appropriate rich-
text/multimedia
c) "mount" these files onto an Internet-accessible/attached computer
system
d) "point" the appropriate server programs which 1) people access via
the Internet and/or 2) gets delivered to other locations, such as
people's sites and/or e-mail accounts, where they can browse and
read it locally.
Information can range from press releases and sales sheets to
brochures, photos, catalog descriptions, multi-media presentations,
even software and documents.
The computer system holding the information can be one within your
company, if your company's "on the Internet" or gets connected.
Examples of who's doing this: Apple, Digital Equiopment, Microsoft,
Novell, Sun, to name a few high-tech companies. (There are hundreds of
companies already doing this -- more every day, increasingly including
publishers, consumer products and services and other non-technical
companies.)
Bear in mind that a network connection to the Internet will cost $300 -
several thousand per month, separate from the cost of the data-bearing
system itself and the concomitant system administration effort. If
your company isn't looking for Internet access anyway, this may not be
the right solution.
Alternatively -- and even if your company does want to connect to the
Internet for other reasons -- you can arrange for one of the growing
number of "Internet 3rd-party technical publishers" to do it. For
example: Cyberspace Corp. (Boulder CO), Digital Express (Rockville,
MD), The Internet Company (Cambridge, MA), Internet Distribution
Services (Menlo Park, CA), MSEN (Ann Arbor, MI).
These are companies running managed computers with Internet
connectivity -- what you're paying for is not just disk space, but also
a 56kbps-T1 pipe between your data and the Internet, running and
managing the appropriate software servers and clients, and overall
system administration. Other Internet users will be able to browse and
retrieve files by whatever mechanisms you decide to pay for, e.g.,
email, anonymous-FTP, Gopher, WorldWideWeb, and whatever comes along
next.
Cost: Varies, expect to pay by some combination of by the megabyte, by
#/accesses, and administrative charges. In terms of effort/value, if
it's right for your business, it's bound to be a great value.
HOW PEOPLE GET YOUR STUFF:
There are a variety of Internet facilities available that make it
possible for people to access, browse, read and download your
information, ranging from real-time ASCII or multi-media access, to
through e-mail submittal of queries and getting responses.
You've probably heard of some of them, like Gopher, WorldWideWeb, and
anonymous-FTP, and possibly of popular "Internet front ends" like
MOSAIC and Pipeline. Users can access your information at no
additional cost to them (beyond the normal costs of using their account
-- which may include the cost of retrieving/storing files, getting e-
mail, etc.).
There are 10-20 million Internet users out there able to access these
information either in real-time (i.e., from their account access your
information that's elsewhere on the network), and as many who can
access information via e-mail -- send requests as messages containing
commands, and receive choice menus or documents back in return.
Through e-mail, people can even access information from their accounts
on America OnLIne, CompuServe, GEnie, Prodigy, etc. E-mail access may
be slower and more cumbersome than real-time access, but may be good
enough for a lot of activities, and is certainly better than either
having to get another account just for this, or not being able to get
info.
It's also important to remember that only a fraction of these
populations currently have full-color graphic workstations and high-
enough bandwidth connections to receive more-than-ASCII stuff (images,
audio, photos) in a timely way.
GETTING THE WORD OUT:
Whether it's telling people about info you've made available, or simply
making announcements about offerings, sales, news, etc., there are
several mechanisms within the Internet and Usenet infrastructures for
doing this. (However, this is the least well-developed aspect of
cyber-marketing.)
One way to send messages is electronic mail. Many companies, for
example, send press releases and newsletters to press people.
Examples: Marty Winston sends his NewsTips newsletter. Tom Woolf
sends releases re a number of his clients.
It's OK -- because in all these cases, I explicitly said, "Yes, please
put me on your list and send this stuff." And if I said "stop" they'd
stop.
One of the oldest activities in the Internet is electronic mailing
lists -- basically, a mechanism for cc'ing a predefined group of
thousands of people as a named list, such as lists of journalists,
network administrators, librarians, etc. There are five or more
thousand such lists in the Internet; many people 'subscribe' -- ask to
receive dozens of these lists.
Having told you about these lists, let me now say: DON'T send your
messages to these lists until you're familiar enough with Internet
'netiquette' and the specific list to be sure what you're doing will be
accepted. Otherwise you've managed to tick off exactly that group you
want to reach.
Example: Recently, someone sent messages from their CompuServe account
to several well-known Internet mailing lists, offering their $9.95
"Wallpaper for Windows" program -- totally irrelevant to the charters
of the mailing lists they picked out.
When I received and read my copy of the message -- within hours after
it was sent, as far as I could tell -- I promptly fired off a complaint
message back to the sender and to CompuServe's e-mail "Postmaster." A
few hours later, I received an automated message from CompuServe
telling me my message couldn't be received -- because the user's
mailbox was 'full' and incapable of holding any more incoming messages.
Guess I wasn't the only person who was annoyed :-).
What folks like Winston and Woolf have done is set up their OWN mailing
lists, then asked us journalists if we want to be added. Simple, easy,
acceptable and useful.
THE USENET:
Another way to 'get the word out' is the Usenet -- POSTING your
messages to APPROPRIATE Usenet Newsgroups.
To continue horribly oversimplifying things, Usenet is the Internet's
world-wide 'distributed BBS,' meaning instead of there being one site
where all Usenet posts are, the Usenet comprises tens of thousands of
BBS sites which more or less "echo" messages sent from one to all
others. Usenet users access the most local site to read messages,
which are categorized into any of 5-7,000+ topical "Newsgroups" ranging
from computer security and OS discussions to folk music, comic books,
movies, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and restaurant
reviews/discussions.
Each Newsgroup has a specific topical focus and a charter; most
Newsgroups' charters rule out commercial and off-topic messages.
Another of the quickest ways to get yourself on the Cyberspace
Blacklist is to post your commercial messages to inappropriate groups
-- especially if you do it to LOTS of them. Even if what you do turns
out not to be against the letters of the laws, you'll become visibly
unpopular, which isn't good for your overly customer relations --
especially as many journalists today watch Usenet as a source for
potential stories.
However, there are some -- an increasing number -- of Newsgroups where
commercial notices MAY be posted. Some companies get Newsgroups formed
specifically for their messages; e.g., Digital Equipment has several.
Each Usenet site can decide whether or not to "carry" -- receive
messages for -- a given Newsgroup, giving some degree of local control.
Again, work with an experienced Internet marketing expert.
The vaguest part of the mix is 'advertising your presence.' There is
little or no 'peripheral vision' in the Internet's on-line presence --
few places to 'put billboards, tag lines, etc.' (I have seen one Burma-
shave type jingle, but that's another story.) This problem has yet, in
my opinion, to be well-solved or even poorly-solved. (Stay tuned for
further developments.)
IS IT OK TO ADVERTISE ON THE INTERNET?
Here things begin to get complicated (and they don't stop,
either). Pay attention; here's where you make or break your reputation
and presence in the on-line world. Part of the challenge revolves
around the definition of "advertising." Other key issues are how it's
done.
Here's some general guidelines:
o You can MAKE INFORMATION AVAILABLE for people to access, read and
retrieve, or request be sent to them -- "mount" it on your own or a
third-party Bulletin Board, or on the Internet's equivalents such as
things called Gopher and WorldWideWeb.
o Do NOT send bulk unsolicited e-mail messages -- not to lists of
people you put together, not to "e-mail lists," not to lists you put
together, not to individuals. Also, do NOT post inappropriate
messages to Usenet Newsgroups.
It is against the rules of nearly every Internet service provider and
site; you can lose your account for this. You'll also piss off a lot of
people, most of whom are in a position to do something about it.
Remember, a) the Usenet and Internet communities are very protective
about our 'space' b) we have LOOONGG memories (and can easily add your
company to a list of "known offenders").
As important, the on-line world is TWO-WAY. If you do something that
the communities don't like, they can easily flood you with "return
calls" letting you know their displeasure -- and probably overloading
your account or system -- in addition to alerting the community at
large.
Get someone who knows what they're doing to advise you, e.g., one of
the 3rd-party Internet technical publishers.
SOME MORE FINAL ADVICE:
WARNING: as noted above, there are a combination of policies, rules and
extremely strong traditions regarding advertising within the Internet
and Usenet -- violate them at your peril! Even if what you do is
within the letter of the law, it may well be against the spirit -- and
this is a set of communities that have ways to both let members know
who's making waves -- and how to push back through the same on-line
channels.
And in cyber-space, you may only get one change -- your first mistake
may be enough to put you on the "virtual **** list."
Lastly: e-mail is not "free." It may not cost YOU a noticeable amount
of money to SEND a message to thousands, or tens of thousands, or
people. But it costs the RECEIVERS money, in the time to read and
discard your message, possibly for the cost to have gotten it even
before being able to inspect it. And MANY of these people are paying
by the minute or even by the byte.
So DON'T view the Internet as a way to send your message to millions of
people for "free." It ain't.
But DO view the Internet as a potentially valuable -- and cost-
effective -- avenue to make information available to the cyber-savvy.
The trick is to identify the correct uses, and the correct approaches.
*
An independent technology and business writer based in Newton Centre,
Mass., Daniel P. Dern (ddern@world.std.com) is author of "The Internet
Guide for New Users" (McGraw-Hill, 1993) and creater of the Internet
Driver's Test and Learner's Permit. (Internet users can find more
information in the "Dern" area of internet.com, the Internet Company's
gopher server.)
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