Book Review: Streetwise Relationship Marketing on the Internet

You'll find lots of books on website technical design, but very few on building a website that accomplishes your company's marketing goals. Most websites fail for predictable reasons.

Parker caricatures three types of websites that fail: (1) inner-directed websites created from the company's point-of-view, not the visitor's; (2) information-oriented websites that operate like a brochure, but fail to engage the visitor in dialog, and (3) transaction-oriented sites that assume every visitor is ready to buy, and make no attempt to create long-term customer loyalty. Only relationship-oriented websites, he contends, attempt to forge long-term bonds with visitors and advance them along the customer development cycle. Of course, such a view is stereotyped and a bit doctrinaire. But the truth is that probably 90% of business websites give little thought to customer relationship development, and their resulting site design makes that pretty obvious.

The core of Parker's book is to show how each step of the Customer Development Cycle can be implemented on a website, harnessing each portion of the site to serve a deliberate business purpose, rather than thrown together to emulate another site. Here is where the book can help any website, planned or in place.

Step 1. Introduction. Introduce your business to the visitor and obtain an e-mail address.

Step 2. Comparison. Meaningful content and credibility enable visitors to compare your product or service with those of competitors, while you learn more about visitors' needs and qualify them by their degree and type of interest.

Step 3. Transaction. The transaction stage, where money changes hands, should be the seen as the beginning, not the end, of the relationship.

Step 4. Reinforcement. Now you add value to your customer's purchase by helping him maximize its value, and position yourself as the customer's trusted partner.

Step 5. Advocacy. When you provide your customers with the tools or feeling of community they need to become your promoters, they drive new visitors to the site.

Each of these steps is detailed in a separate chapter. The technological underpinning of a relationship marketing-oriented site includes a combination of open content, available to all, and premium content, accessible only to qualified -- and registered -- customers. Ideally, of course, the relationship is developed on the siteowner's end by the use of personalization software tied to customer databases that can track customers' individual preferences and make it easier for them to find what they are looking for.

While the earlier chapters provide the philosophical and strategic base for a relationship marketing website, the later chapters touch on tactics and techniques to accomplish your goals. The author discusses setting realistic expectations, determining your market's information needs, developing an e-mail strategy, promoting the site, optimizing site performance, and using good design practices. A final chapter demonstrates how to spread out over a year's time the tasks necessary to get a website working well.

The book's appendix includes case studies to demonstrate how a wide variety of small businesses can use a website to build customer relationships. Unlike many books on web marketing, most of the case study examples illustrate how essentially local businesses can take advantage of the Internet's power. These include: accountant, executive recruiter, financial planner, marketing consultant, oral surgeon, veterinarian, art gallery, auto dealer, gift shop, home theater installation specialist, clothing boutique, video rental store, wood stove dealer, bakery, gourmet restaurant, microbrewery, motel, whale watch, beauty shop, commercial building contractor, photographer, day care center, electronics distributor, graphic designer, health club, insurance agency, realtor, secretarial service, and travel agent.

Streetwise Relationship Marketing on the Internet is significant in that it defines and illustrates a clear marketing strategy for an online presence that informs site design. There's nothing like it on the shelves. I recommend it to both newbies and experienced web marketers in order to build more effective websites.

You may use one of these links to purchase the book at a discount:

US: http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580622550/wilsoninternetse
CA: http://chapters.ca/Affiliates/ItemPage.asp?producttype=1&affid=104410&ISBN=1580622550
UK: http://amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580622550/732
DE: http://amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580622550/wilsonweb