1.1     INTRODUCTION

A founding principle of my teaching - and so this book - is that Internet marketing is about marketing, not computers or IT. In the same way that staff in 'advertising' do not need to know how a TV or radio works, so online marketers need to know what Internet technology can do for them, but not how to do it. As Seth Godin says in his book Meatball Sundae:
  "New [online] Marketing isn't about technology any more than fast food (and the drive-through window) is about cars. Technology, most especially the Internet, has enabled the New Marketing, but you don't have to understand it to use it."
A more holistic view is taken by business guru Peter Drucker. His way of suggesting that we spend more time on what technoogy can do rather than the technology itself comes in this quote from the end of the 20th Century:
  "We have spent the last fifty years focusing on the 'T' in IT ... we should spend the next fifty focusing on the 'I'.".

I have added this article - Break free of this world wide delusion - in this first section because its content is thought provoking and controversial, something that is reflected in the comments from readers. One thing I do agree with is the quote from David Edgerton that the Internet is 'just a means of communication'. I agree totally - indeed, my e-marketing module [and many seminars, talks etc] starts with a slide that says: the Internet is a medium of communication. Full stop. It is not a panacea for all business problems or worldly ills. Take the time to read it - what do you think?

1.2     A BACKGROUND TO THE INTERNET

Visualising the internet is a good series of graphics which show the basics of how the web works.

*pg 5* Internet history Hobbes' Internet Timeline, BannerReport.com

Another concern in the 'Internet overload' agenda is that of the shortage of Internet Protocol (IP) numbers,see Waiting for the internet meltdown

Broadband Holdouts Hunker Down - this article includes stats on broadband and dial-up access in the USA - and also the reasons non-Internet users give for not going online. Obviously it is accurate for North America only, but I suspect that the figures are not that far out for other parts of the world, particularly Northern Europe.

At the end of this section I mention that there are fears that the Internet might become over-loaded, this article - As traffic demands grow, PCs and laptops may start operating at much slower speeds - suggests the subject is still an issue.

Read what the web's creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee had to say in July 2009 at an event to mark its 20th anniversary.

1.3     THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON SOCIETY

*pg 6* Social networks and regime change How social networks contribute to regime change - this is an excellent article on the role the Internet played in the worldwide reporting of demonstrations against their government by Burmese monks in October 2007. In contrast, this article - Cyberspace the liberator is now a tyrant’s tool - suggests the opposite is true, and that the regimes use the Internet to stay in power.

*pg 125* It can be hard to keep secrets ...: the example in the books leads to a divorce - in this case the result is the opposite, with singer Katy Perry discovering on Google that her boyfriend Russell Brand was going to propose to her. See I Googled Myself & I Liked It.

This blog article - The Digital Future Through The Looking Glass - introduces some interesting stats, but note how some of the responses question its validity. Follow the link on the page to the actual research findings.

An interesting article that considers the way the Internet has changed the way we learn - Is the internet making us stupid?

These two articles are two sides of a coin. The first - Advertise to workers at work to influence purchase - is good advice to vendors. The second, however, raises the issue that the Internet can be a costly distraction to workers - Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast.

An assortment of research into how we use the web:

• Mass Communications Succumb to Communications by the Masses
• Survey Reveals Media Channel Lines Continue to Blur
• Women Uninfluenced by Brands on SocNets
• How Web-Savvy Are Online Seniors?
• Females, Teens Most Regretful SocNet Users
• Percent of Blogging Seniors Only 1/10 of a Point Behind Teens - Top 10 Online Activities of People 65+ [young students might be surprised at these]
• Reflecting the impact of 'social media': Facebook More Popular than Texting, Email and Global Time Spent Social Networking Rises 82%
• However, for advertising, online isn't getting it all its own way - Bargain-Hunting Consumers Choose Print Ads over Online
• UK Women Are Digital Communicators
• Social Networking Rises, Especially Among Younger Set

• The Digital Influence Index - understanding the role of the Internet in the lives of consumers. Note: this is a pdf file

That online participation seems to top-out at around 70% of the population is confirmed by this research - Two-thirds of Americans without broadband don't want it.

Some more Internet usage stats from the Pew Internet & American Life Project - Generations Online in 2009, this one from Nielsen has a European focus - French Online More than Other Europeans and The Gap Widens in Online Population focuses on the rise in usage in Asia.

Mini-stats - when users seek medical information, what are they looking for? See Medical Patients Consult the Internet.

The Internet users stats graphs and chart featured in the text are from this website - Internet World Stats. It is worth visiting on a regular basis as it is frequently updated.

From the BBC is this interactive map which tracks the rise of the Internet around the world.

Some more usage stats, this time from Europe - European Digital Stats: 56% of Population Uses Internet.

Google UK has come up with this excellent site of Internet stats - students beware, however, the references are not in full 'Harvard' fashion [though you could look up the original source online to get the full details].

*pg 11* Not only is Sunderland the UK's digital capital, but according to Aleks Krotoski on the excellent BBC series the Virtual Revolution my home city is also the Facebook capital of the UK [nothing to do with me, I rarely access my Facebook page].

In the text I mention the digital divide - referring to the gap between those with Internet access and those without. This article - The Other Digital Divide - suggests the divide might be between those who have fast broadband access and those who haven't.

This article - Global Digital Divide Unchanged Since 2002 - actually has much more information about Internet usage than the title suggests.

Read my comments on research into Americans' views of the first decade of the century, and the impact the Internet [might] have had on those opinions.

This section's 'you decide' raises the issue of governments being obliged to provide Internet access for all, this article - Web access is 'a basic human right' - widens the debate.

Here's a great quote to round off this section - it is worth giving it some thought. It comes from online marketing guru Gord Hotchkiss, who - on many and various occasions - has said that 'technology doesn't cause our behaviors to change, it enables our behaviors to change'.

1.4     THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON BUSINESS

I start this section by making the point that 'online' is not for every business. This article - Seven Questions Local Businesses Should Answer Before Investing in SEO - is, on the face of it, about whether a small business should optimize its site for the search engines ... but I think you can ask the same questions to decide if you should even have a website in the first place. However, I do add the caveat [#2] that we may get to the stage where [potential] customers use the web as their primary source of information about products or services they want to buy locally then perhaps businesses should consider getting a basic web presence. Perhaps research like this - ‘Great Divide’ Separates Small Biz, Online Consumers - suggests that time might be getting close. A couple of stats that draw the eye in this article are that 'only 44% of small businesses have a website' and that '39% [of customers] report frequently not being able to locate a particular known business'. Perhaps the answer lies not in having a website, but online profiles as described in this article - Get Started in Local Search Without a Web Site .

*pg 15* The Hitwise UK Online Performance Awards. I don't know why, but this is the last such list that Hitwise produced - so it is a little dated now. However, this interactive graphic shows which are the biggest sites on the internet.

In the text I state that marketing has moved from 'helping the seller to sell' to 'helping the buyer to buy' - and I am not the only one who supports this notion. Web content development expert Gerry McGovern says 'old-school marketing is about getting customers to do things. Web marketing is about helping customers do things'. [source: Manage your customers' time]. Different words - same ethos?

An example of the power of the Internet comes in this story. On Monday September 8, a story about a UAL bankruptcy began circulating on the web (UAL is the parent company of United Airlines). Within hours of the story being released, UAL's shares dropped by 76%. The thing is that the story was 6 years old! For some reason, the story had been added to the 'Most Viewed' link section on the home page of a Florida newspaper. From there, Google News picked it up, and the rest - as they say - is hysteria. For more on the story see what the BBC had to say - United Airlines dives on old news.

*pg 17* e-What? To read my musings on the subject, take a look at e-commerce, e-business, e-marketing, Internet marketing - what are they?

I started working in Higher Education at the same time as the Internet started to gain popularity [remember, academia embraced the web long before business] so it is impossible for me to compare being a lecturer with the Internet with doing the job without it - though the advantages of email for communication and the web for research make the Internet indispensable now. The same goes for other jobs, it seems, if this research from America is anything to go by.

1.5     THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

*pg 18* Not for the people ... Government website survey: from organization-centric to citizen-centric

The title of this article - Online Auctions Raise Big Bucks for Charity - tells you what it is about.

Here are a couple of papers that look at how governments use the web. The first is from the UK - House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts. Government on the Internet and the second from the USA - Government Data and the Invisible Hand.

1.6     ONLINE BUYER BEHAVIOUR

Note: many of the links I have added to 1.3 [above] could just as easily have been in this section - there is a close relationship between society and its buying behaviour.

Other research into the ways in which 'moms' use the Internet demonstrates that online marketers must be wary - as they are offline - of being too broad in any online segmentation. Research conducted by NewMediaMetrics and published in Parenting Magazine (July/August 2008) found that not all 'moms' visit the web for different reasons. Generation Y moms are much more interested in connecting with other moms (eg online communities and blogs), while generation X moms are more likely to use the web for task-oriented activities like shopping. Online advertisers take note. Source: Parenting Magazine (2008) Mom Matters. July/August 2008 Issue #31.

Some folk are often confused by the results of research such as that from ChannelAdvisor* which found that 'best price and free shipping are the most influencial factors in consumer purchasing decisions.' Note that I have no problem at all with ChannelAdvisor's findings - there is some good stuff in the whitepaper concerned. However [and I haven't seen their methodology] their research seems to study the online buyer behaviour of shoppers after they have decided to buy something online ie convenience is still the over-riding factor for making the purchase from a website - with price/shipping being the differentiator for which site they buy from. And just to show that you can come up with statistics to prove anything - this research - says that it is reputation that counts for more than price with online shoppers.
*ChannelAdvisor (2009) Savvy Consumers Using a Wider Set of Online Destinations to Find the Best Deals ChannelAdvisor.co.uk.

Maybe most men would assume women go online to shop, and - apparently - they would be right, see What Are UK Women Doing Online?, whilst this article - Online Seniors Rival Younger Generations in Web Use - goes against popular opinion about the web being for young folk.

Mini-stats - Why do buyers go online for information? See online research.

Don't forget there are also buyer behaviour sections on my own website in tips, hints and advice and interesting articles.

Apparently consumers are becoming more trustful of online retailers - see this research from ChannelAdvisor - perhaps suggesting society's increasing acceptance of the Internet.

1.7     ONLINE MARKETING OBJECTIVES

This article - Online Marketing Effectiveness - could go in nearly any chapter, but I put it here because it suggests which aspect of Internet marketing is best to meet the objectives of lead generation and branding.