Answer the two questions

Social presence theory shows how effective marketing depends directly on effective communication. The more channels of information and the more immediate the message, the more likely consumers are to relate to the product and its purveyor. For example, a consumer browsing in a brick-and-mortar retail outlet might encounter a smiling sales representative. Complementing the customer's clothing, appearance, or intelligence, the sales representative creates rich social presence through not only direct communication of the marketing message but also through standard forms of verbal and nonverbal communication. The consumer receives multiple modes of communication: including visual and auditory cues.

Marketing that cannot rely on the rich social presence of in-person marketing techniques must create new ways of enriching communications. If using the telephone, sales representatives need to use informal and personal language, speaking to the consumer as one would speak to a friend. In the absence of visual cues, the telemarketer relies solely on vocal cues. Pauses as well as diction must be chosen carefully in order to create social presence.

Online marketing similarly requires creative techniques to make up for the lack of physical social presence. Creating social presence online requires the use of as many visual and auditory cues as possible. The cues must conform to social presence theory through a sense of immediacy. For example, using personal pronouns such as "you" and "we" helps create social presence. The use of photographs of real people in online advertisements can also help create social presence. If relying on e-mail for marketing, similar techniques can be used to convey social presence.

2. The Web permits a wealth of promotional techniques including viral marketing and direct marketing including e-mail spamming, voluntary e-mail advertisements, and pop-up advertisements. E-mail spam is a scourge of the Internet for many consumers and one of the most distinct disadvantages of using e-mail as a form of direct marketing is that many consumers will send the message into the trash before reading it. Thus, many firms rely not on spam but on opt-in e-mail promotions. One of the primary ways of having customers volunteer their e-mail addresses is through mandatory registration on a Web site. Firms that rely on registrations can cull their customers' e-mail address and send direct promotional materials to them. Targeted to the customer's interests, the e-mail flyers and brochures have the potential to bring in consumer traffic to Web sites or in some cases to brick-and-mortar stores. The disadvantage with using e-mail as a means of direct promotion is that many consumers do not provide a valid e-mail address or reserve a spare, hardly used e-mail address specifically for Web site registrations.