In recent past Online was more or less considered to be just ‘it’ for the mode of operation or being a part of it. Focused on the last part of value chain, mere online presence makes the existence global and helps businesses to reach customers that are not only arm’s length distance but also to those who are continents apart. But now with online model the great businesses are in the making, not to say an effective online marketing plan with offline delivery can do wonders for business.
For the service industries online is such a boon as reaching customers is now not only easy but also more focused and can be fatal for competitors who if slips even from one part of their value chain can prove disastrous for them. Online is making the reach simple and with retention of customers which is getting lowered day by day due to higher competition, making new customers globally via online model is cost effective and easy. Online lead generation as this process is called, done through pursuing the people present in the real time. One can pitch them instantly and the customer formation is instant as well.
Previously in the industry due to less competition, there were few customers whose loyalty company vouched for. Organizations have their own databases and client records of such customers and that were enough for them but nowadays due to higher competition clientele changes every time. With growing customer awareness the focus is on higher quality with lower costs. Practical example of this is frequent cost cuts in the telecom sector by cashing on the frequent changes in the customers’ loyalty. This is going to become quite evident in every sector as well, because of growing population around the globe and so with increasing purchasing power. Hence in such cases Online also serves as a great database in itself for the customers around the globe.
Now moving to supply chain part where we are going to take the supply chain model of wholesalers. These wholesalers were kind of bulk breakers in supply chain, similarly it can be quite evident that managing an online globalized population is not easy and breaking the online bulk here is also a definite task. That is where the concept of communities comes into the picture that is present online on the basis of similar interests, similar locations and similar offline work etc. The organizations thus need to identify online community managers from these communities on the basis of online accounts (which can also serve as key accounts) who have an influence in community either as a decision maker or as an influencer. If these key accounts are used to cater personal goals or showcasing personal talents online it propagates the concept of online celebrities (case of Justin Bieber). And communities can also be used for team formation for achieving a similar goal (example of Groupon). Moreover a business model can develop where lining up of community wholesalers (more in case of B2B tie ups) for management of that community by giving online ads, by doing social media, SEO and SEM for that community.
Online Media: Presence of people online is definitely turning it into a media as where the reach is, the media works. But before the presence of social networking websites the online presence of individuals was quite scattered and there was a difficulty in locating the people but now with social networking sites individuals are more organized and thus it is easy to locate them geographically and otherwise (more with the integration of Foursquare, Google maps for geographical identification) and helps the brands creating a personal appeal for them in a different way in comparison to what the mass media do. Thus being social makes it definitely easy for personal selling.
Media and Brands: When Media is online, so is the reputation of organizations. Here any wrongdoing by brands can be talked by the customers online. A constant check over online community help brands to rectify their mistakes and can present them with the idea of moving further. A simple rectification online can do wonders for the organization by spreading strong word of mouth across the network in the online community.
Where the catch is: The virtual identity can get different with real identity if working online is not managed properly. A serious gap between both can cause harm in large extent by diluting the brand image to the minimum. For already established brands online works easily as it can provide extension to its image but for emerging brands not maintaining an offline marketing plan can make them suffer drastically. It is seen the organizations with mere online presence can do a drastic damage to their image by captivating themselves only virtually providing with little shades of reality but if they somehow collaborate effectively offline as well they can go miles with their online presence
Note: Am supposed to write an article on social system for some publication but somehow got fried with writer's block and it turned out to be like this (May be this time writer's block got directed towards work murder ;) for sure). This is my first attempt with writing a marketing article, please ignore the follies if you find some :)
0 comments:
Post a Comment