- It's No Longer a Site-Centric, PC-Dominant, English-Speaking Marketplace
- Clicks and Bricks
- Wedding Traditional Media with Interactive Services
- M-Commerce: Wireless Commerce Is Coming
Like this article? We recommend
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Wedding Traditional Media with Interactive Services
Closing fast behind click-and-mortar is click-and-flip—companies that market over the Internet and through printed catalogs. Cataloguers were quick to build online stores in response to their dot-com challengers. And in turn, the pure-play dot-coms have turned to printing and sending catalogs to customers and prospects to increase their reach and build their brand.
Familiarity with a brand such as catalog merchants L.L.Bean and Sharper Image make consumers more comfortable with their online purchases. On the flip side, online merchants can extend their brand awareness and reach into new consumer segments by publishing a printed catalog. Greatfood.com was one of the first pure-play dot-coms to launch a "Netalog." Their printed Netalog was used to drive new traffic to their Web site.
Pure-play dot-coms using print to sell merchandise is not the only example of wedding traditional media with interactive services. Content can be sold as well. Take Yahoo!, for example. They market a very successful magazine called Yahoo Internet Life. Not only is it a magazine in its own right, but it acts as a branding and traffic-generating vehicle for their Web site. How successful? It has a paid circulation (that's right, paid) of over 750,000—higher than some decades-old popular magazines such as Esquire.
By studying companies like those mentioned here, your e-business may be able to apply their marketing techniques to help your company sell wherever your customer may be. Someday soon, selling entirely through a pure-play dot-com will seem as ludicrous as having a catalog company without a toll-free number.