INTERNET MARKETING REPORT
FOR
BY:
SAM JOBES
Introduction:
This research paper focuses on marketing techniques used on the internet,
and specifically how SynerMark
can increase their presence on the World
Wide Web. Several important ideas are discussed in great detail
to allow SynerMark to re-evaluate and improve on its current marketing
strategy.
In May 1995 , between 35 to 45 million people were using the internet. This number is growing at an estimated 10 to 15 percent per month and by January 1997 it is was estimated that there were at least 62 million individual users. It is evident to most people that the internet is the wave of the future, both as an entertainment and communication medium. These facts simply cannot be ignored by any company that wishes to maintain its competitive edge through the 21st century.
Designing and implementing a web site that attracts visitors and keeps
them coming back is the key to marketing on the Internet. The following
sections will discuss some important tools and techniques for achieving
a quality site.
Design:
This section will discuss basic design techniques currently in place
at SynerMark's web page and suggestions for keeping them effective.
SynerMark's site uses good overall design techniques based on a company design template. Not only is this template used on the web page, but also in other marketing materials such as brochures. The design presents a specific corporate image which should be easily recognizable to past and present clients as a trademark of the company.
The use of a universal font such as Times Roman suggests a conservative image. This theme prevails throughout the site, and is the most attractive approach in marketing to the real estate investor. Investors don't want to work with a company that is too flashy or one that uses eccentric art and graphics. The use of specific icons and a standard font throughout the page provides consistency and contributes to conservative corporate image.
The site uses anchors and hyper-text links throughout the pages for easy navigation within the documents. This is a good technique because it allows the reader to bypass information he or she feels is irrelevant and it also eliminates the need for constant scrolling through documents.
The documents at SynerMark's web site are small which is good as most people don't like waiting the length of time it takes to load a huge document. Along the same lines are images. The images in the documents are small and fast loading. As a web- marketer SynerMark must continue to be sensitive to the its visitors download time.
There are several design suggestion that SynerMark must keep in mind.
Even if most of the development of the site is done externally, SynerMark
must pay attention and exercise control over the marketing concept and
presentation. Creativity is good as long as it is helps send the right
message. The web site should be content driven, not boring, but easy to
read and to the point. The design features must be used to strengthen the
marketing message, not clutter it.
Content:
This section will discuss the main component of a web site. Content
refers to what you are offering to the visitor, things that will keep them
coming back for more. This is the meat and potatoes of a web page, and
can make or break a site. In real estate they say "location, location,
location" on the internet it is phrased "content, content, content".
Useful content includes thorough information about services and products that are offered by a company and also provides resources and background material related to the industry. This has the potential to position SynerMark as an industry expert and create visibility to draw more visitors. Content should conform to a value added approach, offering something to people, not just blatant advertising.
Now for the good the bad and the ugly. SynerMark's site has decent content in that it's attractive and user friendly. The information on SynerMark's site is useful for promoting the company image and providing basic information on the services SynerMark has to offer. The site also shows past accomplishments and plenty of short biographies about management. Glamour alone however will not make the web site a success. This is good to have but only as a supplement to real content. SynerMark must put itself in the visitor's shoes. Who is going to visit the site and why? What are they looking for and what do they want to get out of it? The content must match the needs of the visitor and some cases content can create needs that a visitors didn't even know about.
The people that are going to visit the site include investors, professionals, and the general public. As the demographics of the web continue to change, more and more investors and professionals will be surfing the web for information. The main reason these people will visit SynerMark's site is for the information it provides. Not only will they be interested in information on the company but also what the company has to offer. The site is about real estate, and this is what will draw them in. Once they are drawn in they must be rewarded for visiting the site and offered incentives for sticking around.
SynerMark must provide a complete listing of its properties for sale and lease. People from all over the world are looking to invest or lease properties. By giving them complete listings of properties and related financial data, they can decide if it meets their needs. SynerMark already does this for a few properties listed for sale, but the list is not up to date and only has detailed information and pictures for a few properties. An important key to web site content is to keep it fresh and update it regularly. This will keep visitors coming back.
The images are an important part of the content as well. People like to see raw data but pictures are enticing and as the old saying goes " a picture is worth a thousand words". The images should be linked through thumbnails or smaller pictures on the initial listings page. It takes time to load images so this gives the visitor a choice of whether or not to see the full blown image. SynerMark needs to be sensitive to the visitors need for shorter download times. There are many ways to make images smaller and faster loading. Adjusting the color depth and resolution, and using interlaced GIF format or JPEG compressed images helps the web browser load images faster. Images can be scanned in to a computer using software such as Photoshop, or taken with a digital camera. A digital camera would be an ideal tool for a company such as SynerMark, considering the vast amount of money that is spent on image processing and reprints. Digital storage also saves space compared to hard copies. One thing to be careful of with images and image links in general, is the fact that some visitors turn off inline graphics and browse the web solely on text. Be sure to provide a caption for images.
Another content idea SynerMark should look into is providing a database of information of some sort. A good example is a database for news clippings on real estate related articles for the Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio areas. This would certainly keep people coming back to the site. SynerMark already has a clipping service and uses the information regularly for its own purposes. The articles could be easily scanned into the computer and OCR (optical character recognition) can be used to convert the images to plain text. Most scanners are capable of this, including the one SynerMark already uses for scanning photographs.
Regardless of other value added content the web site provides, it should
definitely contain a page devoted to links of related real estate sites
on the internet. The page does not have to link to competitor's pages,
but rather other sites that provide industry related news, and information.
Links, as discussed in the following section are a great source of networking
for higher visibility.
Market Research and Data Collection:
Market research and data collection are another function of web sites
that can be very beneficial to companies.
SynerMark has set up a form for the collection of e-mail addresses and other demographic information. This is a great way to gather information on the people who visit a site. It also helps the company interact on a much more personal level with the visitors.
Data can be collected about e-mail addresses, interests, needs, suggestions, and basically any information a person is willing to provide. The key to this is "willingness to provide". People rarely go around filling out detailed forms with personal information unless they have a damn good reason to do so. In order to gather this kind of information SynerMark needs to offer them something else in return, not just a reply saying thank you. There are several ideas that SynerMark can use in order to obtain this information
One idea would be to offer a service which notifies people by e-mail of updates in listing information. This can be done via a mailbot. The mailbot can be designed specifically for the needs expressed in the forms people return.
Another service could be complete lists of "on the market properties" which advertise specific types of properties through SynerMark keeping the listing agent, if from another company, anonymous.
CIP (Commercial Industrial Properties) puts out a market review and
forecast brochure for the Austin area. Visitors could fill out their address
in a form to be sent a similar brochure from SynerMark.
Visibility:
Visibility of a web site refers to marketing the marketing medium, getting the message out, getting more hits. SynerMark can do much in the way of creating visibility for themselves as this section will discuss in further detail.
SynerMark has registered with several search engines on the web such as Yahoo for example. This is probably one of the most important steps in making a page visible on the internet.
SynerMark probably used a registration service to promote their sites to popular search engines. This was a mistake, but in time it may be corrected. The problem with these registration services is that they use a robot or automated program to deliver generic information to the search engines about the site. The robot gives the search engines reasonable information, but each search engine is so different that this method couldn't possibly get SynerMark's page near the top of the search results. The key is that each submission should be custom tailored to each individual search engine. Several pages could be devoted to the correct submission of a web site to the myriad of search engines available, however there are a few specific steps SynerMark can take to increase their visibility through search engines.
There are two basic types of search engines out there, deep search engines and standard search engines. Deep search engines use a robot or spider which constantly search the web for new or updated pages. When the robot visits the page it reads the whole thing and any connected sub-pages. It then stores every word on every page and compresses it to a database. Standard search engine store information that you give them when you register a page. The good thing about the deep search engine is that the robot comes around every few months or so and can update SynerMark's page once it has been correctly formatted. To format the page specifically to be picked up at the top of the list by a deep search engine there are a few suggestions for SynerMark.
The title of a page is usually the best description of the content of the page. The robot in a deep search engine realizes this. It is therefore important to use the most powerful keywords in the title. Each sub-page also has a title so use the titles in all of the pages for the most powerful keywords. Use different ones in each page. Changing titles regularly is a sneaky way of having a deep search engine have your page scattered all over the search results. When the robot visits your page and finds a new title it treats it as a whole new page. This could be considered cheating but many other people do it so why let them have the advantage.
META tags are another way to get your page higher up in the search results list.
META tags are text embedded in the document and not seen by the actual browser. This is a type of HTML code used by search engines in finding information (Exhibit A). SynerMark already uses fairly good META tags but here are a few more suggestions. Don't use the same keywords more than six or seven times in the META "keywords" tag, or else the whole lot may be ignored. Try copying the whole list of keywords used in the META "keywords" tag to the first text following the BODY tag and enclose it in <!-- -- > so it doesn't show up as text in the actual document (Exhibit A). This is effective because it is important to have your most powerful keyword near the top of the document.
Most search engines recognize keywords on a percentage basis. For example, if a page had only four words in it "SynerMark offers leasing services" the keyword "leasing" makes up 25%. The number of keywords does not matter as much as the percentages for getting a page further up on the results list.
An alphabetical ranking of the page TITLE won't affect the listing of a site in the results of deep search engines, but most standard search engines do work this way (ex: Yahoo). SynerMark start the title of its pages with a word beginning with "A".
Another important thing that has been ignored by SynerMark is adding an "S" onto the keywords used in its META tags and sometimes an "ING" or other plural of the words. This is important because if someone is seaching for the keyword "Brokers" and your keyword in the page is "broker", it will be overlooked. A search for a singular keyword will always pick up the plural keyword in a META "keyword" tag.
Now that we have examined ways for SynerMark to deal with the complex world of search engine etiquette, there are several other ways that SynerMark can make its site visible. SynerMark has been good about promoting their web site on other forms of media. Press releases, business cards, and brochures for example are a step in the right direction, but still other avenues exist.
Marketing sections within your web site is an effective way to generate traffic through all of your web pages. SynerMark already uses hyper-text links which are a good way of exposing a visitor to different places within the site however Menu icons are another way of doing this. Mentioning regularity of updates to the site is a good way as well. SynerMark could even design small banner ads to put at the bottom of its pages.
Another way of increasing visibility is through networking which simply means mutual linking. By picking sites that are relevant to the real estate industry SynerMark could network with them to have them provide a link to the SynerMark site and vice-versa. Although this may be time consuming and require quite a bit of net-surfing, the hits that it generates could be invaluable. Theoretically this system has a snowball effect which should, once established, keep expanding on its own. Asking people to link to your site is much easier if it is interesting and provides good content. A good way to network is to provide a form in the page which collects links from people who wish to establish mutual linking. It is also good to have a separate page for links only.
Banner exchange programs are another way to make your page more visible and generate more visits. This works by placing a banner from some "banner exchange company" on your page, or pages. For every "X" number of visits your site gets, your banner is displayed at some other site. These banners provide a direct link to your page. Theoretically this process works the same way as in the networking example above. By putting a banner on each page you generate banners more quickly on other sites. If a person visits all ten or twelve pages of your site and you have a banner on each site then your banner will have appeared several times on other sites. The best part of this process is that banner services cost you little time to register and a banner can occupy only a small space at the bottom of each page. One of the best banner exchange service out there is Banner Ad. Another one to look at is The Internet Link Exchange.
There are literally hundreds of things SynerMark can do to increase its visibility, but a couple of last things to mention are signature files and FAQ's. Signature files are like e-mail endtrails. They are mini advertisements that are connected to every e-mail that you send. SynerMark should have a standard "sig-file" giving a brief description of the company, company name, telephone number, and web address. This is like a free advertisement for SynerMark. Usually when E-mailing someone, they have asked for a response. This makes it all right to throw in a little advertisement. FAQ's are sections within a site where you provide answers to frequently asked questions about your site or services you offer. You can never have enough of these as these enable people to gain more information about the company and solves the problem of frequent question that may be overloading your e-mail account.
Measuring Success:
There are several tools that can be used to measure a web sites success.
SynerMark is already using forms, but as I mentioned earlier people must be enticed to give up information about themselves. As long as there is no reason to return these forms, this tool will remain a poor indicator of success. Once the enticement is there SynerMark should begin to see more and more forms returned which will provide a good measure of a web site's success. E-mails can be a good indicator as well.
SynerMark should have a counter on its index page. A counter is one of the best measures of success because it actually measures the exact number of people who browse through your site. Although it may not pick up detailed information on individual visitors it is still a great tool.
Cross link or reciprocal link
requests are another good measure of success as well as media attention.
There are also sites that give awards to especially good sites and this
is a goal that SynerMark should always strive for.
Conclusion:
In addition to the specific recommendations listed above there are several
general ideas that SynerMark should pay attention to and be aware of in
trying to market the internet effectively.
Successful Business Websites Should: