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Long gone are the days when salesmen travelled from town to town with little more than a suitcase of their wares, a collapsible table, and a slew of empty promises to cure rheumatism, toothaches, and back pain with a single swig from their bottle of magic elixir — a concoction advertised as a paint remover at another town.

Back then, perhaps because of the combined gullibility of uninformed consumers and the quick tongue of slick salesmen, you could sell just about anything to anyone. But nowadays discriminating consumers, a multitude of choices brought on by competitive markets, and more readily available product information and reviews are the rule rather than the exception.

People expect to get what's advertised, and the consequences of not delivering what's been promised will have disastrous long-term effects on their perception of your ability to deliver an end product. And these consequences are even greater in a company that makes claims to increased productivity through the implementation of a much heralded corporate-wide system to be introduced by IT. If you make these promises too often, without the results to back it up, employees will begin treating these claims as background noise, with as much weight as their daily dose of spam.

Differences Between Internet and Intranet Marketing

Internet and intranet Web sites, though based on the same technology and they may appear outwardly similar, serve two very different purposes. A publically accessible Internet site is a tool used to advertise a company's products or services, whereas an intranet is the product.

And because of this, you need to use different approaches to promote each site. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that there are certain cases where it's not necessary to actively promote an Internet site beyond including its URL with the rest of your corporate advertising — brochures, press kits, television and radio commercials, newspaper ads.

You don't need to promote an Internet site because it's only a marketing vehicle for your products or services; that's what you're trying to sell, not the site. People will most likely seek out a company's Internet site on their own while trying to find product or service details. In this respect, actively advertising an Internet site is akin to advertising a telephone number.

However, an intranet is a completely different matter. An intranet is not a marketing vehicle for a product; it is the product. Without proper system promotion, users won't know about the existence of an intranet or the true value of the content contained within it. And the time, money, and effort expended to build an intranet is far too great to hope users will simply happen upon it by chance.

Intranet Rollout: Loud Versus Quiet

Most company's are familiar with the traditional method of system launch: creating a buildup of expectation, lead by a high-profile marketing campaign, prior to the system's official launch date. But a trend that's been gaining momentum is the idea of the non-launch, or a “quiet” launch. Unlike the fanfare often associated with traditional, “loud” launches, quiet launches rely mostly on word-of-mouth and low-key promotion.

The idea of using quiet rollouts as opposed to grand system launches came about as a result of user communities that have grown wary, even cynical, of past IT system rollout failures — late launch dates, missing features, marketing that exaggerated true system value, or the system not living up to the hype. Creating a lot of buzz surrounding an intranet launch in this type of cynical environment will cause users to think, "Oh great, here we go again. What is it this time?"

Here's a breakdown of launch characteristics:

Loud Launches

Quiet Launches

Uses high-profile marketing campaign to create public awareness of the coming system prior to launch. Maximum exposure is created to build up the user community's expectations, treating the official launch date as a special event in the corporate calendar. Best used when the system is 100 percent complete, able to deliver on everything that's been promised, and the user community hasn't been marred by past failed systems.

Little-to-no pre-release marketing campaign or even a formal release date Relies mostly on word-of-mouth and other low-key promotional methods to gain exposure and public awareness of the system. Best used for companies whose user community has grown wary of past IT system rollout failures.

Ten Ways to Increasing Intranet Exposure

Regardless of whether you decide to implement a high-profile or low-key system launch, there are numerous ways to increase intranet exposure from within your company. Many of the methods mentioned below can be used concurrently and will be most effective when you understand your user community.

1. Intranet Presentations
It's not always feasible to provide presentations to the entire company — especially for larger corporations with thousands of employees, or employees working from remote, satellite offices where time zone differences with corporate headquarters may make it difficult.

But presentations can be given to smaller groups — department heads, group and project leaders — highlighting key intranet features and the types of content that can be found in the system. Then they, in turn, can introduce the system to their own staff.

The added benefit of this top-down approach will allow intranet marketers to adapt their presentation to focus on each department's key needs (targeted marketing is discussed below). And, since you're presenting to much smaller groups of key individuals, satellite offices can be introduced to the intranet with the use of a real-time Web conferencing software such as WebEx — a tool that I've had success with in the past.