This ten million dollar question: How to market your product through the Internet? asked by some members here, may want to read the texts below.

To expand on the brief, let me be more concise and according to text book teachings.


You need to do an Environmental Scan, which consists of:

1. Situational analysis
   
1. Environmental factors
2. Market opportunity analysis (demand, supply, and SWOT).
2. Select target market(s)
3. Set objectives
4. Select marketing mix: the 4 Ps.
5. Action plan (tactics)
6. Budget
7. Evaluation plan
   

Customers in the 21st century are more informed, have wider choices of sources of supply, and they are empowered by the Internet.


Internet usage is growing, no doubt about it, and a company must engage with it to use it as a marketing tool to propagate the products. However, there are different market segments with different sets of needs, priorities, infrastructures, and cultural values. These have large consequences on the method of selling the product. We do segmentation of the market, and adjust the method according to the level of the demographic groups.


Let me give you an example:

Countries with high volume of broadband (high speed Internet connections) can apply higher resolution graphics, and animated display. However there are users of 56K modem or lesser speed, and there are different systems and browsers, such as Netscape, Firefox, Explorer, etc.


Beside age group, gender, and ethnic background, the demographics are grouped into these parts:

1. Innovators High wage earners, willing to pay premium price for new technology product. 2.5%.
2. Early Adopters. Community minded than the innovators. They will check around with others who have experience using the product, before deciding to buy. 13.5%.
3. Early Majority. They do not rush to buy, but gathers information first, weigh the pros and cons and evaluate with other brands available and consider the price and other features available. 34%
4. Late Majority. This group is more harder to convince than the Early, and will only buy when their friends have bought and used them. Word-of-mouth is very important than advertisement to them. 34%.
5. Laggards - the low wage earners, use the older versions, and will buy on cheap prices only. E.g. users of the Windows 98 OS, and the Pentium 3 system. They are users of cable modem running analogue technology. 16%.
   

There are the barriers to adopting the product:

Social and Cultural Matters

CASE: Many countries do not have credit card processing infrastructure, and the citizens do not carry credit cards. Therefore to purchase and pay by credit card is no go.

In many Asian countries, to read about a product in the magazine, newspaper advertising or even a coloured catalogue has no effect on them. They want to see, feel and touch the product, some even want to try the product. Demonstrations of the product is important, and pre-after-sales backup is vital to the sales. Service the product in their location, they will not believe it until they see it. They are the "Thomas Buyer"


For some culture, the brand name of the product carries much weight, and Religious sensitiveness is as important, because it will turn them off at the first instance. E.g. the symbol of a Dragon is repulsive to the Western culture, more of the middle-eastern culture. A typical example of case study is like selling hamburgers to the Hindu majority country of India, where a company had communicated that their hamburger contains quarter pound of pure beef.


Speaking their language is the open door to communicate your product. To sell to Japanese, speak Nihon Go, and to Germans, Sprechen Deutsch. Be careful about their cultural taboos, observe their norms. Eg. to give them some gifts or chance to win something big in lucky draws will be good marketing gimmicks.

Technology Issues

For example: the available media that is spreading quickly worldwide is the Mobile Phone. In some countries, with the ready buyer with the available cash to purchase, but do not have the phone lines. Arab countries have 49 telephones per thousand, compared to an average of 133/1000 world wide.

Communication for business is commonly done the marketplace or the bazaar. This is also a social meeting place that provides people the benefits of the community. So, emails, snail mails, tele-marketing will not do to this group in the market sector. These people are the upcoming market opportunities, as the high oil prices bring them new level of wealth and spare cash.


Last but not least are the Legal and Political Issues.

Censorships, patent infringements, **** activists, and countries which are at war with each other, or goods that are sensitive to their security cannot be exported.


Street Smart

Replying to [Street Smart]:

I saw my name somewhere in your article....."Thomas Buyer" ???

Great Advise.

I would suggest giving out free samples as well. As you know, I have my own small little internet shop, sales are small, but with free samples and quick service, I have won many returning customers' hearts and customers' reference.

Exchanging banner links and buying ad spaces at Specialized websites is another way to market your products. This is more effective, in my opinion than Adword from Google.....

Replying to [Street Smart]:Great SS, Nice topic.

Replying to [Thomas1976]:
The basic part of Internet marketing is to get visitors to your website, the right type and with the right intentions. This part is Market Communication, or Promotion in the first P of the market mix.

Alibaba is a good platform to do market communication, with the search engine catchy system, the keywords are turned out by most Search Engines. For discerning marketing managers, they will first concentrate on the most popular ones, and then to the lesser known, Yahoo.com, Google.com and Alta Vista.

You have to test out the Search Engines, and check the search list which appear. Your website should be in the first or second page, not more than the third page of 10 to 30 sites listed.

Rare words turn out better than common words, and specific description of your company product, profile and variations of the meaning of the same object is making your site more SE friendly.

Servers with foreign words translators are ideal for the market promotion by keywords. If not, you have to enter these foreign language words into the META File or hidden with the same colour as the background in your body text.

Mastering the technique for Internet promotion requires skill and wit, with basic knowledge of how the SE Robots work, and the HTML and other Scripting languages.

Street Smart

By participating in the Alibaba Forum, where there is very high hit rates and long period of stay, it is also a great thing to do.

Replying to [Street Smart]:Thank you for your valuable topic.

samee

That is a really good advive~! Tks

thank you very much,i saved this page for further use ,too bad that the article was too concise
but with a little of thinking i will understand a bit of that

here you go !! hope it helps i use this as a referencehttp://www.hktdc.com/info/mi/pgbp/en/Practical-Guide-To-Brand-Promotion-In-China?DCSext.dept=2&WT.mc_id=1399083

Internet Marketing actually is born out of the Traditional Marketing.

The principles are same, except for some changes in the structure, methods and executions. It is a combination of all things, as described by Marketing people as the Marketing Mix.

Under this Mix, the division is based on the 4 Ps. (Product, Promotion, Price and Place or distributin).
The E-marketing structure such as ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) are the frames attached to the backbones of the 4 Ps, which has its purpose and cause centered on the Customer.

It is amazing, how many books are written and how many more information are available on the Internet, with simple Search keywords. Many of us cannot find the time and absorption to read them and to apply them into our daily chores. So, they remain only as text books for the students for the examination questions and correct answers according to the text.

However the human race has been doing this since the beginning of our time, the Chinese trade with the West by the "Silk Road" and loads of merchandise are done on camel backs, running across the Asian continent, stretching from Europe to Mongolia, and into China, to the Eastern most part of East Russia and to Japan. What we are doing is nothing new, only the speed and the amount of information flow and the location of the business is no longer a strategic selling point in the business. One do not have to be there to do the transactions, they are carried out through the vast expense of the network system. In the Cyber world, anyone can do business from anywhere, and make it to the top, regardless of size or location. This is good for the small and medium enterprises, they run on small capital and do not require large capital expenditure to deal business.

Street