Corrections or additions?
This article by Kathleen McGinn Spring was prepared for the
February 21,
2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
For Online Marketing Try an Online Seminar
A catalog company with $160 million in annual sales
has just determined that 10 to 20 percent of its business comes from
the Internet, and that up to 25 percent of its Internet customers
would not have found it any other way. Those numbers are too big to
ignore, says Faye Gregory-Yuppa, owner of Applied Success, a
Lake Hiawatha-based firm that consults to Information Technology
companies.
Gregory-Yuppa presents a seminar on how online marketing differs from
traditional marketing at the New Jersey Technology Council on
Thursday,
February 22, at 4 p.m. at Dendrite International in Morristown. Cost:
$40. Call 856-787-9700. Speakers are Paul Kulvanis of the
Company
Store, Tom Scott of e-budgets, and Kelly Gates of Gates
& Company.
Asked to name companies that do not need to add online marketing to
their mix, Gregory-Yuppa hesitates. “Maybe a local machine shop
or auto shop,” she says. For everyone else the question is
not whether to market on the Internet, but how to add that medium
to the marketing mix. It’s early days for Internet marketing,
Gregory-Yuppa
says, but we have learned some things:
Manage search engine ranking. “We aim to come up inthe top 10,” Gregory-Yuppa says of the strategy she recommendsto her clients. Whether a company name comes up second or 202nd whensurfers type in a search term makes all the difference, and, thoughmost people don’t know this, getting a name to rise to the top is”a little science,” she says. Factors that move a companytoward the top include how skillfully it uses key words in registeringwith search engines and how often it issues press releases containingthose key words, Gregory-Yuppa says. Add search engine managementto an employee’s job description is her advice. Half a day a weekspent on the task will increase a company’s Internet profile.Put on a Webinar. Effective online marketing strategiesinclude sponsoring E-newsletters and organizing virtual events. TheE-newsletters are effective, Gregory-Yuppa says, because they givepotential customers information they can use. Virtual events oftenwork well for the same reason. She knows of one company that has hadsuccess holding “Webinars,” or online seminars. Participantswho are interested enough in a subject or a product to sign up andattend are excellent sales prospects, she says.Act like the big guys. Gregory-Yuppa uses the Internetto send out marketing brochures and proposals. Other companies, shesays, give virtual product demonstrations on the Internet. “Theygive information on references and pricing and provide much morecompleteinformation more quickly than ever before,” she says. Using theInternet to educate customers about a product means “a smallcompanycan compete with a company 20 times its size,” she says.Previous StoryNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
