Challenges of Promotions the Whole world can see

Promoting on the internet, why should Marketers do it?

Connected Kingdom provide statistics that show the internet has contributing more and more to the UK's GDP (7.2%/£100 billion in 2009), and 60 % of the internet economy is driven by consumption, which is becoming ever easier. They also suggest that by 2015, the internet will provide 10% of the UK's GDP. Along with this comes the growing knowledge that with technology increasing at an exponential rate, the internet will continue to be a significant part of consumers lives. 

There is a challenge here already for companies to think of, as The Guardian recently reported that the internet has run out of space, there are no new internet addresses available, as almost 4 billion have been used up since it's creation 40 years ago. This will lead to the implementation of new systems being installed in the next 12 to 18 months, which means a company looking to launch a website will have to be aware of the changing of Internet protocol versions (IP's) and ensure they are using the newest IPv6 type. Charles Arthur and Josh Halliday wrote "This could mean that in a year's time you may hear about a new site – yet when you type its address into a web browser or click a link to it on a web page, your computer simply won't connect to it because it will use an addressing system entirely different to the one used before."(2011).

The key for a company promoting on the internet is to establish trust with the consumer and to develop a good reputation. In this digitally communicative world, the speed of transactions is increasing and desire is easier to satisfy. Janice mentioned in our lecture that desire is cyclical, i.e. excitement leads to desire leads to excitement and so on and so forth. With the internet providing a platform for faster, easier consumption, this cyclical system is accelerated, so for an aspiring company, there is a need to offer diverse products that satisfy many different needs, not unlike that of Ebay, which provides a way to tangibalize desires.

There is, and probably always will be, a debate surrounding the degree of privacy that is lost due to the advancement of the internet. An aspiring company would need to be aware of the various laws that are in place to ensure that a certain amount of privacy is sustained.

It is assumed that companies will keep individuals information private, but the data protection act, as Connor pointed out in our lecture, is not necessarily geared towards absolute privacy with ambiguous terms such as adequate, necessary and not excessive. This provides a certain degree of leeway for a company, and Alex Krotoski believes that privacy rights are effectively lost by utilising the free services of the internet. The information a consumer gives is a virtual currency and how they "pay" for the services they are using. 

Customer data is pivotal for a marketing strategy to be effective and the information that consumers gives allow the promotional objectives of companies to be accomplished. I have spoken before on the way in which companies utilise personal data on Facebook to provide relevant adverts on one's profile page. This has changed in recent years as Facebook has grown and the ability to utilize personal data increases, as the two charts below indicate.

The blue area shows the level of personal data that is available for Facebook (provided by Matt Mckeon.com, and subsequently enables the personalized advertising techniques they implement.

To conclude, a company looking to promote a product on the internet will face challenges, as previously explained, but the rewards to be gained largely exceed the costs. Furthermore, whilst privacy is an issue that needs to be looked at, the plethora of information consumers provide, enables marketers to target consumers specifically with products the consumer may actually want, as opposed to random, generalized promoting. In my eyes, there will always be ways for companies to find information out about a consumer once it is on the world wide web, if there is information that a consumer does not want to be known, then they should not be putting it on the internet. I agree with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and leave you with a quote from him, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place".

References:

Arthur, C., Halliday, J., 2011. Internet almost out of space with allocation of last addresses. The Guardian. 1st February. Available from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/01/internet-last-addresses-ipv4-ipv6 [Accessed on: 11th February 2011]