A.     Classified Sites

Classified ad sites could be surprisingly effective. The keyword here is targeting. One must target your ad to the target audience, therefore ads in other Swatch sites and watch sites in general would be the most effective. Advertisement in other sites such as web site design would be far less effective. It is essential to write eye-catching ads that stand out. It may be a good idea to couple the ad with a discount coupon. One added bonus of this approach is that the effectiveness of various campaigns can be monitored.

B.     Unsolicited e-mail

This will definitely not be part of the promotion strategy of ZiWatches. A lot of companies seem to think that this approach is effective and spends a lot of time and money. In our experience the response rate is very poor (around one in a million) and none of our customers have returned for further purchases. Furthermore, our web site had been shut down before and our ISP threatened to withdraw its services. There is also a lot of potential damage done to the image of your company.

C.     Opt-in mailing lists

This could be a very effective means of promotion if you have your own opt-in mailing list from your site. However, this list will take some time to build. The key would be to give news on new editions and discounts from time to time. Response rates of as much as 15% had been reported. Another approach could be to pay an advertising agency to send e-mails to third party opt-in lists. However this is very expensive in comparison to other methods of advertising.

D.    Banners

Banners are the most widely used form of advertising but is also the poorest. The clickthrough rate is very poor and the industrial average is around 0.4%. Even after a clickthrough, their response rate is reported to be poor relative to other forms of promotion. Despite their poor response rates, banners remain the most popular of advertising because there is no form of advertising that can generate such a massive exposure. There are only a finite number of searches performed on a search engine on a given day but there are thousands of high traffic sites that can take banners. ZiWatches will use banner advertising sparingly in the beginning until we are satisfied that the response rate justifies the cost of the campaigns.

E.      Pop-ups

Pop-ups generate a higher response rate but are generally annoying to web surfers and may damage the reputation of the company. Again ZiWatches will only use pop-ups sparingly in the beginning until we are satisfied with the response rate. Despite the well-known poor response rate of Banners and Pop-ups, ZiWatches will still have to use Banners and Pop-ups because this is the only way of generating huge exposure on the Internet. However, this would have to be conducted extremely carefully.

F.      Shopping and Auction Sites

Shopping such as Yahoo shopping and Amazon provide a highly effective means for third party online retailers to sell their products. However, these sites are not open to retailers based in Hong Kong. Auction sites such as eBay provide a useful means to sell products. However, prices realized on auction sites are generally very low and therefore auctions will normally be reserved for unsold stock