Yahoo!: Do you Yahoo? For How Long?
When Yahoo! first began advertising, “there were about 75 to 1000 different start-up internet
companies at the time, so yahoo had to say something big, relevant and something that
mattered to consumers. So they came up with Humorous ads that showed consumers finding
everything from big hair to fish bait with the tagline “Uh, do you Yahoo?”.
The message obviously worked because today Yahoo! is one of the two or three internet
portals expected to survive the coming portal war along with mighty AOL. Started for “fun”
by two Stanford University PhD. students who published a directory of their favorite Web
sites, Yahoo! has leaped into the number two spot by capturing 50.8% in1999. And Yahoo! has
repaid its investors by becoming the first internet portal to become profitable.
Survival in the portal war, however, requires “stickiness” which means keeping users at
a portal longer. The more they use the site, they more stuck on it they are. Building stickiness
is not that easy. This is where Yahoo scores!. Its offline advertising successfully communicated
Yahoo! as the find anything, go anywhere search engine for the net. Unlike techy-sounding
names, Yahoo! sounds like fun, is less intimidating and lives up to its name. It works.
The main ways of building a set of satisfied users is through My Yahoo!. Through My Yahoo!,
the user can receive email and tailored information on a variety of subjects—price quotes on
stocks he/she is interested in, weather in the cities they want to travel to, news that pertains
to their interests, items they might want to bid on at Yahoo! auctions and more. Yahoo!’s
early TV and Radio advertising campaigns and off-beat promotions spread the word about the
firm.
To generate repeat usage yahoo provided ways to customers to interact with yahoo. In 1998,
Yahoo! became the first portal to launch virtual “clubs”. This is a kind of mega-chat room
where people of like interests can schedule chats and conversations, share content and post
links to other sites
Target- Kids: It offers a safe service especially designed for children, Yahooligans! where kids
can find information, work on school assignments and talk to each other without parents
fretting about their viewing inappropriate material.
Customization: Yahoo! is international—it’s available in fourteen languages and offers the
same services adapted for the individual’s home country. in Spain, Yahoo! is in Spanish and in
Japan, it’s in Japanese, but the same personalized services such as e-mail, pagers, weather
information, travel services, news, etc. are available to users.
Deals:- (1) Petstore.com in which Petstore banners will appear on Yahoo! and be featured in
Yahoo! email messages to users.
(2) Signed a cross-promotional deal with News Corp. Through this arrangement, Yahoo!
gets exposure on all Fox media outlets.
Direct marketing: So, Yahoo! is very careful to send messages only to those users who have
indicated an interest in hearing about new services rather than spam all of its registered users
at once.
To expand its user base and higher margins
Yahoo! purchased GeoCities, one of the most popular personal publishers on the
internet.
To transform itself into a major media powerhouse, Yahoo! acquired Dallas-based
Broadcast.com Inc. in a stock swap and in May 1999 launched a music service that
contains 10 channels. Demonstrating use of a corporate brand plus product name,
the channels are named Alternative Rock, the ‘80s, Y! R&B Jamz, Electronica, Classic
Rock, Y!Oldies, Y! Classical, Y! Jazz, Y! Country and Celtic. The deal with
Broadcast.com moves Yahoo! well along the road to being an internet audio and
video giant.
Acquired Yoyodyne, Eddie Bauer, Inc., travel site Lowestfare.com, and Bluefly (Web
clothing retailer)
If you want people to be stuck on your site, entertainment ought to be a powerful magnet.
Examples are: Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Health.
It offers a wide range of other services, from database management, website hosting, help
with direct marketing and even financial services to the companies that sell through its
site.
