Marketing Essays - E-Business Marketing

E-Business Marketing

E-business marketing is the conduction of transaction (commercial) by using the telecommunication systems. The widespread use of the internet has increased the competency of the companies to conduct their business more accurately at a high speed and with huge coverage at a minimized cost. Apart from this, it has helped in providing customized services to the target market. As a result, innumerable companies have created web sites in order to provide information and promote their services and products. E-business plays an important role in building their sales by getting an access over the people across the world (Kotler, 2002).

E-marketing strategy

In order to formulate an effective E-marketing strategy, it should be aligned fully with the organization’s overall business objectives. The main purpose of an e-Marketing Strategy is to generate a long term competitive advantage and focus on enhancing the performance by capitalizing on resources of enterprise and technology. Building of effective strategy requires thorough research, intense planning, experience, analysis, and deep information about the online industry.

The Strategy for e-Marketing is based on the principle of offline marketing i.e. 4 P’s: Product – Price – Promotion –place, and Added 3 P’s like People – Processes – physical evidence. The uniqueness in e-Marketing lies due to its seven main features such as: Personalization, confidentiality, better Service to the Customer, Community, digital media, Sales Promotion and Security (Krishnamurthy & Singh, 2005).

1. Personalization: It means identifying and recognizing the needs of the customer in accordance with trends in the market.

2. Privacy or confidentiality: in e-Marketing, this indicates that the gathered information is safe and is used in apt manner from collection to the storage of data. Privacy plays a significant role as many legal aspects are associated with the use of such information.

3. Better Customer Service: e-Marketing focuses on building the relational viewpoint and in this transactional system; Customer Service plays an important role.

4. Community: as the number of members increases, it leads to the formation of the community. Therefore, developing the community is the key role to be played in the e-marketing

5. Site or digital media: It is the location where the interaction takes place. The digital technology helps in making it accessible at any moment and place.

6. Security: as the transaction begins on the internet channels, security function plays a vital role. The security system should prevent the unauthorized access of a third party over the transaction. Therefore, it is important for the e-marketing business to develop confidence in the customers regarding the safety of the transactions.

7. Sales Promotion: in building the e-marketing, sales promotion plays a vital role, as it helps in achieving sales growth in terms of volume. Here the marketer is supposed to apply his innovation. And he is also required to use the advanced internet technologies and promotional plan (Krishnamurthy & Singh, 2005).

Marketing tool and technique

If identified properly, marketing tools help in guarantying long term success for the organization. Review of the right target audience must be done at the initial stage. For B2C, the end user forms target audience. Therefore, proper attention must be given to identify the needs of end user. On the other hand, for B2B, the customer serves as the distributor and as a result, the marketing of this business becomes quite difficult. In B2C and B2B, customer identification and creative internet site that can attract the right customers are essential.

B2C: Business-to-Consumer websites are the mediator portal between the consumers and the suppliers. They help the businesses in connecting with their customers and in keeping their loyalty. Some of the major portals of B2C website are eBay (an auction site), ZDNet (a technology market place) and Yell (an internet version of yellow pages) that exists on the internet. The eight common features of business-to-consumer website are

• Sophisticated session control
• User log-in
• Shopping Basket system
• Anywhere, anytime information
• More convenient and faster shopping
• Privacy and Security of customer information

Internet Company with marketing focuses on meeting the direct needs of end customer. The internet site fulfills the needs of customer and make successful sale. The web site finds numerous ways to attract the attention of the customer. For example: Amazon.com and Dell Inc. provide very good examples of a B2C intelligent e-business success story. The benefits provided to the customers by Dell Inc. include: access to the information anywhere at anytime and a proper co-ordination and communication. It also provides its customers with the benefit of self-help service and support. It provides the opportunity of forming a partnership with a leading e-commerce player along with detailed information about the products, solutions and services (Cao, Zhang & Seydel 2005).

B2B: In this, the business provides several products and through the receiving business, it meets the need of the end customer. The approach followed in this business is customer-based marketing. Therefore, they focus in designing the products and services according to the demands of the customers. Initially, they market their products to the distributors and develop way for entering the market in selected products and also create the sales environment for the products so that it can easily meet the needs of the target customers. By making the use of the B2B, the portal of the company can forward the incoming business to specific pages so as to have improved order techniques, inventory control and customer needs for example: e STEEL. Therefore, the marketing tool plays a vital role in the B2B and B2C (Ramaswamy & Namakumari, 2007).

Difference between the B2C website and B2B website

Different strategies are used in the business-to-business environment. It uses routes like: advertisement in the form of pop up, e-mail and banner advertising in business. B2B and B2C can be differentiated on the basis of the following points:

Objective: E-mail in B2B business is concerned with the production of lead; on the other hand in B2C, it refers to the transaction of the sale. In B2C, after consumer reach to the landing page, the next step is the evolution to the shopping cart and checkout page, where as in the B2B, e-mail marketing campaign itself acts as a source of marketing.

Permission: In B2B transaction, permission involves a guarantee that the shared information will be kept confidential and as a result, the lead will be generated in more numbers where as in B2C, dealings demand receiving permit in a dissimilar way. Here an enterprise will insure the customers that they have the power to cop out of farther e-mails (Weil, 2002).

Challenge in Copyrighting: In B2B, an e-mail must have the eye catching phrase on the subject of e-mail. Where as, in B2C the WIIFM acts as an important factor. The customers need to know that there is something relevant for them. B2C transactions are easy to maintain as compared to the B2B (Weil, 2002).

Conclusion

Broad use of internet has led to the development of B2C and B2B. In these businesses, deep understanding of the customer is required. The use of latest technology and the proper understanding will allow huge success. Both these e- businesses have provided the customers with the convenient options. A customer can easily gain the information of the product online and can also close the sale online. In order to make e-business successful, proper E-marketing strategy should be formulated and implemented and according to the target market, the marketing tools should be used.

References

• Cao, M., Zhang, Q & Seydel, J. (2005). B2C e-commerce web site quality: an empirical examination. Industrial Management & Data Systems 105(5): 645-661
• Kotler, P. (2002). Marketing Management (11^th Edition). New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India Private Ltd.
• Krishnamurthy, S. & Singh, N. (2005).The international e-marketing framework (IEMF): Identifying the building blocks for future global e-marketing research. International Marketing Review 22(60): 605-610
• Ramaswamy, V.S. & Namakumari, S. (2007). Marketing Management (3^rd Revised Edition). New Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd.
• Weil, D. (2002). B2B versus B2C Email Marketing: Five Differentiators. Retrieved May 21, 2008 from http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/b2b_em_mkt/article.php/994371