How Does the History of the Internet Affect Your Internet Marketing?

The history of the internet and how it affects your marketing

Remember back to when you first logged onto the internet and the first types of things that you used to do. Compare that to the things you do with the internet these days. Now think about the internet as an object and think about the feelings that come about it? When you start something you have initial experiences and these experiences tend to guide your feelings about it. Notice how you still have some latent feelings about the internet and how to use it. I can assure you now that many users are the same. What I have discovered is that these feelings also tend to guide the way in which you use the internet and therefore dramatically effects what marketing you are exposed to.

Here are my first impressions of the internet:

1. Slow to download things
2. Sent emails and wanted someone to send me one.
3. SPAM was always in my inbox.
4. I would search the search engines for basic terms trying to find information or things of interest.
5. Normally I would be given a homepage and the extent of my browsing started and finished with that website I began on.
6. Banner ads opened my eyes to different things that were available on the internet.
7. I looked at pictures and quickly scanned for links.
8. I was always in search of something that was out of this world that would interest me. It was like there was a treasure hunt on for things which were undiscovered on the internet.
9. When Google became available the results were much cleaner and so I decided to set it as my homepage. Cleaner in that less spammers came up in my results.

What were your first impressions of the internet? I met a girl yesterday who said she bought 20 minutes of the internet and just sat in front of her computer and waited for something to happen!

Mobile marketing insights for your internet marketing

I spoke at Cebit last week and met a mobile marketer there and I learnt something that will help you clarify this idea of the internet. He was telling me about the early people who are using mobile as a content source and what types of things they do. He said most of them are just starting from the website they are provided with and clicking on links. The reason I would infer from this is that most people who use a new medium are not quite sure how to use it and what is possible. They are more just thrown into the deep end and just asked to have a crack. People don’t know what is possible and how to locate places that are of interest to them. Super early users are less likely to search for things and find them, although with the internet as they have become a little more experienced and seen how some other people use the internet they will learn to search. This brings into play search engines and I can imagine the first search engine to crack the mobile market perhaps only spidering .mobi domains will be a real winner. The key here will be having a very light page weight and being exceptionally fast as these users will be on the run.

3 insights to consider for your online marketing

1. Target your marketing to where the fish are already swimming - Are your users basic or advanced? Do they search.. If not cover those early portals and websites that users are provided when they join an ISP or first get a computer. Usually in Australia that will be Ninemsn or Any of the ISP websites.
2. How can you take advantage of the mobile revolution on our doorstep? Is there are part of your business that will adapt well to people on the go. Is there a little niche that your business can own? Just like with the internet the first movers have done the best. Google may not be a better search engine that Yahoo although now it has the brand and people use it because they THINK it’s the best. Remember that a mobile website is just like an internet website only its smaller, the same principles will apply to getting traffic and getting repeat visitors.
3. What is the history of your market that everyone remembers and still perceives your market to be like? In the website development game our first clients used to come to us not knowing why they needed a website or what they were going to do with it but they knew they just needed one. A lot of businesses are still at that point and haven’t learnt much more and that is why we give seminars to teach marketers how to use the internet as a tool for their business. When I first got a mobile phone I thought text messages were impersonal until I realised they were a quick way to tell someone what is going on without disturbing them now as they might be in a meeting.

What other insights have you gained from this idea?

* Picture from The History and Future of the Internet