Charles Lau dot Com

I was hearing from the marketing companies (especially in Singapore) that internet marketing is not as effective as the usual TV advertising or even Radio advertising. They talk about eyeballs (in internet terms, it is known as “Impressions”). They talk about being measurable in terms of frequency and reach, which I personally feel it is such a waste of money. Well, it has become a common debate between me and a physical marketing expert who don’t understand about Internet.

She has been telling me great stuff about putting up an advertisement.  It is in the world she has been exposed to, which are spending millions of dollars over there.  Putting up a very big banner in the train station can cost a lot of money on a monthly basis.  Sometimes, when there is nobody advertising, they will usually allow the last advertiser to continue putting up the ad there so that it doesn’t look empty.  In other words, it become a free advertisement.  And by the way, this kind of ad is very expensive and they have to put it on a consistent basis or else it wouldn’t work.

When I talk to her about Internet marketing, she is very skeptical about it.  She is wondering what is so good about it.  I am not surprised after all.  Though I don’t have the energy to explain to her what it is, I just hope she will start to understand over the period of working with me on the online marketing campaigns and a series of websites.  She has been telling me things like “There are now so many websites out there, how do you stand out from the rest?”  If she is looking from this angle, she is absolutely right!  In the offline industry, there are already so many advertisements out there… So how do you stand out too?

It is until she can understand the difference between permission marketing and interruption marketing which she is still trying to understand the difference.  It is not easy for sure… It is like convincing me that TV advertisement works better than Internet advertising… And I am actually very skeptical about TV advertising myself…

Actually… It is very simple to understand.

$250,000 value of TV Advertisement => 1,000,000 Impressions => 100,000 find out more => 10,000 bought

$10,000 Internet Advertisement => 500,000 Impressions => 5000 clicks => 500 bought

Look at it very carefully…

10,000 TV customers = $250,000
1 TV customer = $25

500 Internet customers = $10,000
1 Internet customer = $20

And what’s not covered yet?
We have not included the cost of working out the TV advertisement… With that included, it will cost a value like $35 per TV customer… Seriously speaking, $250,000 is considered very cheap already…

And then?
Internet is not just about advertisement if you would want to look at it that way… It can be converted into permission marketing where you can get back to the same customer again and again without intruding into his privacy.  This is where we come in with email marketing.