Interactive Marketing
Interactive media technologies combine computers and telecommunications resources to create software that users can direct themselves. They allow people to digitalize reports and drawings and transmit them, quickly and inexpensively, over phone lines, coaxial cables, or fiber optic cables. People can subscribe to personalized news services that deliver article summaries on specified topics directly to their fax machines or computers. They can telecommunicate via e-mail, voice mail, fax, video conferencing, and computer networks; pay bills using online banking services; and use online resources to get information about everything from investments to a local retailer’s special sale, day-care facilities, and local entertainment activities for the upcoming weekend.
Companies are now using interactivity in their marketing programs, as well. Interactive marketing refers to buyer-seller communications in which the customer controls the amount and type of information received from a marketer. This technique provides immediate access to key product information when the consumer wants it. Interactive techniques have been used for more than a decade; point-of-sale brochures and coupon dispensers are a simple form of interactive advertising. Today, however, the term also includes two-way electronic communication using a variety of media such as the Internet, CD-ROMs, and virtual reality kiosks.
Interactive marketing frees communications between marketers and their customers from the limits of the traditional, linear, one-way messages to passive audiences using broadcast or print ads. Now customers come to companies for information, creating opportunities for one-to-one marketing. For example, each customer who visits a XVeb site has a different experience, based on the pathway of links he or she chooses to follow. Interactive marketing can also allow many- to-many exchanges, where consumers can communicate with one another using e-mail or electronic bulletin boards.
Interactivity involves more than just moving from one section of a CD-ROM or Web page to another. These electronic conversations establish innovative relationships between users and the technology, providing customized information based on users’ interests and levels of understanding. Interactive technologies support almost limidess exchanges of information. People gain access to chosen programs and services via their personal computers and telephones, and they can purchase products not only from stores but also via television or the Internet. For example, the Weather Channel offers extra information on local forecasts and the Tonight Show provides details aboutjay Leno’s guests on its interactive TV programs.
One of the busiest areas of interactive marketing is online auctions and name-your-oi-price vendors. This sector, which is expected to draw well over 6 million buyers by 2002, includes airline tickets, hotel rooms, cruises, and rental cars. Although Budget, Avis, and Hertz all have Web reservation sites, Budget was the first to establish an interactive price bidding feature, the Bid- Budget program. Online bidders simply fill out a form indicating the desired dates and airport pickup location, preferred car type, contact information, a major credit-card number, and the price they are willing to pay. Budget notifies the bidder within 24 hours whether a bid is accepted and offers a money-back guarantee up to 48 hours before the pick up time.
Interactive marketing can transform and enhance customer relationships. Interactive promotions put the customer in control. They can easily get tips on product usage and answers to customer service questions, they can also tell the company what they like or dislike about a product, and they can just as easily click the exit button and move on to another area. The challenge is attracting and holding consumer attention. Marketers must devise new strategies based on interactive marketing techniques to build lasting customer relationships. Subsequent chapters will show how companies are successfully using interactive techniques in their marketing campaigns.