MYTH NO. 7: It means the end of mass marketing. (Myths And Realities of Web commerce Part seven)

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Once again, the theory is simple enough: The Web is the first communications channel that enables cost-effective one-to-one marketing on a huge scale. Marketing to a "segment of one" has long been the goal of database marketing, data mining, and telemarketing, but Web technology enables marketing of unprecedented exactitude and low cost.

But how do companies get people to come to their Web sites in the first place? Customization and personalization are fine for customer retention but not so good for customer acquisition. "In the global world of the Internet, what counts is brand," says Compaq's Meyer. That's why Yahoo posted billboards at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium during the World Series, and why Web shopping site Buy.com kicked off a $25 million mass marketing campaign with ads on Monday Night Football last month.

Can consumers click on a stadium billboard or TV ad to purchase something, which is what the "mass marketing is dead" pundits claim all ads should let buyers do? Of course not. Buy.com founder and CEO Scott Blum knows that it will take conventional marketing channels such as Monday Night Football, as well as low-priced merchandise online, to achieve his company's goal to leapfrog Amazon.com. "We want to be a household name," says Blum, and that won't happen with only targeted Web banner ads. Witness the proliferation of mass-media ads for Web sites during the current holiday shopping season.
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Mass marketing is also a necessity for the captains of online industry. Dell isn't the largest online PC seller only because of execution; it also heavily markets its direct-selling approach--on prime-time TV and elsewhere. "In theory, an Internet-only computer company should have surpassed Dell by now," says US Web's Laube. "But there is no 'PCs.com,' at least not one that's been very successful. In E-commerce, branding and mass marketing are more important than ever."

Ultimately, that's just common sense--at least for those who understand there's more to E-commerce than click-throughs. "You can't just build it, because they will not come," says Cliff Conneighton, CEO of Icoms Inc., which has developed commerce sites for Houghton-Mifflin, Hasbro, Fujitsu, and other companies. "Tiger Electronics doesn't expect people to find Furby.com, so they run TV ads. The Net is like TV with 10 million channels. You can't just hope that someone surfs by."