Online Marketing Strategies
Two powerful business forces drive the product development process in the e-business domain. The first one is propagating selling channels to a much wider area and the second one is the growth in the demand by customers for personalization of the products and services. As a whole Online Marketing Strategies revolve around these and a few more that you will explore further. The skills like packaging products and presenting offers that can lure the potential customers, along with the online channels are the sole criterion for determining the winners and losers in this ever growing economy.
A popular term that continuously pops up in this respect is "Product channel readiness" that is the readiness or suitability of a product to get supplied to the market for sale. It is quite an important source of revenue generation. Product development will become less about building a better mousetrap and more about building one that is easy to buy.
All those products that are simple and easily configurable find a good presence and demand in the World Wide Web. According to a 1999 eMarketer survey, the top three revenue generators were travel, computers and books respectively. The B2B sector is also on the verge of new boom where a wide variety of products (e.g., electronic components, petrochemicals, aerospace equipment) find there place in e-business.
Contribution towards making this successful rests on the hands of the new trading communities and also to the increased sophistication of the B2B purchasing communities.
Still, most marketing managers are failing to rethink their product strategies to reflect the impact of e-business. According to the 1999-eMarketer data, nearly half (47%) of retailers not currently engaged in e-business still feel this way.
Most of the leaders in the e-business ventures mention the following:
- Developing custom designed products that are optimized for specific sales and distribution channels that also includes the e-channel;
- Developing custom designed products and services that can cater to the needs of specific customer groups and community.
Marketing executives need to:
1. Researches for some external data on how products can be sold distributed and bought in the market should be performed. One should keep track of the customer behavior, channels and their competitors.
2. Your business services should help to optimize the products around new design and development criteria available for simplification and mass customization with proper support in using the products and services. For example, software developer Microsoft has provided self-help knowledge bases and customer-friendly online customer support.
3. Invest in a range of enabling technologies: Invest in wide range of advance technologies to develop cutting edge products that can provide amazing customer satisfaction and success in business that wins you all sorts of competitions.
Follow the principle of centering your product development and product channel readiness, e-business winners will figure out ways to sell the market simple, complex and engineered products using the online and offline channels effectively. On the other hand the less innovative companies may find themselves trapped in their outdated technology and products.