Monday, October 2, 2006

Online marketing effectiveness

A recent study from the CEFRIO sheds some light on our behaviour toward different types of online marketing activities. Some revealing points of this study are:
  • 93% of internet users ignore online banners and publicity in general;
  • 80% find it invasive, especially when used in a popup or overlay;
  • In terms of message type, 25% tolerates publicity in search engines, 21% find text links ok, 18% find banners to be fine, while only about 6% likes overlays.
  • However, traditional marketing can drive online trafic: 60% of respondants will sometime refer to links presented in magazines and 50% will sometime look at links presented on TV.
The study also reveals its own top 10 golden rules of online marketing:
  1. Do not take the user ostage - always offer a way to close or bypass it;
  2. Do not interfere - overlays or animations are to be used cautiously;
  3. Be respectfull - leave the choice up to the user;
  4. Be contextual - place your publicity on a site that have some contextual meaning to your offer;
  5. Be unintrusive - place publicity at the top or on the side;
  6. Publicity should be displayed transparently within the page flow;
  7. Use the medium - be different from other media channels;
  8. Be informative and subtle - never be coarse;
  9. Be funny or amusing - a pub that makes you smile can never be negative;
  10. Consent - for email marketing.