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                      WEB MARKETING EZINE
                The Human Face of Web Marketing
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March 6th., 2002           Issue #180              ISSN 1444-2027


Contents
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1. Sponsor's Message
2. First Word
3. Tips, Tools, News and Views

- Free Direct Mail Guide
- Validate Your HTML for Free
- Information Treasure-Trove
- Get Real, Guys!
- Free Training Courses of The Week: Photoshop 5.5 & 6.0
- E-Commerce Term Of The Week:

4. A Touch of Humor
5. Classified Ads
6. Free Training Courses
7. Feature Article: The #1 Reason For a Web Presence (Part 2.) 
8. Our Companion Ezine 
9. Administrivia

Visit our companion website at http://www.WebMarketingEzine.com

Want to read this online? For your convenience, the Current Issue 
of WME is posted each week at the WME website. Just visit 
http://www.WebMarketingEzine.com/currentissue.htm


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1. Sponsor's Message
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2. First Word
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Hi All!

Time is short this week, so the class gets an early mark! I hope
you enjoy and profit from this week's offerings.

Till next week, have a good one!

John


Thought For the Week:
"Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is 
had to begin where he was." 
- Richard L. Evans 

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3. Tips, Tools, News and Views
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Free Direct Mail Guide
----------------------

It's true. Direct Marketing in general, and Direct Mail in
particular, is the most scientific form of advertising there is. 
There's no bull here- no warm, fuzzy feelings, no brand builing, 
just cruel, hard numbers. There's no sentiment, just results. 
There's no reliance on guesswork, but testing, testing, testing.

Direct Mail incorporates both snail mail and email. The more you
can learn the elements of success of this tough school of
Marketing, the better equipped you'll be to take on the world.
Here's a little something that will help.. 

"Receive a FREE copy of Name-Finder's Direct Mail Guide - a 
brief overview of direct mail marketing and mailing lists. Over 
40% of your direct marketing campaign's success depends on your 
mailing list strategy. Learn how to maximize your direct mail 
results with the right mailing lists and unlock the full 
potential of your direct mail campaign. Order your FREE Direct 
Mail Guide at: http://www.namefinders.com/dmguide "

If you're serious about improving your copywriting skills, here
are a few suggestions...

1. Take Joe Robson's great FREE 5-Day Netwriting Course. Just 
send an email to mailto:[email protected]

2. I recommend 'Make Your Words Sell', a wonderful eBook by my 
friend Joe Robson, and Ken Evoy. Joe's a regular contributor to
WME, and is acknowledged as one of the best in his field. To 
learn more, check out http://myws.sitesell.com/itsyourfuture.html

3. I also recommend Yanik Silver's excellent 'Instant Sales
Letters. There's a host of highly useful information on 
copywriting, and a suite of pre-written sales letters that you
can use from Day #1. You can learn more at
http://www.webmarketingezine.com/isl.htm

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Information Treasure-Trove
--------------------------

WME regularly brings you White Papers of interest to Web 
Marketers. A reader recently asked "What is a White Paper".
Before I had a chance to answer in these pages, I discovered a
wonderful site called IT Papers.com. It's a constantly-
evolving collection of White Papers broadly focused on IT issues.
Currently there are 28,412 White Papers listed in their search 
engine! To answer the question "What is a White Paper?", and to 
tell you a bit more about IT Papers, I'll quote from their site.

"What's a White Paper?

In the IT community, a White Paper is an informational brief 
offering an overview of a technology, product, issue, standard, 
policy, or solution - its importance, use and implementation, and 
business benefits. With the growth of the Internet as a fast and 
easy vehicle for distribution of information, White Papers have 
emerged as the standard way of communicating more in-depth 
information to IT and business decision-makers in terms of 
problems solved and markets addressed - the key criteria for 
product selection.

At ITpapers, you'll find White Papers that... 

- clarify the broad outlines of an issue to non-specialists 
- summarize the implications of a new technical or business 
development 
- introduce a new technology to general IT business readers 
- stake out a company's approach to a particular issue or market 
set out basics of a technical or business issue 
- educate technology readers 

At ITpapers, you won't find... 

- documents that serve solely a promotional function 
- product and sales brochures 
- data or spec sheets 
- promotional press releases"

Today, I had a long meeting with the Director of a chain of 9 
local retail stores. The subject of Intranets, and how they could
be used by his organisation came up. So, to give ITPapers a try,
I followed a series of clicks...Internet/ Internet and Web/
Intranet. 3 clicks, and discovered a treasure trove of 277(!) 
White Papers on every aspect of the subject you could 
imagine. I read a few, and I was impressed. This is one great 
resource. 

If you're after serious information on IT-related subjects, 
there's gold in them thar' White Papers! Go mining for some FREE,
but valuable information at http://www.itpapers.com


Get Real, Guys!
---------------

Some Web Marketers can get carried away by the latest in 'whiz-
bang' technology, and gazillions of HTML column inches are 
written about the latest developments in the field. The sad 
truth is that Web marketing hasn't even touched the majority of 
businesses in the real world. This has been brought home to me 
in a couple of different ways over the last couple of weeks. I 
touched on this subject in last week's "First Word' editorial, 
and I'd like to expand on it some more this week.

Firstly, I had some contact with a local business that is a 
market leader in the field of bedding. They have a website. It 
looks pretty enough, but it doesn't 'sell'. It's uses frames so 
that you can't bookmark a page, or email a URL to a friend. Meta 
tags are missing, and Google doesn't know it exists. To my 
knowledge, the website isn't integrated with email marketing, or
their marketing plan in general. It just sits there. I did a 
search for 'mattresses', and 'canberra', which is where I live. 
The Google results told me about beds at a whole gaggle of local
hotels and motels, but retailers didn't feature. On spec, I
tried 'televisions' and 'canberra'. That was equally successful.

The moral: Most real-world businesses don't have a website, and 
most of those who do, have a poor one, and don't know how to use
it anyway.

The second issue was raised by an ad I saw yeterday, which 
started...

"EMAIL MARKETING IS DEAD. The days of a traditional email
marketing campaign have gone the way of the dinosaur." What a
load! These guys may be trying to push their latest, Generation
5, lowered, souped-up, 12-cylinder model, but most of the real
world hasn't learnt to drive the second-hand pickup yet! Look at
where you spend all your money. Then look at where your email 
comes from. How much of a fit is there between the two? Not
much, I bet. When was the last time your local dry cleaner, 
sports store or electrician tried to get your email address, and
did something with it?

The moral: Most real world businesses don't have a clue about
using email for marketing.

By all means, keep up with the latest in our field. But please, 
remember that the majority of the business world is yet to use
the technology that was available 3-5 years ago. There's a huge
market there for Web Marketers just getting them started. 

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E-Commerce Term Of The Week: Intranet
-------------------------------------

A network based on TCP/IP protocols (an internet) belonging to an
organization, usually a corporation, accessible only by the 
organization's members, employees, or others with authorization. 
An intranet's Web sites look and act just like any other Web 
sites, but the firewall surrounding an intranet fends off 
unauthorized access. 

Like the Internet itself, intranets are used to share information.
Secure intranets are now the fastest-growing segment of the 
Internet because they are much less expensive to build and manage
than private networks based on proprietary protocols. 
-Source: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/i/intranet.html

Note: You may wonder why I put a link to the E-Commerce Term of
The Week, when exactly the same words are on that site. I have
two reasons. The first is to give credit to the source of the 
information, and that's only fair. The second reason, is that there
is generally a lot more information and further links available, 
when you access the original page. Check this week's 'Intranet'
link at Webopedia, and you'll see what I mean. It's good value.

If you'd like to take a free, entry-level training course on 
Intranet Deployment, you'll find details at our Free Training page 
at http://www.webmarketingezine.com/freetrainingcourses.htm

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4. A Touch of Humor
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"The Pentagon on Tuesday shut down its short-lived "strategic 
information" office after media reports suggested it might be 
used to spread disinformation abroad." — Reuters, Feb. 26, 2002 


Closed Disinformation Agency Can't Convince Staff It's Closed
-------------------------------------------------------------
"Right, Sure, We're 'Closed,' Gotcha," Say Winking Employees 

Washington, D.C. (SatireWire.com) — Following Tuesday's 
announcement that the Pentagon had closed the controversial 
Office of Strategic Influence, which allegedly was created to 
spread false information abroad, the agency said it has been 
unable to convince OSI employees to stop reporting for work. 


"Every time I say 'Go home,' they just nudge me in the ribs,"
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said of the OSI staff. 
"We got ya, sir, we're 'closed'," said a winking Major Chad 
Brumley when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found him at his
desk again today. "There is no one here spreading misinformation
now, and certainly there won't be anyone here spreading 
misinformation daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sir." 

"How was that?" the major added in a whisper. 

Rubbing his temples, a clearly frustrated Rumsfeld attempted to 
explain to Brumley and other staffers that the office really had 
been shut down. "Listen people, with all the reports circulating 
that we were going to use the OSI to spread false news, we had no
choice but to close. So please, everyone, go home." 

"Yes sir, we're gone, sir. No one here at all, sir!" responded 
information specialist Lt. Alice Ball, who then turned back to 
her computer. 

"Look, you're not getting this," said Rumsfeld. 

"Yes sir, we don't get it, sir," Ball replied. "There is no 
getting here, sir. We don't do getting, and if asked, we never 
have, sir." 

Rumsfeld then turned to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, 
who had been in charge of the office. "I don't understand," said 
Feith, shrugging. "I sent out a memo about the closure. Didn't 
you people get the memo?" 

"Yes sir! By which we mean, of course, no sir!" Brumley answered. 

"Well, what did you do with it?" asked Feith. 

"We translated it into 46 languages, and sent it to journalists 
in 102 nations, sir. We also had our bombers drop leaflets about 
it across the Middle East, sir!" said Ball. 

"You didn't," said Rumsfeld, wincing. 

"Oh... right, we didn't sir, no sir!" said Ball. "We did not do 
that, sir. Nor are we having it continually broadcast from 
Special Operations aircraft, nor will we be having it planted
on so-called 'objective news' sites across the Internet. 
Corporal Jennings will be 'not' be handling that end of it. Sir!" 

Exasperated, Rumsfeld finally commanded the staff to stop what it 
was doing. "Listen up, all of you! This is not a joke, all right? 
Leave now and do not come back! That's an order!" 

In the stunned silence that followed, a crestfallen Corporal 
Jennings approached the Defense Secretary. "You... you mean it, 
sir? We really are closed? You're not, you know, putting us on?" 

"No, I am not kidding," Rumsfeld said patiently. "You really are 
closed." 

"And the U.S. government really is not interested in propagating 
lies," Feith added. 

With that, a wave of relief suddenly washed over the room. "Oh 
good one, sir!" said Brumley as the office erupted in laughter. 
"You really had us going there, sir!" 

"We never should have started this," muttered Rumsfeld, throwing
up his hands and walking out. 

"Ooo ingenious, sir," said Brumley. "Jennings, new disinformation!
The OSI wasn't 'closed,'. We never even opened!" 

"Yes sir, I won't get to work on that right away, sir!"

Copyright © 2002, SatireWire.
- Source: http://www.satirewire.com/news/feb02/osi.shtml 

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7. Feature Article
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The Number One Reason For a Web Presence (Part 2.)
--------------------------------------------------
by Michel Fortin

(Part 1. of this valuable article was published in WME last week)

Increased Control

A web business also allows reduced inventories and overhead by 
facilitating a "pull" type of supply chain management (e.g., 
"just-in-time" inventory) and allows for the customization of 
products and services, which in turn provides a significant 
competitive advantage often not available in the real world.

Above all, the greatest benefit of the web is the ability for 
online businesses to offer customized and/or personalized 
services. As my respected colleague and marketer Dr. Kevin Nunley
of http://www.drnunley.com/ once noted, "If current trends offer 
any indication, the demand for personalized services [...] will 
continue to grow [and] the future of the Internet lies in 
personalized services supplied by small businesses and 
individuals."

Also, with the help of the web products can be stocked and orders 
can be fulfilled more efficiently, thereby reducing the time 
between the outlay of capital and the receipt of products and 
services. Take, for example, Dell computers' enormously effective
"just-in-time" inventory control process, where parts for its 
customized computer sales are ordered and shipped on a daily 
basis -- there's no need to maintain a huge, costly inventory.

Improved Management

An added advantage to doing business online is that the web 
enhances communications within organizations, between business 
partners and with a company' various publics (e.g., the media, 
specific market segments, the government, related agencies, trade
associations, etc).

To illustrate, news releases can be distributed quicker on the 
Internet. Additionally, complete follow-up information, among 
others, can be posted on one's website for retrieval by the 
press. On top of the rapid dissemination of information, the 
correction of errors, as well as the modification and update of 
data, can be done quicker and more effectively through the help 
of the web.

Improved Branding

Being a branding and positioning consultant, I've personally 
noticed that the Internet greatly facilitates the adoption and 
branding processes -- such as with the ability to project a 
strong corporate identity and to build brand equity, both over a
shorter period of time. Moreover, it removes potentially 
critical, physical comparisons (i.e., on the Internet, the 
element of size no longer exists).

Take for instance a large multinational corporation like Dell 
Computers at http://www.Dell.com/ and a smaller, single location 
rival like Stupid PC at http://www.StupidPC.com/. Online you can 
look just as big and be just as effective as the "big guns." 
Similarly, the web offers the capacity to project a favorable, 
positive corporate image -- and do so easily and cost-
effectively -- where in the physical dimension a mere fancy 
catalog will not cut it for most.

Improved Promotion

This one is my favorite. The web is an extraordinary market 
research tool. It facilitates intelligence gathering, tracking 
and measuring of marketing efforts (often referred as "data 
mining"). As well, it offers new promotional avenues, and opens 
new customer service and product support channels.

For example, in a physical store it's virtually impossible and 
often extremely difficult to track buyer behavior. You can't, for
instance, follow your customers around your store with a video 
camera and track their every move in order to see which aisles 
they visited, at which products they looked, how long they looked
at them, which ones they put in their carts (or put back on the 
shelves), how many aisles they visited, what their interests are,
what their shopping trajectories are (i.e., who referred them to 
your store and where they are going next) and so on.

Arguably, you can obtain this type of information through market 
research, focus groups, surveys and so on -- which takes money, 
time and the willingness of customers. But with a website, all 
this and more can be mined from your server logs or tracking 
software -- even in a matter of seconds.

Final Word

Of course, there are many drawbacks too. The lack of privacy, 
security, tangibility, human response and so on can become and 
are, in many cases, impediments to online sales. But there are 
ways to overcome these. (I have brought you a few in previous 
articles, on this website, in my newsletter and especially in the
Marketing Challenge private site.)

Nevertheless, weighing the differences between the benefits and 
the drawbacks of doing business on the web is an exercise most 
businesses should do at some point. It might prove itself to be 
quite revealing …

And profitable.

----------------------------------------------------------------- 
Michel Fortin, of http://SuccessDoctor.com/, is a marketing 
professor and a highly sought-after consultant whose advice has 
helped countless clients earn millions in record time. His latest
book, "Power Positioning Dot Com," reveals how to keep your 
business or product indelibly carved into your prospects' 
uppermost consciousness at all times -- see 
http://successdoctor.com/pp/
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8. Our Companion Ezine: A Better Life:ItsYourFuture!
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======================= ITS YOUR FUTURE! ========================
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9. Administrivia
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Disclaimer:
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This publication was designed to provide accurate and 
authoritative information with regard to the subject matter.
Subscribers are sent this free weekly e-zine with the 
understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering
legal, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other
professional assistance is required, we advise seeking the 
services of a competent professional.

John Payne does not accept any responsibility for any 
liabilities resulting from any claims in articles or
advertisements published in WME, or the actions of the parties 
involved.

This publication is for informational purposes only.


Copyright:
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© Copyright 2000-2002 John Payne All rights reserved.
Web Marketing Ezine may only be redistributed in its unedited
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        Web Marketing Ezine is published by John Payne 
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