Electronic Marketing

Electronic Marketing in the Era of

Automatic Message Screening

E-mail advertising is dead!

Yes, e-mail advertising is dead.  It has been spammed to oblivion.  Most unsolicited e-mail is now filtered out by most institutional e-mail servers.  If the unsolicited message does make it through to the intended receiver, again, because of excessive unwanted e-mails, it is likely that e-mail will remain unread and eventually deleted.  With all the computer viruses and Word marcos coming through on e-mail attachments, no one should open those things.  As for Faxed advertising, don't bother, no one reads an unsolicited Fax except maybe the person that is throwing it away and complaining about wasting paper.

The Web Site as Source

For electronic marketing to succeed in reaching the modern scientific community the information not only has to be useful and valuable to the end user but it also has to be in a format that the user finds accessible.  In every high technology market survey done in the last five years report that 98% or greater of scientists use a company's web site to obtain detailed product and service information.  The second and third level for product and service information comes from conference presentations and booths providing product brochures and scientific articles.  Print advertising is a fourth or fifth level source, but scientists admit that the ads do direct them to a potential solution to their specific problem(s).  They then obtain the information they need to make a buying decision using the sources listed above.

Basically, though, it all leads back to getting them to look at your web site.

The Company’s Web Site should thus be viewed as the ultimate vehicle for electronic marketing and in the reality of this electronic world, all of the company’s marketing.

The Parts to the Puzzle – The Fundamentals

The obvious implementation, a company's imperatives are the production of:

·         An easy to use, useful, and informative Web Site containing clear and persuasive product and service information.  That information should be easily down loadable.

·         Product / Service documents in both electronic and hard copy formats.

·         Announcements - a brief description of Your Company’s solution to the customer’s problem(s).

·         Bulletins - a reasonably detailed description of Your Company's solution to the customer's problem(s) and a single datum for proof of each solution.

·         Scientific Articles - describing all technically important aspects of Your Company's product or service solution.

·         Brochures – a glossy marketing description of Your Company’s intent for providing the product and convincing arguments why the customer should buy it rather than others.  Basically the entire sales pitch.

·         Press Releases produced regularly to appear on / in:

·         Your Company's Web Sites

·         Public Marketing Web Sites

·         Trade Journals

·         Trade Journal Articles describing all important aspects of Your Company's product solution relative to the market competition and other technology solutions to the potential customer’s pains and difficulties. 

·         Direct Mail sent by regular post to a list of potential customers.

·         Product Bulletins

·         Newsletters

·         Techniques and Applications bulletins

·         Application forms for Free Stuff, either an out right toy or a sample of Your Company’s product.

·         Conference Presentations that convey useful problem solving oriented information in the formats of:

·         Scientific Talks

·         Marketing Talks

·         Hospitality Suites

·         Training Sessions

·         Booth Presence providing copies of all the Product or Services information.  If possible, say that you can mail the information to the interested party and thus get their contact data.  A sales representative can then follow up with that potential customer to see if they received the documents requested and if there are any other questions.

·         Advertising, if you have the budget for it.

·         Scientific and Trade journals

·         Relevant Web sites

·         Internet Search engine strategies.  They each have there own ways of getting Your Company’s web site to appear near the top of the search results list.

Still, the final Call to Action for all of these activities and pieces of company and product information is: 

Look at the Company Web Site for further information.

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Send mail to webmaster@molecularbiolectrics.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 04/24/2008