Smit Shah's Blog

Smit N Shah

Article # 1
Microsoft Video Advertisement on various websites.


With the technology available today, consumers prefer to do their homework before going out into the market to buy a product. They check customer reviews and feedback on various websites prior to investing in a product. CircuitCity.com has a great user review section for all of their products which makes it easy compare products side by side. CNet.com has their own company reviews and also customer feedback on their articles. They cover almost all technological products from laptops to MP3 players. They have recently also added motor vehicle reviews to their portfolio. Microsoft has started marketing its products online on a such websites. They play a video commerical prior to playing the actual review on CNet.com. In other words if I as a future customer, go to CNet.com to survey a product, they play a fifteen to thirty second video commercial prior to the actual review. This forces me to watch or atleast hear the commercial before I get to see what I actually want.

Advantages of Internet marketing is the broad reach it has to consumers. The Web is not just nationwide - it's worldwide. This means that your product or service can be viewed by people just about anywhere in the world. Compared to other forms of advertising, Internet marketing can reach a far larger number of people. Another advantage is that when you put your money into it, you won't have to put too much. Not only is online marketing fast and easy, it's relatively inexpensive. Compared to other forms of promotions, it is far more affordable and cost effective. Among the other advantages, it can also help you reach your target audience of consumers. These features of online marketing make it a great promotional strategy. Moreover the users viewing this commerical are already using a computer hence provides a perfect target market. Through email marketing, you can reach thousands of people at once. This provides an awesome platform for promoting their products directly to customers instead of intermediate vendors.

Marketing a software product to a user on the internet makes the most sense. The reason being, only someone using the existing technology can value the features and functionality of a newer technology. Moreover, a person visiting a website for user reviews would be a technologically savvy. Hence this would be a perfect target audience for the advertisement. Also, the user wont mind watching it for a short time as long as they get what the came for (the review).

// posted by WizKid @ 12:22 PM