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    PROJECT REPORT 2011

    e-mail marketing

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    E-mail marketing

    In t roduct ion

    E-mail marketing is one of the hottest subjects on the internet, withalmost endless websites devoted to the subject. More and morepeople are realising that there is a lot of money to be made onlinethrough legitimate businesses, such as selling on Ebay, promotingaffiliate products, and developing and selling your own products.

    The major attraction of e-mail marketing is that there are almost nobarriers to entry. You don't need any substantial capital to set yourselfup, as you would in the offline world. For example, you can immediatelystart selling unwanted household items on Ebay, or you could sign upas an affiliate for a company and start promoting their products on thenumerous sources of free ads, such as free classified ads sites,safelists and traffic exchanges, and earn a commission for each sale.

    Most of the resources that you need to start making money online canbe found cheaply, or indeed free in some cases. I recommend creatingyour own website if you want to increase your earning potential, butagain this can be done cheaply if you are on a limited budget.Registering a domain name can cost less than $10, and the cost of webhosting varies, and although I recommend finding a quality web host, itis possible to find free web hosts that will host your site.

    To build your site, there are various free tools that will simplify thewhole process by using simple, easy to understand editors, so thisneedn't be daunting either. A good way to get started is simply by

    creating your own blog, using a service like Blogger, for example,who will host your site on their server for free.

    As you can see it's obvious why e-mail marketing is now so popular, andwill only continue to grow in the future. However, if you want to besuccessful marketing online there is a steep learning curve, and a lot ofpeople simply give up after a few weeks because they haven't made any

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    money. It takes time to learn how to be successful. Experiencedmarketers have endless resources they can draw on, that will mostlikely have come from years of testing and researching.

    In the early stages of your e-mail marketing career there is a lot to learn,and you should absorb as much information as possible. Look for themore renowned internet marketers, and subscribe to their newsletters forideas and tips. Also be sure to check out the Warrior Forum, which isfrequented by some of the very best online marketers, who you can learnso much from. There are also numerous ebooks and websites devotedto the various aspects of e-mail marketing.

    There will come a time though when you have to take action. A lot of

    new potential marketers end up spending hundreds, if not thousands, onebook after ebook, trying to learn as much as they possibly can, withoutactually devoting much time to doing it themselves, and learning as theygo along. Don't get caught in this trap. It's very easy to do. I knowbecause I did it myself to some extent when I first started out.

    If you don't make any sales straight away, don't panic. Just keep trying outdifferent things and learning from your mistakes. No-one makes lots ofmoney instantly with no experience. It takes time. One thing I would

    recommend highly is having an opt-in form on your front page, where visitorsto your site can choose to receive emails from you. This way even if you arenot making any sales at the present time, at least you are building up yourmailing list, which many successful marketers claim is their most valuableasset. This will enable you to market your product to the same prospects infuture emails, increasing the chances of making a sale.

    How significant is E-mail marketing to businesses? Today, the answer to thisquestion varies dramatically according to who is answering. For companies

    such as electronics company Cisco, the answer is very significant Cisco sell$9 million worth of hardware using the Internet each day. For fast-movingconsumer goods (FMCG) companies such as Unilever the answer isinsignificant the majority of their consumer sales will occur throughtraditional retail channels in response to promotional campaigns in traditionalmedia. In 1998 advertising expenditure for Internet placed adverts wasestimated at 8m, compared to 3 billion for TV and radio adverts.

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    Does, the relatively unimportance of the Internet to companies such asUnilever indicate that E-mail marketing is of specialised interest only? Webelieve not, because the interesting question to ask is "how significant will E-

    mail marketing be to businesses in the future; in 2, 5, or 10 years time?" Thisis the question many companies are asking themselves today, and is why it isimportant to understand this relatively new marketing phenomenon.

    For example, Unilever is starting to use the Internet as part of brand buildingfor its new products. In 1998 it launched its Mentadent toothpaste in theUnited States using traditional media campaigns and also offered samples inresponse to users clicking on an advert placed on health-related web sites. It

    received more than 40,000 requests for samples, far exceeding itsexpectations for this new medium. If businesses do not understand and startto apply the new marketing techniques and technology in this way, then theymay not only miss an opportunity, but may even cease to exist.

    The media portrayal of the Internet often suggests that it is merely analternative for traditional advertising. In fact, the Internet can be readily appliedto all aspects of marketing communications and can and will need to support

    the entire marketing process. As we move into the new millenium,organisations will use Internet technology in the form of intranets andextranets to support the operation of the internal and external value chains.

    This book will cover all the different ways in which the Internet can be usedto support the marketing process. Many organisations have begun thisprocess with the development of web sites in the form of electronicbrochures introducing their organisations products and services, but are

    now enhancing them to add value to the full range of marketing functions.

    When reading this book, we would encourage a healthy cynicism in the reader;

    to adopt a questioning approach. When referring to the case studies and

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    estimates of growth, ask what are the tangible benefits that have beendelivered and what are the growth estimates are based on?

    Remember, also that for every success story, there may be unrecordedinstances of companies failing to deliver the foreseen benefits. The case study

    INTERNET: Europe sales 'could top $1,990bn' highlights the reasons forgrowth in Internet sales to both other businesses and consumers and describessome of the barriers which make estimation of the level of sales difficult.

    The Internet and the marketing concept

    The word marketing has two distinct meanings in terms of modernmanagement practice. It describes:

    1. The range of specialist marketing functions carried out withinmany organisations.

    Such functions include market research, brand/productmanagement, public relations, and customer service.

    2. An approach or concept that can be used as the guiding philosophyfor all functions and activities of an organisation. Such a philosophyencompasses all aspects of a business. Business strategy is guidedby an organisations market and competitor focus and everyone in anorganisation should be required to have a customer focus in their job.

    The modern marketing concept unites these two meanings and stressesthat marketing encompasses the range of organisational functions andprocesses that deliver products and services to customers and other keystakeholders such as employees and financial institutions. Increasingly theimportance of marketing is being recognised both as a vital function and aguiding management philosophy within organisations. Marketing has to beseen as the essential focus of all activities within a organisation.

    The marketing concept should lie at the heart of the organisation, and the

    actions of directors, managers and employees guided by its philosophy.

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    Modern marketing requires organisations to be committed to a market /customerorientation. All parts of the organisation should co-ordinate activities to ensurethat customer needs are met efficiently, effectively and profitably. Marketingencompasses activities traditionally seen as the sole domain of accountants,production, HRM and information technology. Many of these functions had littleregard for customer considerations. Increasingly such functions are being re-orientated, evidenced by the importance of initiatives such as Total QualityManagement, (TQM), Business Process Reengineering, Just in Time (JIT) andsupply chain management. Individuals functional roles are undergoing changefrom functional to a greater emphasis on process. As such they are beingencouraged to become part time marketers. Processes have a significant impacton an organisations ability to service its customers needs.

    The Internet can be applied by companies as an integral part of themodern marketing concept since:

    it can be used to support the full range of organisationalfunctions and processes that deliver products and services tocustomers and other key stakeholders

    as a communications medium it can act as a corporate glue thatcan integrate the different functional parts of the organisation

    it facilitates information management which is nowincreasingly recognised as a critical marketing support tool

    the future role of the Internet should form part of the vision of acompany since its future impact will be significant to most businesses.

    Without adequate information, organisations are at a disadvantage withrespect to competitors and the external environment. Up to date, timelyand accessible information about the industry, markets, new technology,competitors and customers are a critical factor in an organisations abilityto plan and compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

    What business benefits can the Internet provide?

    The case study INTERNET: Euro pe sales 'cou ld top $1,990bn' highlightsthe key reason why many companies are seeking to harness the Internet. Thereason is an additional source of revenue made possible by an alternativemarketing and distribution channel. The marketing opportunities of using the

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    The location of web sites is promoted by using online promotion methods such as advertising or listing in electronic catalogues andoffline promotion methods which involve publicising a company webaddress in traditional marketing communications.

    A notable difficulty for web marketers indicated by Table 1-1 is that it isdifficult for potential customers to find a company web site. It is estimatedthat there are over 100 million web pages amongst which a company iscompeting for the attention of customers. It follows that promoting thelocation of the web site is critical for companies. There are two methods forthis. First, offline promotion is used to provide users with the web address.

    This can be achieved by including the web address on traditional advertisingnewsletters, company stationery and other marketing communications.Second, online promotion is used to help users find the web site. Onlinepromotion targets a number of methods which are summarized in

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    Alternative methods of customers visiting a corporate web site

    Staff monitoring web sites find that the most common method of peoplevisiting a web site are search engines or directories , so it is importantthat each company is listed with such directories. Search engines anddirectories that are now commonly referred to as portals or Internetgateways are described in more detail in Chapter 4. Many largercompanies now place adverts with news services, search engines orother widely used sites to attract customers to their sites.

    Sites are also reached by users typing in the location or web address ofthe site which they will be aware of through offline promotion methods.

    A web address such as http://www.ftmanagement.com is technicallyreferred to as a URL or universal resource locator. The format of webaddresses are described in Chapter 3.

    A detailed coverage of how to promote web sites is supplied in Chapter 10.

    Search engines are a special type of web site that provide an index of allwords stored on the World Wide Web. Keywords typed in by the end-user are matched against the index and the user is given a list of allcorresponding web pages containing the keywords. By clicking on ahyperlink the user is taken to the relevant web page.

    Web directory sites provide a structured listing of web sites. They are groupedaccording to categories such as business, entertainment or sport. Each categoryis then sub-divided further, for example into football, rugby, swimming.

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    Adver t is ing

    Since the Internet is a new medium, marketing staff are still undergoing alearning curve in terms of exploiting its full potential and integrating it with theiroffline promotional activities. Essentially, users have the choice of two optionsfor advertising on the web. The first is to set up a web site and through thiscommunicate key messages, images and buying information to the web sitevisitor. Such sites can incorporate interactive activity and sounds. The secondoption is to use banner ads which can increase brand recognition andcommunicate / reinforce brand values as well as providing a link to the website. Banner ads can be placed against reserved key words on search engines(entering the search keyword "car", for example might display a banner advertfor the Avensis") or can be placed on media sites with more tightly definedniche audiences. Banner ads are relatively unsophisticated and do no morethan provide exposure to a message. The banners can provide opportunitiesfor interaction and provision of further information Additional messaging canbe contained on the advertisers own web site. While some Internet advertisingis fairly primitive compared with other media, many have good creativeexecution and are integrated fully with their off line campaigns. For maximumimpact, adverts on the web should be researched and planned as carefully ason any other medium. When combined with a promotion, the proportion ofpeople clicking on the page (the click through rate) may increase from 2% to

    10%. The latter figure has been achieved by when combined with a discountoffer or competition.

    A rectangular area of screen which promotes a brand and/orencourages the user to click on it and visit the relevant web site.

    Sales pro m otion

    The Internet provides marketers with an excellent channel through which tocommunicate sales promotions. Capital Radio in conjunction with Nestlelaunched a telephone response promotion targeted at children revising for their

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    GCSEs offering revision tips and a guaranteed answer within 24 hours to Emailed queries. They received 10,000 phone calls per week over the twoweeks that the promotion ran. However on further investigation theydiscovered that they didnt answer 90,000 calls per week which proved tobe an irritant to the caller and potentially detrimental to the brand. Capitalput the information on the web and announced the new service on air.3,500 people downloaded the revision tips and a further 1000 entered acompetition which required filling in a lengthy data capture form. Salespromotions that allow users to accumulate some kind of reward (possiblyfinancial) for each time they interact with a company on the Internet is onepromotional strategy used to build longer term loyalty. Similarly theinclusion of gifts such as mugs and pens or other collectables can easily beincorporated onto a web site. Such examples demonstrate the power of theInternet to act as a channel for communicating sales promotion offers.

    Public Relat ion s

    Public Relations activity on the web offers organisations scope forcorporate communications, sponsorship, publicity and a direct vehiclefor communicating press releases. The Internet provides scope for twoway interaction, clear targeting of key opinion formers and journalistsand the potential for communicating strong corporate brand messages.

    Several PR agencies are investigating the potential for organisations tofurther exploit the potential for electronic Public Relations.

    The Internet can be used to facilitate traditional methods of publicrelations. It can also be used to expand the depth and breadth of PR.

    Most press agencies now use the Internet as a primary source ofinformation. Press releases can be sent by E-mail to agencies you areregistered with and also made available on your web site.

    With this new method of PR, a key difference is that a company can talk direct

    to the market via the corporate web site. Third party agencies and physical

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    media still have a role, because of their credibility as an independent source ofinformation and their wider circulation. Agency information can be supplementedby more detailed and timely information direct from the corporate web site.

    Another difference with the new PR is that traditional weekly and monthlypublishing deadlines disappear as new stories appear by the minute. This has theobvious benefit that you can make an immediate impact and be better aware ofthe changing marketing environment. The obvious problem of the new PR is thatyour competitors have these advantages too. So it is likely that there will be anincreased need for defensive PR.

    Direct m arketing

    Direct marketing is currently one of the fastest growing fields ofmarketing. The techniques it utilises can be spread across all theelements of the promotional mix. The following extract clearly identifiesthe purpose and scope of direct marketing.

    Direct marketing on the Internet offers significant potential for customisation ofproducts and services and personalising a message. The utilisation ofdatabases and the interactivity of the Internet enable organisations to engagein one to one dialogue. As indicated above, the real benefit of direct marketingis its potential to use data to develop relevant dialogue and relationships with

    consumers. The Internet is currently not fulfilling its potential in this area withusers of the Internet, but we will look at some examples of companiesexploiting the potential for relationship marketing activity.

    Elec tronic com merce

    Electronic commerce has become the standard term recognised for businesstransactions conducted on the Internet. It is a term that encompasses a rangeof business activities such as selling online, online bill payments, homeshopping/banking and improving efficiency in dealings with suppliers and

    clients (Hoffman and Novak, 1996). Some authors such as Zwass(1998)extend the meaning of electronic commerce to incorporate all marketingcommunications. For clarity, in this book, a narrower definition is used :electronic commerce is used to refer to paid-for business transactions.

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    The adoption of Internet commerce is currently variable according to thesuitability of a product for online sales. In some sectors, the Internet is fastbecoming the primary medium for products sales. By the end of 1997, Cisco, asupplier of network infrastructure, had achieved daily Internet based sales of $7million (39% of sales). The computer manufacturer Dell now sells $6 million ofPersonal Computers via its web site each day. Both of these companies expectover half of their revenue to be derived from the Internet before the millenium.

    In other sectors, the Internet is also becoming a preferred method of purchase.The Microsoft Expedia site sells holidays and flights worth over a million dollarseach day. Amazon, the largest Internet bookshop saw revenue grow by over800% between 1996 and 1997 to a total of $239 million. Figure 1-5 indicatesthe variation in popularity of products purchased using the Internet. Takenacross a number of sectors the impact of the Internet becomes significant;.Business-to -business transactions were estimated to reach $160 billion by theyear 2000 in The Economist of May 1997.

    Electronic commerce has implications for existing channels ofdistribution regarding the logistics involved in delivery of products andservices, how products and services are ordered, taxed and paid for.For consumers, a significant benefit of online shopping is that itprovides access to a global marketplace of online shopping sites.

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    Propor t ion of g ood s purc hased onl ine in Europe .Sou rce K PMG. 1998.

    A concern over security of transactions is one barrier which will need to beovercome before wider consumer use of electronic commerce. Organisationssuch as Mastercard and Visa are working with other partners to develop aSecure Electronic Transaction (SET) standard for securing payment cardtransactions over the Internet. These issues, which will govern the adoption ofelectronic commerce are investigated further in Chapter 12. In Chapters 14 and

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    15, examples are provided of how electronic commerce has beenused in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer market.

    Services mark eting

    The Internet provides both a communication and distribution channelfor the provision of

    faster and more effective service delivery. Access to organisation resourcesand information, the interactive nature of the Internet and the linkage ofInternet technology to other information technology hardware provide a widerange of opportunities for marketers to improve the service delivery process.

    An example of improved service delivery via the Internet is shown when theRoyal Mail launched a web site which provides rapid access to informationsuch as different types of postal services and a postal rates calculator whereyou can enter your packages weight and its destination to find out how much itwill cost to send the package using each service. Users can request furtherinformation by entering their E mail and postal address. Legal and Generalwas one of the first UK insurers to set up a web page site. Now it has added apackage of on line financial products and services (Interplan) and plans anextranet for its representatives and agents. Account holders are able to accesstheir accounts on the web site, make lump sum payments andincrease/decrease monthly payments and withdraw any reserves. Thecompany hopes to persuade more customers to link into Interplan to performbasic customer service such as notify changes of address.

    The potential to develop improved customer service online can providecustomers with significant added value. Federal Express has developed asite that is not directly designed for revenue generation but rather forconvenience and cost saving to its customers. The company provides atracker service for every parcel it transports and this service has now beenincluded on its web site (Figure 1-6). Customers can now communicate online and identify exactly where their parcel is at any time. The service whilstbeing efficient has also substantially reduced the number of phone calls thatFederal express received. Most organisations can introduce customer carelines and customer information facilities that can easily be placed on line.Cost savings, ease of access and immediacy of response are three potentialbenefits offered from improving online customer service.

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    Figure 6 Customer service Internet parcel tracking application fromFederal Express

    Summary

    1. The growth in use of the Internet for marketing has been dramaticsince the inception of world wide web browsers in the early 1990s.KPMG estimated in 1998 that the European electronic commercemarket would be worth nearly $2,000 billion by 2001.

    2. The Internet is used to develop existing markets through enabling anadditional communications channel with potential customers. It can be used todevelop new international markets with a reduced need for new sales officesand agents. Companies can also add new products using the Internet.

    3. The Internet can support the full range of marketing functions and indoing so can help reduce costs, facilitate communication within andbetween organisations and improve customer service.

    4. Interaction with customers, suppliers and distributors occurs across the

    Internet. If access is restricted to favoured third parties this is known as an

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    extranet. If Internet technologies are used to facilitate internal company

    communications this is known as an intranet a private company Internet.

    5. E-mail marketing involves a different demographic profile to the generalpopulation since it is largely restricted to computer users. The profile is

    skewed towards young, high-income males. E-mail marketing also differs inthat the customer is seeking information and it is possible to set-up interactivedialogues with customers that are tailored to the customers preferences.

    6. It is important for marketers to understand how visitors are likely tobecome aware of their web-site. Online and offline promotion techniques canthen be used to capture new visitors using these methods that include:

    search engines directories banner adverts placed in online media links from other sites typing in a web address (URL)

    7. Many companies do not possess a clearly defined E-mail marketingstrategy. It is important that the strategy is integrated with the marketingstrategy and includes clearly defined objectives, scope, branding,promotion methods and legal/technical constraints.

    8. Electronic commerce is the term used to describe transactions between

    a business and third parties such as customers, suppliers and distributors.Transactions can include paid for items or can be interpreted as the fullrange of transactions that occur as part of marketing communications.

    9. The marketing benefits the Internet confers are advantageous both tothe large corporation and the small-medium enterprise. These include:

    a new medium for advertising and PR a new channel for distributing products opportunities for expansion into new markets new ways of enhancing customer service new ways of reducing costs by reducing the number of staff

    in order fulfilment

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    Case Stu d y

    eBay

    Online sho pp ing w ebs i te

    Abo ut eBay

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    eBay is The World's Online Marketplace, enabling trade on a

    local, national and international basis. With a diverse and

    passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay

    offers an online platform where millions of items are traded eachday

    Price

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    When you think about selling on e-Bay, one of the last things that usuallycome to mindis pricing strategies. After all, e-Bay is an auction site. Youlist your item and wait forcompetitive bidding to drive the price up.Unfortunately, its not that simple.Pricing the items you sell on e -Bay is animportant part of the selling process, even on e- Bay. Many sellers dontgive pricing too much consideration and their auctions usually show it. People are looking for bargains, especially on e-Bay. They will bid only onitems wherethey see a value for the price they are willing to pay. Naturallysellers are concernedabout getting a fair price, too. Often, they have moneyinvested in the item they are tryingto sell. They cant go below a certain priceor they risk losing money.So, how do pricing strategies work on e-Bay?

    There are essentially three types of pricing you need to be concerned with:

    Starting bid Reserve price Buy-It-Now price Each of these methods has important factors to consider

    Benefi ts of eBay

    Malls and department stores are not the only ones reaping profits overwholesale and retail sales nowadays. While some of these stores haveonline versions where people can browse through their catalogs andmake their purchases over the internet, there is one online shoppingsite that offers a whole range of items from multiple vendors. eBay isthe one-stop-shop for millions of Americans doing their shopping online.

    One of the greatest benefits is the wealth of inventory it has on itspages. Pages after pages of listings of various items are

    available for the online shopper. It is almost guaranteed that whatever item you are looking for, it is availableon here. Common items like clothing, furnishings and gift items are plentifulas well as odd ones like celebrity memorabilia and rare collectibles. There areunlimited products that you can choose from on. No need to go through

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    racks or shelves, all you have to do is to type in your desireditem in the search box.

    Another benefit of shopping on eBay is the affordability and convenience

    of it all. Since it is an auction site, it allows you to purchase items listedon their pages for the amount that you are willing to spend for thatparticular item. If the closing price is way beyond your means, thensomeone else with a higher bid is more likely to end up with it. You arenot forced to make the purchase nor derailed in sticking to your budget.

    As there is a huge amount of items on sale on eBay, there are also a lot ofvendors selling their wares. You get to choose from which vendor you want tobuy your item from. No more tiresome and time consuming rack combing or

    shop hopping in the mall. You can also choose to deal with the vendor thatgives the best deal. It is important, though, that you check out thespecifications of the product being offered to make sure that it is exactly whatyou are looking for. Also check for other fees and charges you may have topay. It is a bummer to win a bid on an item only to find out that you will becharged horrendous fees for shipping and handling or that your item will not beshipped for quite some time for one reason or another. Make sure you aredealing with a reputable seller by checking out each seller's feedback.

    eBay is user- friendly. All you have to do to make a transaction on eBay isto go through a one-time registration process absolutely free of charge. Theprivate registration page asks you for basic information like name, addressand telephone number plus a number of user identity verification data suchas desired user name, password, and a security question and itscorresponding answer. An email confirmation will be sent to you with a linkto confirm your membership. Once your membership is confirmed, you canmake any number of bids for as many items you wish to buy.

    Shopping on eBay is convenient, budget-friendly and practical. For thebest deals on the internet, try the ultimate online shopping site eBay.

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    Ab out Goog le

    1. Int rodu ct ion

    The web creates new challenges for information retrieval. The amount ofinformation on the web is growing rapidly, as well as the number of new usersinexperienced in the art of web research. People are likely to surf the web using

    its link graph, often starting with high quality human maintained indices such as Yahoo! or with search engines. Human maintained lists cover popular topicseffectively but are

    subjective, expensive to build and maintain, slow to improve, and cannot coverall esoteric topics. Automated search engines that rely on keyword matchingusually return too many low quality matches. To make matters worse, someadvertisers attempt to gain peoples attention by taking measures meant to

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    mislead automated search engines. We have built a large-scale search engine whichaddresses many of the problems of existing systems. It makes especially heavy use ofthe additional structure present in hypertext to provide much higher

    quality search results. We chose our system name, Google, because it is a common spelling of googol, or 10100 and fits well with our goal ofbuilding very large-scale search engines.

    1.1 Web Search Engines -- Scaling Up: 1994 2000

    Search engine technology has had to scale dramatically to keep upwith the growth of the web. In 1994, one of the first web searchengines, the World Wide Web Worm (WWWW) [Mc Bryan 94] had anindex of 110,000 web pages and web accessible documents. As ofNovember, 1997, the top search engines claim to index from 2 million

    (WebCrawler) to 100 million web documents (from Search Engine Watch). It is foreseeable that by the year 2000, a comprehensive index ofthe Web will contain over a billion documents. At the same time, thenumber of queries search engines handle has grown incredibly too. InMarch and April 1994, the World Wide Web Worm received an average ofabout 1500 queries per day. In November 1997, Altavista claimed ithandled roughly 20 million queries per day. With the increasing number ofusers on the web, and automated systems which query search engines, itis likely that top search engines will handle hundreds of millions of queriesper day by the year 2000. The goal of our system is to address many of theproblems, both in quality and scalability, introduced by scaling search engine technology to such extraordinary numbers.

    1.2. Google: Scaling with the Web

    Creating a search engine which scales even to todays web presents manychallenges. Fast crawling technology is needed to gather the web documentsand keep them up to date. Storage space must be used efficiently to storeindices and, optionally, the documents themselves. The indexing system must

    process hundreds of gigabytes of data efficiently. Queries must be handledquickly, at a rate of hundreds to thousands per second. These tasks arebecoming increasingly difficult as the Web grows. However, hardwareperformance and cost have improved dramatically to partially offset thedifficulty. There are, however, several notable exceptions to this progress suchas disk seek time and operating system robustness. In designing Google, wehave considered both the rate of growth of the Web and technological

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    changes. Google is designed to scale well to extremely large data sets. It makes efficient use ofstorage space to store the index. Its data structures are optimized forfast and efficient access (see section 4.2). Further, we expect that thecost to index and store text or HTML will eventually decline relative tothe amount that will be available (see Appendix B). This will result infavorable scaling properties for centralized systems like Google.

    Ab ou t Facebook

    Facebook is a social networking website, very popular among college students. It was originally developed for university students,faculty and staff, but has since expanded to include everyone,including high school, corporate and geographic communities.

    The name of the site is based on the paper facebooks thatcolleges give to incoming students, faculty, and staffdepicting members of the campus community.

    Faceboo k Enco urages Wri t ing On the Wal l

    Facebook, Inc., an Internet social networking site incorporating allthat is good in individuality and the connection of a global society,stands out from other similar sites in its many innovativeapplications. One of which is "The Wall."

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    Facebook users are allowed to comment on each other's "walls," a spacein your profile for friends to post greetings, thoughts, ideas, and generalcomments. Much like text messaging on cell phones, The Wall offers aplace for people to connect without spending lots of time conversing.

    With the climbing popularity of video-posting sites like YouTube, theFacebook team lent their efforts towards keeping up with the rapidly changingelectronic era and opened posting avenues by allowing members to recordvideos to post, attach links including the embedded video itself, send photosand fortunes (another application), etc. Keep in mind, you can only attachapplications that you or the friend whose wall you are writing on has.

    One of the first updates Facebook made to The Wall was building a typingspace into The Wall itself so members no longer needed to travel from one

    page to another to post a comment, something other sites still do. Thischange saves time and frustration for members with slower connections.

    Don't want The Wall? Simple! Users can choose to delete their wall or editto whom it is visible to by going to the Profile section of the Privacy page.

    When a member posts on a friend's wall, that post may be made visibleto people in his or his friends' networks through the Mini- Feed on thehomepage. You can also see others' wall posts through the Wall-to-Wall application, which lets you to view wall posts between two peoplewhose privacy settings normally allow you to see their walls.

    All information regarding The Wall can be found on the Facebookhelp page, which makes it all even easier and convenient. So forgetwhat your mother said when you were a child because writing onwalls has a whole new meaning.

    History of Faceboo k

    The site was founded as the facebook in February 2004 byMark Zuckerberg at Harvard University with financial help from EduardoSaverin. Within a few weeks, over half the Harvard undergraduate populationhad registered. By the end of February, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hugheshad joined Zuckerberg to spread the website. Within two months, Facebook

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    expanded to the rest of the Ivy League and a few other schools. ByDecember 2004, the number of registered users exceeded one million.

    As the website's popularity rose and advertising revenue grew, Zuckerbergand Moskovitz left Harvard to run Facebook fulltime, while Hughesremained at Harvard to work as the site's spokesperson. Zuckerberg andMoskovitz moved to Palo Alto in June 2004, established an office and hireda staff of eight, including Sean Parker, Matt Cohler, and James Pereira.

    Stories about Facebook became commonplace in online and print media.Simultaneously, several competitor sites appeared attempting to capturesome of the limelight. While at Harvard, Zuckerberg's project competedwith a student portal by Aaron Greenspan known as houseSYSTEM,whose Universal Face Book was launched in October, 2003, before

    Facebook existed. [6]. Greenspan would later fold houseSYSTEM into anew product, CommonRoom. In late 2004, the owners of the websiteConnectU (Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss),another social networking website targeted towards college students, fileda lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg had stolen sourcecode intended for their website while in their employ [7][8]. Wikinews Wikinews has news related to thisarticle: Facebook's funding

    In September 2004, Facebook received around $500,000 from PayPalco-founder Peter Thiel in an angel round. In May 2005, Facebookraised $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners [9] .

    In late August 2005, it was announced on the main website that thedomain name facebook.com was acquired from Aboutface Corporation,and the website moved domains and dropped the "the" from the site nameeffective August 23, 2005. The purchase price for the domain name was$200,000 according to people familiar with this deal[citation needed]. Also

    included in the move was a site overhaul, making profile pages more"user-friendly", according to Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has since addedmore universities to Facebook (with an emphasis on forgotten schools inCanada as well as in the United States), but unlike in the past, the new sc

    About facebook

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    So too can social networking sites offer these same types of benefits.You connect with your friends already, why not stay in front of them ina business capacity? Use the powerful tools within networking sites toexplain what you do to friends and family, to keep them abreast of thelatest trends and technologies in your own industry.

    Facebook in particular offers great group features. Facebook allowsyou to create a group about whatever topic or topics you want. Mostrecently I've created the Web Design and Programming group andinvited many classmates, friends, even teachers into the group whereI hope to discuss problems and topics in web design or programming,offer help, build an online community for everyone.

    In creating such a group I have created value for the individuals that are apart

    of the group, I have connected with a number of like-minded, skilled, potentialsales people, and finally it is a network of valuable talent, resources and skillsthat I can tap into later, perhaps as employees or referral sources.

    Harnessing the power of Web 2.0 doesn't necessarily mean you haveto spend copious amounts of money on web ads. Instead, I've foundtremendous value in molding the connection features offered by thesesocial networking sites into my own business.

    Do you have a unique (guerilla) marketing technique thatharnesses the power of Web 2.0 or uses a commonplace featureof a favorite website to drive sales and traffic?

    Zachary Katkin is the founder of Naples Web Design Firm, UniqueID Web Design. Zach can be contacted via the company's web site.

    You can read Zach Katkin's personal blog, theNapkin for moreinformation on running and marketing a small business online


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