One popular definition of marketing is known as the Five P’s
of marketing. The five P’s refer to the type of decisions that you will have to
make when you effectively market your product. These decision categories still
apply in Internet marketing, though the decisions you make around them may
differ when you are dealing with an online environment vs. a “brick and mortar” store or
location. Product:-
The
physical product or the service that you are offering to the customer. You will
decide what to sell or offer, how it should appear, what customer service
support will come with it, and any warranty or additional aspects of the
product that will be included. For
the Product aspect of Internet marketing, you need to make decisions regarding
the following:
•
Functionality – what does the product do? What does it not do? This is a list
of some of the features of the product. These are the basis for the benefits
that help a customer determine which product(s) they will purchase. In an
online environment, remember that your website itself is part of your product
offering.
• Appearance – The appearance of the
product and even the appearance of its packaging is important in conveying the
message that you want to send to the public.
• Quality – the quality of your product
or service needs to match the message you are sending to the customers in your
marketing.
• Packaging - It should communicate the same level of quality
and functionality you promised.whatever you’ve been promising. The
packaging should always complement the product. The copy should highlight the
major benefits of the product for those who haven’t decided to purchase it yet.
• Brand – Your website and any Internet
marketing you do should strengthen and complement your brand - customers should
recognize your company whether they see it online or live.
• Warranty – The warranty has
multiple affects on your product. First, of course, there is the financial
implication of a warranty that needs to be considered. Second, there is the
practical side of implementing a warranty.
People :-
The
people decisions that you will make are those that refer to how you want your
customer service representatives to interact with your customers.When you are marketing a product or service, you are also
marketing the people that provide that customer or service.You want to
consider how you will do that, particularly considering the following:
• Knowledge -If the
person or website recommends a new product, you are more likely to purchase
something from them than if you saw it on a website that you were not already
familiar with. For this reason, part of your Internet marketing strategy may be
to establish yourself or your company as a source of reliable, valuable
information.
• Service – Need to know
customers expectation from your salespeople, your customer service people, and your
technical support people.Ready to provide the level of service, even
in an online environment.
• Attitude – Although you might not think about this one
initially, the attitude your people carry - even through online transactions,
emails, or other forms of communication - will also communicate a message to
your customers.
Price:-
Pricing
decisions are made based on profit margins, pricing that competitors use, and
the demand in the market. You will also have to make decisions regarding when
to offer price discounts and whether or not you’ll allow financing or other
payment arrangements.With the Internet market, you’ll need to compete on price
but also on shipping charges and any other fees that might change what the
customer pays for the product or service.
Pricing
is one of the most challenging areas of your Internet marketing strategy to
address.The strategy that you use to price your products and
services depends on the type of industry you are in, the quality and position
of the competition you have, the activity in the market itself, and several
other factors.
Promotion:-
Promotion decisions will need to be made regarding how you
will communicate and sell to your potential customers. You’ll have to decide
what you can afford to spend on promotions as well based on the expected return
on investment (ROI). If not done carefuly, you could easily spend thousands of
dolars on promotion activities that do not provide any significant return on
investment.Internet
marketing strategy should take advantage of as many opportunities as possible
to attract and keep visitors on your website.
• Advertising – What kind of
advertising will you put in place for your product or service? How will you
integrate any online advertising with offline advertising? One strategy is to
use your offline advertising to drive your visitors to your website, where you
can then advertise anything and everything you want.
• Personal selling – Will you still
have personal selling, as in, will you be doing personal face-to-face
marketing? Remember that if your website is the sales channel, there may still
be salespeople behind it who need to close the sale - or fulfill the sale.
Also, building relationships with your client base online is key if you want to
become known as an expert and someone that your customers will buy from again
in the future.
• Public relations – A company’s
reputation is critical in sales. The Page Rank efforts you undertake both online and
offline can make the difference between a customer choosing your product vs.
the competition’s.
• Message – The basic information you want every customer to know about
your product, service and organization. It could be the basis for all of your
online and offline advertising and what you want the customer to walk away
remembering about your offering.
• Media – what additional types of
media will you use, and how will you integrate them with your online
advertising and marketing? The answer to this depends on whether or not your
customers would receive your messages in those other channels.
• Budget – Finaly, your promotional efforts are limited by
the amount of money that you have to spend on them. Again, many internet-based
marketing methods can be relatively inexpensive or even free - but then some
can be very expensive.
Place:-
Also
sometimes called Placement, these decisions regard how you will distribute your
product or service to the customer. Gone are the days when you could consider only your local
geographic area as a possible place for selling your product or service.
• Channel Motivation – each channel
you sell through, you need to be able to motivate your customers to take action
through that channel. For example, if you sell a specific product, you could
sell it through your own website as well as through a major retailer like
Amazon.com. Each sales channel may require different marketing, advertising,
and promotional activities so that you can recoup the investment you’ve made in
that marketing channel.
• Market Coverage – what range of the
market are you going to attempt to cover with your marketing efforts? Which
other websites will you advertise on, and how will you choose them?This requires some understanding of what you already have gained in terms of
marketing coverage as well as knowing where your customers are already surfing.
• Logistics – For each decision you make on where, to whom,
and how you plan to sell your product or service, both online and offline, you
have to be able to carry through on the operational, logistical side of the
sales equation.
• Service levels – In this aspect of
the Place decisions, you want to consider if you will offer the same level of
service both online and offline. As we’ve mentioned, providing excellent
customer service for online customers could be the key to keeping a customer
from clicking over to the next website.
