Overview

If you haven t produced promotional material for the net before, you should start by comparing what you can do on the net with other media. In many areas, the Internet offers additional functionality over and above traditional promotion mechanisms.

• Internet promotional materials can be used more flexibly than other media: each customer might take a different route through your site.

• Internet promotional materials can be changed and re-published more cheaply than materials in other media.

• They allow greater interaction, allowing customers to talk to each other, or to a company when it suits them. Firms can post messages, and customers pick them up and reply exactly when it suits them. Promotional materials can also allow customers to post questions and request inspection copies. Websites offer the potential to create community centres, meeting points where experts, customers and suppliers in the same field can gather to discuss and debate issues affecting their common interests.

• Companies hosting websites can enjoy more rapid learning than firms operating in other media. It is possible to measure site traffic, find out which pages are most popular, and conduct experiments in which results come back very quickly indeed. Customer databases can be built up online, and surveys conducted at very low cost.

To make use of this powerful added functionality, you must decide who your customers are and what will entertain and involve them. If you get this right they will come to you. Don t do what so...