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OTHER ONLINE PROMOTION
A number of other techniques exist for promoting web sites online, including:

Usenet newsgroups
Market exchanges
Viral marketing initiatives
Chat and community building programmes
Loyalty schemes
Competitions, special offers, promotions

Some of the above items straddle the online/offline divide, and some extend beyond our own strictly defined lines of promotion to new visitors. All can have an important part to play in the promotional mix, depending on the type of business and target market, and should be considered when developing a promotional plan.

Newsgroups can be a rich source of potential customers, if approached discretely and sensibly. DejaNews (www.dejanews.com) can be used to locate relevant lists by keyword. FAQs for each group should be checked prior to any posting to ensure compliance with their rules. Some lists exclude commercial messages, some are almost entirely made up of advertising - and best avoided, unless the subject matter is very specific to the nature of the business. The most fertile ground is to be found in moderated groups which do not tolerate commercial advertising, and therefore have a regular and committed membership with a sense of community.

A very fine line must be trodden with Newsgroups to avoid any contravention of the rules, and postings should be very low key, ideally providing solutions to members problems, or providing information content that is appropriate for that forum. Self promotion should be avoided, but the web address should always be provided in the signature block, and featured in the message if appropriate.

Market or B2B exchanges are an opportunity for businesses to join online trading consortia - thereby in theory gaining more visibility in the market, and an opportunity to buy or sell more efficiently within their industry sector. B2B exchanges were a rapidly growing phenomenon until the sharp cooling of the Internet market in the Spring of 2000. There are over 700 exchanges, many based on the auction model, and hoping to create commodity markets for everything from chemicals (www.chemdex.com) and cars to steel(www.e-steel.com) and cement.

These spot markets however represent only a few percent of the huge private market of one to one contract deals. According to the Economist (47), 80 - 90% of all business goods and services are actually traded through long term contracts of a year or more, and of the 600 B2B exchanges studied by AMR Research recently, not one of them had reached 1% of the overall trading volume in its industry. It is still early days for these exchanges though. If the present structural, technical and business problems can be overcome, they could become an important way of doing business in the future.

According to a report in e.Business Review (17), PricwaterhouseCoopers estimates this sector to be worth $200 trillion (£138 tr) in world wide capital market value within ten years. On the other hand, analysts also believe that 80% of existing B2B market places will disappear soon - so picking the right winner now is a tough gamble. Proceed with caution.

Viral marketing is the online equivalent of word of mouth promotion - effectively launching an idea, concept, or image into cyberspace, suitably primed for replication by countless numbers of other users. This is potentially the most powerful form of promotion as it carries the endorsement of a friend or colleague.

Hotmail is the most famous example of successful viral marketing, raising its email user base from 3 million to 30 million in two years, largely through the power of a simple signature at the end of every email sent by its members. Another example is the 'dancing baby' image, a short animation sequence released by Autodesk Corp. which was emailed all over the Web within weeks.

More incentivised schemes can be used to persuade people to pass on a web address to a friend with a recommendation to visit, by offering tokens, or even cash in return for every resulting 'click-through' or purchase. This can be a very cost effective way to enlarge a customer base - paying say £5 to acquire a new customer in this way compares very favourably with the e-commerce industry average new customer acquisition cost of $250, or £172 according to Cutler and Sterne (13) based on McKinsey & Co. data for USA businesses in first half of 1999. Such a tactic resembles the affiliate marketing co-operative model.

Another way to build traffic is to use chat facilities to promote a sense of community, and provide a space where people feel at home. Hof et al (24) in 1997 claim that just adding chat facilities to a site consistently boosted traffic by as much as 50%, with visitors remaining three times longer than average.

Turban et al (49) cite an example of N2K (acquired by CDNow), an online music store, increasing its quarterly sales from $85,000 (£59,000) to $450,000 (£310,000) with the inception of new community sites with chat rooms, to $3.6 million (£2.5 m) one year later - all attributed to communities, and opportunistic low profile marketing to meet their needs.

However it is important to realise that successful chat operations develop organically, prompted by user interests, not by fiat from the parent sponsor. Chat rooms can therefore be double edged weapons, with unpredictable results, and may even backfire on their hosts. However, advertisers need not run to the expense and trouble of setting up a chat room, they can just buy space in other communities' chat rooms, selected by topic, and design highly targeted ads.

Loyalty schemes, competitions and special offers etc. are often thought of as measures to retain customers - but they can also be an attraction for first time visitors. Competitions and special events can be a good source of publicity, which may be broadcast free by news agencies and others, if the material is interesting enough.

Loyalty schemes such as Zoom (www.zoom.co.uk) and Beenz (www.beenz.com) are a new tender on the Web, and provide more than just a transactional convenience. Surfers who have signed up for a Beenz account for example will be attracted to sites offering Beenz (either to earn or spend) and may be persuaded to part with marketing intelligence (e.g. personal details) in exchange for Beenz, or make an online purchase (earning more Beenz according to value), or pay partly or in full with Beenz credit already accumulated. Beenz can also be converted into real money through a new deal with MasterCard.

In addition to their potential draw for Web traffic, loyalty schemes and special offers can have a very positive impact on customer loyalty, one of the most important contributors to profitability. As Turban et al (49) explain, the cost of acquiring new customers can be five to eight times more than that of retaining existing ones - so learning how to retain existing customers is crucial.