Examining the use of Internet for

marketing research and how the

Internet can be used for promotion
Internet Marketing

Assignment #1
Vit Horky
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Student Vit Horky

Class: Internet Marketing Lecturer : Jeff Buehler
Semester: Spring 2008 Program: HND Business
Due Date: Sep 30 2008 Actual Sep 30 2008

Submission

Date:

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Note: The attachment of this statement on any electronically submitted assignments will be deemed to
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Signature:

Date: Sep 30 2008

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Refer to your Student Manual for the Appeals Procedure if you have concerns about the grading
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Sep 30, 2008

FROM: Vit Horky, a Student of Prague College

TO: Jeff Buehler, a Lecturer of Prague College

Author: Vit Horky

Date: Sep 30, 2008

Word count: 2,732

Lecture: Internet Marketing

Semester: Spring 2008

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Table of Content

Table of Contents
What is the internet marketing.............................................................................................6

Internet versus traditional media................................................................................... .......................6

What is a market research.......................................................................................... .........................7
What is a marketing research............................................................................................................. ..7
How information about existing customers can be captured through Internet......................................7
Market research benefits on potential new customers.......................................... ...............................8
Market research for International markets.................................................................................. ..........8
Internet promotion opportunities....................................................................................................... ....9
Examples of product and service internet promotion.................................................................... ......10
Product website...................................................................................................... ........................10
Search Engines records............................................................................................................. .....10
Online catalogue record............................................................................................... ...................11
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising....................................................................................................... 11
Partnerships and sponsorships.............................................................................................. .........13
Advertising models..................................................................................................................... ........13
Affiliate models........................................................................................................................... ........14
Why to be member of affiliate advertising?............................................................ .........................14
Google AdSense................................................................................................................. ............15
What are the benefits for small businesses?............................................................................. ......15
Social Media marketing and social networks............................................................................... .......16
What is social marketing............................................................................................... ..................16
How the small companies can benefit?................................................................................... ........16
The options of social marketing.......................................................................... ............................16
Using advertising on social networks.......................................................................... ....................18
Where you can target Czech customers?................................................................. ......................19
Conclusion................................................................................................. .........................20

References............................................................................................................ ..............21

Bibliography.................................................................................................................... ....22
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EXAMINING THE USE OF INTERNET FOR MARKETING

RESEARCH AND HOW THE INTERNET CAN BE USED
FOR PROMOTION

A situation: I am a Internet Marketing consultant hired to provide my work to a group of venture

capitalists interested in investing in a social networking Website. They need to know how to arrange

marketing research and promotion using internet.

What is the internet marketing

Internet marketing is built on the principles of classical marketing. Internet marketing is, according
to Dave Chaffey et al, 2006, using Internet and related digital technologies in order to
achieve marketing objectives. The same rource explains that Internet Marketing benefits
are among offline media especially on the opportunities to:
a. Sell - Grow sales
a. Serve - Add Value (extra benefits)
a. Speak - Get closer to customers
a. Save - Save costs
a. Sizzle - Extend the brand online

Internet versus traditional media

Internet as an online medium has variety of characteristics that other media, the
offline ones, can not compete with. Some of them are:

1) High interactivity

2) Easy to update

3) Easy to link with other information and to create a networks

4) International character, accessibility

5) Low degree of censorship

6) Personalization – an opportunity to let the visitors to say or see what they want
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Every benefits have also their negatives and the Internet is not a exception,
therefore there are some of the CONs among the offline media mentioned as well:

1) Unsufficial reliability of information from some online resources

2) Accessibility only on places where internet signal is available

3) Unstructured Internet content; difficulties to find relevant information

What is a market research

A Market research is usual and essential part of every marketing plan because the
market research helps to get to know the customers, their needs and expectations
as well as it helps to identify factors on the market that influences the business
performance.

Market research are activities undertaken by an organization to determine the

characteristics of its customers and competitors, as well as the demand for its
products or services.

What is a marketing research

A marketing research is basically such a research that will provide any information
that can be used for marketing purposes of the particular organization. It is a
research conducted in the name of producing better marketing results. It usually includes market
research, consumer research, and product research. Marketing research covers a wider
range of activities. While it may involve market research, marketing research is a
more general systematic process that can be applied to a variety of marketing
problems, according to Internet Center for Management and Business
Administration, Inc., 2007.

How information about existing customers can

be captured through Internet

There are several ways how to capture such information about our existing
customers that can be used for further improvement of business performance.
There is high importance to evaluate which of the technics should be used. There
can be for example following technics for information gathering about existing
customers used:
1) Enterprise resource planning system automatically connected to Internet website of the
organization
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2) A connection of electronical shop on the organizations website to ERP system of the

organication

3) Extranet sections for the existing customers on the corporate website. Any move can be
monitored and evaluated.

4) Connection of electronic shop or extranet sections to the Customer Relationship Management

system (CRM)

5) Primary research (questionnaires) conducted by the organization using contacts with existing
customers.

6) Polls, online discussion, online technical support – everything connected to CRM system

Market research benefits on potential new

customers

The biggest benefit of well-conducted market research is the informational

outcome that the research gives the organization. The research can find important
information where to look for new customers, which customers should the
company avoid or how to better target marketing campaigns in order to acquire
new customers.

Market research for International markets

The market research can be prepared not only for domestic market but also on the
international market that covers markets in more than one country. The basic
structure of the market research is usually the same, however the market research
conducted on the international market have some differences. Information about
the customers has to be divided according to the countries they live/work, however
there has to be also used statistics that cover the international market as one
entity. Other information about the market sizes, market characteristics,
environmental differences and other facts are usually gathered and evaluated both
individualy and together in order to extract such information that can be used for
shaping successful marketing campaigns.

Internet promotion opportunities

There are several tactics and opportunities how the Internet can be used as a
medium for promotion. Here are some of the opportunities identified:
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1) A corporate website with overall information about the company and its products

2) A product website

3) Online electronical shop

4) Search engine marketing (SEM) including Search Engine optimization (SEO)

5) Online catalogues

6) Portals and vertical portals (vortals)

7) Banner and video advertising

8) Pay-per-click and contextual advertising

9) Affiliate programs

10) Viral marketing

11) Social media marketing

12) E-mail marketing

13) Partnerships, sponsorships

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Examples of product and service internet

promotion

The products and services are on the Internet communicated usually by the
promotion ways that has been identified in the list above. There are examples of
promotion of products presented below:

Product website

For a wholesaler of optical frames

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:11 on www.svetovebryle.cz

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Search Engines records

For webdesign services

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:09 on www.google.cz

Online catalogue record

For an architectural studio

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:14 on www.firmy.cz

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

For webdesign companies

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Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:19 on www.seznam.cz

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Partnerships and sponsorships

Of a webdesign company

Screen clipping taken: 28.9.2008; 20:20 on www.inspiro-solutions.cz

Advertising models

Advertising opportunities on Internet have different characteristics according to

specific technics that has been used. There can be following types of advertising
identified:

1) Banner advertising

2) Video advertising

3) Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

4) Contextual advertising (can be part of PPC or banner and video advertising)

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5) Link swaps and partnership icons

6) Email advertising in newsletters

Affiliate models
An Affiliate program is an e-commerce program under which owners of one website (for instance, a

website about mountain biking) send users to another website (such as an on-line bookstore) to

purchase related items. The owner of the target site shares its profits from the sales with the owner of

the referring site (The Marketing Association of New Zealand, 2008)

Why to be member of affiliate advertising?

You can increase sales of your products:

Start to provide affiliate programs with information on your website how to join to
the programs where members will advertise your products/services and get fee
from each of the sale that has been processed because of their websites. However,
the affiliate programs are sophistical systems where lot of potential problems has
to be proactively avoided or minimalized and therefore the idea of starting the
affiliate programs should be supported by detailed analysis of opportunities and
competition that is usually created by professional internet marketers of
webdesign consultants.
You want to increase income by offering place for an affiliate adverts:

The affiliate programs has no affiliate network on the Czech and Slovak market and
therefore to find an appropriate affiliate program that can be beneficial for you
website is difficult to find. However, the administrator of website Webtrh.cz, Czech
web market blog, started to list the maximum of currently active affiliate
opportunities distributed to different categories, like a Travelling, Webhosting,
Lifestyle, Electronics etc.

More information on: http://webtrh.cz/16-ceske-affiliate-

programy?s=57acda051583254d4c0b44509578848e&

Czech language only; Last edited by tracy : 27.5.2008

Google AdSense
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AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers
ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience
and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually
find them useful.

Resource: ()

What are the benefits for small businesses?

You can put the Google Adsense bar to your website within couple of minutes and
not to take care much about what kind of advertising will be placed on your site.
The ads are usually relevant to the business area your website is focused. But, the
Google Adsense has also couple of CONs:

1) The ads can compete to your business

2) The ads will increase the exit rates of your visitors/potential customers

3) The placement of Google Adsense to your website is not ensure an income – your website has

to have substantional visit rate and focus to such an industry where adverts can be effective and

attractive for the visitors of your website

Generally can be said that lot of start-ups or sole traders placed the Google
Adsense to their sites with hopes that the incomes from the affiliate programs will
increase their profit. The praxis is usually that the adverts on the web with traffic
up to 200 unique visitors a day will not even pay for the webhosting costs of the
website. Therefore the placement of Google Adsense or similar affiliate program
should be discussed with professionals who can analyze objectively if the affiliate
program is effective way for your business.

Social Media marketing and social networks

What is social marketing

Social marketing has its roots in the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman
realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products
to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviors. Kotler and
Andreasen define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only
with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social
marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to
benefit the target audience and the general society." ()
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How the small companies can benefit?

The small business can be in an advantage ahead of large companies in the area of
social media marketing. What has to be the input of small company into social-
based internet activities? You need to invest such time and effort that will be at
least equal to the return of investment. The return of investment can be shaped
into increasing brand awareness, website traffic or search engine optimization, that
has also an impact to the previously mentioned traffic.

The options of social marketing

A small business or self-employed person can use following tactics how to increase
business success:

Resource: based on ()

1. Comment on other blogs.

– You have great chance to increase direct traffic to you website when you comment by putting

interesting and professional opinion into a discussion. It is always important not to forget to add

after your name the website address or short sentence about your company.

2. Make and share videos

– The current phenomenon of watching and uploading videos on Internet can be beneficial to your

business as well. Shoot a short video (usually up to 3 minutes) with usage of your products in

interesting way and put it on video-sharing servers like Youtube.com (www.youtube.com) or

Stream in the Czech market. The video can be easily seen by large number of visitors that will

recognize your brand, your product and they have a chance to get a positive opinion about your

company which can potentially conclude in a purchase.

3. Take and share photos

– Using Rajče (www.rajce.net); Flickr (www.flickr.com) or similar sites for presenting interesting

photos of your products that shows an unique selling proposition can increase direct traffic to

your business website

4. Join groups & mailing lists

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– Building a network of contacts that knows your company and your products means

consequently that these people can easily consciously or unconsciously prefer your company

before others, because simply they know you. Moreover, people in groups can share their

opinions on your products and increase the positive branding impacts.

5. Join social networks such as Facebook or Lide.cz

– Social networks can be defined as a network that refers to a number of websites designed to

create online communities. These communities can be focused on different goals, areas of

interests or just with a focus to let the people interact.

– What is the potential benefit for small companies? You can create your own group on Facebook

and present your product, publish interesting news and build a community of interested people.

These people can increase the number of your potential customers as well as to broaden

positive opinions on your products. These social networks also offer usually a space for

advertising that can be highly targeted as the social network providers usually knows a relatively

detailed information about their members.

6. Start a blog

As McGee notes to this issue, to start blogging is a great way to open up a dialogue with your

customers, and that connection is the reason social marketing exists. The blogging servers are usually

provided for free – an example is Wordpress (www.wordpress.com), where you can create your own

blog and start to publish a content almost immediately. But the one eternal truth exists – you have to

publish on Internet something interesting that will build a traffic to your site and raise a positive opinion

on your company otherwise a blogging for business purposes will be probably only waste of time.
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Using advertising on social

networks

In addition, there are a variety of social

network types, including sites where the
main purpose is social networking, sites
where social networking is one of several
activities and vertical social networks.
Additionally, there are marketer-specific
social networks, according to (). The table
below shows the rapid progress in social
networks advertising within four years.

Image 1 - Worldwide Online Social Network Ad Spending, 2006 & 2010

(milions), according to ()

Where you can target Czech customers?

There are different social networks, where Czech citizens are getting used to browse on regular basis.
The list below provides the basic overview of the most visited social networks by Czech people.

Examples:

1) Facebook

Facebook is a global social network site that connects people – it allows them to interact

between each other; people can find their friend from real life or join existing groups of their

workplace, school or hobby related groups. The Facebook interacts with application for

uploading and sharing photos, videos or other media content that makes communication easier.

The Facebook has been launched in Czech localization in the 2007 that created more open

environment for joining of Czech people into a Facebook network.

2) Libimseti.cz
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The Czech server libimseti.cz has been created as a site for meeting new people and for rating

photos of other people. The server provides its own radio station, video chat rooms and it

organizes face-to-face parties in variety of Czech cities. The community has around 950,000

members – daily logged-in users around 180,000 persons, according to ().

3) Lide.cz

The young generation of 12 – 19 years makes a majority of members on the Lide.cz, as the ()

presents,the social network site provided by Seznam a.s. The server website is divided into a

number of categories including a chat, discussion boards, dating and blogs. The Seznam, The

owner, offers a variety of advertising spaces on the website; the product list portfolio is provided

on O nás, link: http://onas.szn.cz/onas/files/pdf/prod/prod_lide-hry-spoluzaci-

horoskopy.pdf?2007-01-31

4) Spoluzaci.cz

It is a popular community site on which the users find a database of school classes of primary

schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities in the Czech Republic. Therefore, the

target group is structured into different age categories. The attendance of the website was in the

year 2006 around 400,000 users.

CONCLUSION

Internet as a worldwide online medium is accessible for anybody anywhere and social media marketing

gets people together more than ever. However, the business opportunity of social network development

is influenced by variety of very important factors that makes the topic difficult to evaluate without in-

depth research. Therefore a sophisticated marketing research should be conducted and its outcomes

should be used for marketing plan and business plan of the Website. Assuming that the Website will be
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accessible from more than just one country there is high importance to conduct a market research for

international market as well as to evaluate every opportunity how to promote the Website on Internet.
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REFERENCES
eMarketer Inc.

Accessed: September 28,2008

Available on: [http://www.emarketer.com/ ]

Google Inc.

Accessed: September 28,2008

Available on: [http://www.google.com/ ]

Internet Center for Management and Business Administration, Inc.

Accessed: September 28,2008

Available on: [http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/research/ ]

Inspiro Solutions website

Accessed: September 28,2008

Available on: [http://www.inspiro-solutions.cz/ ]

Seznam, a.s.

Accessed: September 28,2008

Available on: [http://www.seznam.cz/ ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dave Chaffey et al, 2007, Internet Marketing, 3rd edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, United States

of America
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Edexcel HNC & HND Business, 2004, Marketing. BPP Professional Education, London

Edexcel HNC & HND Business, 2004, Organisation and Behaviour. BPP Professional

Education, London

Kotler P & Keller K L, 2006, Marketing Management, 12th edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, United

States of America