IMKTG REPORT December 17 2001

OPPORTUNITIES, MONDAY, DECEMBER 17TH, 2001

Good Morning Execs,

Internet World was this week. although
there were lots of snazzy booths (AOL,
MSN, C&W, Akamai), it was a must-
be-at event for too many different types
of businesses. network providers, ad
folks, media folks, hosting companies,
ISPs, it was too much and no focus.
why is this bad? there were many small
businesses with great business opportu-
nities that got drowned b/c they weren't
prepared for the big budget companies
drawing their audiences. if you ever
participate in a trade show, make sure
you have a goal, are aware of the other
exhibitors and audience, b/c you don't
want to waste your money.

as 2001 winds down, this will be our
last newsletter until january 7th, 2002.
it's been a great year for us at al berrios
iMarketing and guess what? we are
celebrating one full year in business with
22 consecutive weekly editions of
OPPORTUNITIES, 12 clients, 12
partners, and 10 iMarketers making
sure I deliver on my promises to you all!
we'd like to thank everyone who has
stuck by us and wish you all safe &
happy holidays. be blessed. stay
successful.

CONTENTS
1. SEM: set goals, expectations
2. BRANDING: free vs fee, bluemountain analyzed
3. TEENMARKETING: goosehead vs bolt.com
4. NETRADIO: still trying to figure it out online
5. TRENDS: new segment, voluntary simplifyers
6. EMAIL: Miss Cleo marketing machine
7. TRAVEL: why discounts and ad blitz failed
8. RESEARCH: quality vs quantity online
9. ROUNDTABLE: targeting african americans
10: THEWEEK: remember what happened last week?

::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios sem ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

SEM: if you've been keeping up, you know
search engines aren't messing around and
want money for your listing. the most popular
approach is bidding for keywords, allowing
you to control the value of your search engine
listing. but what's your ROI? better yet, what
the heck are you paying for? what's your
goal? traffic or sales? and do you under-
stand that just b/c you're paying for your
traffic doesn't mean it'll translate into sales?

BOTTOM LINE: i've been asked to do
search engine marketing on a website on a
cost per acquisition basis without a budget
and no control over what the site will look
like with results due in about a month. not
impossible, but not worth the time and effort.
this person clearly didn't fully understand
his/her goals, his/her customers, or his/her
brand to have made a request like that. i
think you get the point.

READ MORE:
Stern, Gary M., "Pay-For-Placement Replacing Banners", Investors Business Daily, Internet & Technology section, Monday, December 3rd, 2001, p A8

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios branding ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

BRANDING: does suddenly charging for
something you used to offer for free damage
your brand? let's review bluemountain.com.
in college i used to get like 3 of these ecards
per week. it was this sort of usage that made
Hallmark cringe and Excite buy them at the
peak of their popularity. now, i get none.
could be my lack of friends, or could be
people just don't want to pay $11.95/yr
to send ecards. Excite sold Bluemountain
to American Greetings, who also bought
eGreetings, making them the only source
of ecards now, and yup, they're all charging.
yeah, you could always use one of the smaller
services like e-cards.com or yahoo's own
ecard service, but it's all about brand aware-
ness, and right now, American Greetings has
it all online.

BOTTOM LINE: i'm constantly preaching
to diversify your revenue, charge for content
and services, and keep your users happy.
clearly, paying for something that was once
free will turn away some consumers, but in
the case of Bluemountain.com, consumers
really don't have much of a choice if they
want to access their rich library of ecards,
making American Greetings change in e-biz
strategy a smart one. and with close to 10
million monthly users, if they even have a
5% conversion, that's $6 M. not bad.

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios teenmarketing ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

TEENMARKETING: goosehead.com vs
bolt.com. gh, clean look, relevant topics,
such as teen health info, games, & sex,
quick upload. bolt, cluttered look, conser-
vative topics and wording, dangerously long
upload time. gh, advertising integrated eerily
into content, 17 yr old founder prominent
throughout, although chaotic, content quite
structured. bolt, makes every attempt to
build their community, more corporate feel,
easier to navigate left hand side menu. both
poll teens on homepage on various topics
and both have developed credibility online,
so who do you go for?

BOTTOM LINE: it's like going to an italian
restaurant run by non-italians. they know
what they're doing, but hey, italians are italians.
same argument here, a teen knows teens.
how more authentic can you get than this:
http://www.goosehead.com/started/index.html

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios netradio ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

NETRADIO: live365.com, publicinteractive.com,
listen.com, aol.com, yahoo's launch.com, netradio.com
clickradio.com, and why so many? what's the
advantage of audio online? what about mp3s?
what about the record labels?

BOTTOM LINE: whether listening while surfing,
or just for fun, listening to music is something that
consumers will always do. they enjoy choosing,
owning, and controlling the music they listen to.
mp3s have solved this problem for consumers.
record labels don't want to loose their control.
sounds normal, but what record labels seem to
have forgotten is that w/o consumers, they won't
make money. and that goes for your business,
too. forget wall street, b/c it's main street that's
going to keep you in business. adding an online
radio station to your site is not a bad idea tho,
as long as it's not your only ad offering & you
explore licensing original programming.

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios trends ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

TRENDS: University of Arkansas researchers
discover new consumer segment - "voluntary
simplifyers" - and highlight the need for marketers
to target. this new segment hasn't shown up
in the ten years that they claim they've been
around b/c it's a lifestyle chosen individually and
not based on any social changes and marketers
target by major lifestyle preferences that affect
groups of people.

BOTTOM LINE: voluntary simplifyers use
only what they need and can live without many
material possessions. this lifestyle preference
further dilutes audiences and can potentially
increase marketing expenditures for companies,
unless companies wisely employ 1to1 strategies,
similar to how Amazon.com keeps track of
every click you made in an effort to simplify
your shopping experience, then suggests other
stuff you may be interested in based on your
clicks.

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios email ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

EMAIL: persistent marketing, what is it?
you see her late night on infomercials, on
day parts during Maury and Jerry Springer,
phone calls harassing you for money,
newspaper & radio ads, and now, Miss
Cleo has entered the wonderful world of
spam emailing: "There is no need to go
through life alone. Our MASTER PSY-
CHICS are here to assist you and provide
you with answers and guidance. We are
the best in the world, and we believe in
you and your future! For your very own
LIVE PSYCHIC READING, simply call
Miss Cleo 1-800-788-3517." how do
you know when your marketing efforts
become overwhelming?

BOTTON LINE: if a 4-state lawsuit for
fraud hasn't stopped her, how can the
average mortal avoid her for very long?
does this barrage of ads strengthen or
weaken the Miss Cleo brand? i would
say strengthen. i would also say that if
this new email strategy is managed
successfully, Miss Cleo may be able to
employ CRM strategies & generate positive
buzz vs the negative publicity she blasts
in her TV commercials. Miss Cleo
clearly understands her target audience
and just like X-10 camera pop ups, she
uses her budget wisely to reach them.

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios travel ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

TRAVEL: with all the ads and discounts,
travelers just ain't travelin'. but what's
really going on? the value of traveling
has been devalued, that's what. just like
the devalueing of the dot com stocks,
travelers have realized that travel was
way overpriced and when they call to
get more info on how far that discount
goes, many don't purchase tickets when
they discover it doesn't cover very much.

BOTTOM LINE: what's going to happen
is travel vendors will begin to focus in on
costs, many will fail, and the market will
give way to companies like airline jetBlue,
that don't have union burdens, and better
financing deals. a wise travel exec once
told me that value is all about perception.
as business owners, you can't force what
you think your business' value is on your
customers. and before you offer incen-
tives or other "added value" items, you
have to make sure that you understand
what your customers want and consider
valuable from your brand. many companies
alienate customers and devalue their brands,
because they over discount or don't clearly
communicate their value. don't make this
mistake.

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios research ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

RESEARCH: seems like everyone's
doing it online. from AOL, to Yahoo!
to content pub B2Bonline and email
service Ureach.com, companies are
starting to realize that figuring out what
customers want is faster and more cost
effective online. but which is better,
quality or quantity?

BOTTOM LINE: quantity is sending
requests via email and redirecting your
customers to take static surveys. quality
is engaging your customers in real time
with questions that adjust to your cus-
tomer's moods, in their preferred
environment, that offers them a more
interesting experience. the first is achieved
with technology, the second, iMarketing.
we here at al berrios advocate both,
depending on your needs.

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios roundtable ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

ROUNDTABLE: why are whites and
blacks considered different segments
to target? if they both live in the same
country, eat the same foods, work at
the same companies, what makes them
so different that there needs to be spe-
cific messaging to reach them? is there
a difference in the way they are nurtured?
if so, does a white person brought up the
same way react to black-targeted ads?
american taliban john walker can prove
this true. and w/the prominence of hiphop
culture influencing both whites and blacks,
why are two different "languages" used
to speak to people that understand the
same language? let's stop kidding our-
selves. the fact that african americans
are targeted as though they just arrived
from another country is further evidence
of how old fashioned traditional concepts
of what effective marketing are, whether
offline or online. why aren't irish white
guys targeted differently than italian white
guys? they were both raised in different
cultures, and yet, marketing clumps them
up in one "white" category. it has been
recognized that there are vast differences
in reaching latinos from mexico, dominican
republic, and cuba, but no difference
when reaching white guys. based on my
comments here, i conclude that there needs
to be an overhaul of what "marketing" is and
how it is used to communicate with an
individual, not segments. what say you?

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios theweek ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

THEWEEK: Enron continues its massive
screwing of investors, employees, accounting
firms, energy companies, the SEC, & even
Congress, Monster may loose Hotjobs to
Yahoo! bid, which Carly Fiorina may wind
up using when HP fires her for failed
Compaq merger, interest rates cut down to
1.75%, go buy a house now, NBC first to
air liquor commercials in search of ad profits,
Winona Ryder arrested for shoplifting $5k
from Saks in Beverly Hills, Anna Nicole
Smith, former playboy bunny, sues 3rd time
for $400M estate from dead Texan billionaire
husband J. Howard Marshall, gold digger or
loving wife?

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::::: ::::: ::::: ::::: al berrios iMarketing ::::: ::::: ::::: :::::

Disclaimer: The recommendations, commentary and opinions published herein are based on public information sometimes referenced via hyperlinks. Any similarities or likeness to any ideas or commentary from any other sources not referenced is purely coincidental. al berrios & co. cannot control any results occurring from advice obtained from this publication nor any opinion(s) conveyed by any reader of this publication.

(c) 2001-2005. All Rights Reserved. al berrios & company, inc. Published by al berrios & co. This Report may not be reproduced or redistributed in any form without written permission from al berrios & co., subject to penalty.

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