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Cracking The Marketing Puzzle Of E-Commerce

2008/7/30 9:25:00 41791

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From services, channels, IT, value-added, to overcome the difficulties faced by B2B enterprises.

To succeed in the complex B2B market, what companies need to do is not just to implement several measures that have been tried and verified.

High performance B2B enterprises believe that the key to success lies in the ability to manage four important problems.

Here are some insights into how to cultivate this competitiveness within your company.

B2B, which provides products or services to business customers, is being threatened by smart foreign competitors and homogenization of many products.

Some of the measures taken by B2B companies are to focus on service businesses with better general profit margins.

Some B2B companies also show the value of the precision analysis tools used to analyze a large number of customer data.

The core idea of all these strategies is to require B2B companies to improve their customers' efficiency and competitiveness.

Managing the following four urgent problems is an important part of achieving this goal.

First, reform and Innovation: expand the scope of business services

Smart competitors make manufacturers realize how easy it is to homogenization, even for sophisticated products.

However, if the service business is professional and unique, it is often difficult to be imitated and easier to reform and innovate.

No wonder many product manufacturers have been able to expand their businesses by expanding their services.

Service revenue can include the following sources: replacement of parts, regular maintenance of equipment or product service contracts, or consultation on how best to use products.

The experience of three Finland multinationals in similar industries shows how important the service business is to the sales performance of the entire company.

Kone Elevator has been strengthening its service strength, making the proportion of various service businesses to the current income of 60%.

Interestingly enough, Wartsila, the global leader in the production of diesel engines for ships and power stations, has increased its service business to 50% in eight years.

The third company is Metso, which is very active in the paper and mining industry. It also keeps its profit growth by raising sales to total 40%.

Although these companies have not publicly disclosed the profitability of their service sector, people generally believe that service business is more profitable than new product business, thus becoming an important factor in sales revenue, business growth and overall profitability.

There has been fierce competition in every industry recently, but they can still maintain their competitive edge.

Do we have any special experience in management to learn from these companies?

Compared with backward enterprises, the leaders of these companies can take the initiative to participate in building their own service business.

They all have an executive who specializes in service business, and their authority is similar to other product business departments.

These companies integrate the service activities of many business departments and establish a real service platform to achieve the best results.

They take a macroscopic approach to services, including after-sale parts, complete life cycle management of customer equipment, and so on.

They provide various types of services and develop different service brands.

They also create service technologies and processes, even competitive services.

Many B2B companies need to emulate the concepts and Strategies of these service sector leaders if they want to keep pace with industry leaders.

Although everyone recognizes this in principle, it is still a great challenge for product companies to increase their service contents.

The topic discussed is around how to manage this pition.

In particular, companies should deal with organizational problems, such as integrating service business into ordinary product sales activities, or establishing a separate service department, and then using special financial measures to measure the service operation of this independent business department.

In the division of service business content, the company's difficulties are how to distinguish the difference between warranty maintenance and service, and how to make pricing for different service contents.

Fortunately, this effort is worth it.

Research shows that companies with excellent performance are closely related to customers.

Tongli elevator is like this.

They are based on the clear value of various divisions to formulate service, price and delivery proposals for paying customers.

Two, broaden channels: make full use of the power of distribution.

Because of the increasing economic and brand power of large retail enterprises, some traditional B2C brand products enterprises are forced to turn into B2B companies, and their market is more regarded as retailers rather than end-users.

In most developed countries, three or four retailers have been able to control the market share of more than 75% of the main product categories.

What makes the situation even more confusing is that retailers can also own their own brand products, which makes their partners become competitors, and the end users are more concerned with distribution brand rather than product brand.

According to a survey conducted by AC Nielsen, Nelson's own brand accounts for 17% of the total value of the global packaged goods market.

Although the price of these private brand products is relatively low, many consumers think their quality is "too good to go".

Manufacturers are adopting different ways to deal with the challenge of retail enterprises.

Some manufacturers have handed over their product categories to large retailers, while Procter & Gamble and Nestle are trying to expand their sales channels, such as discount discount stores and retail outlets such as dollar stores.

They also innovate their products and services to meet the retailer's logistics and business needs, and introduce new size packaging.

At the same time, manufacturers are more closely collaborate with retail businesses to share information about products, customer relationships and consumers.

This can optimize the planning and implementation of product promotion and display.

In some cases, there will also be a customized "store in store" area.

Procter & Gamble even worked with retailers to create a new shopping experience.

The manufacturers of brand products now learn to put the partnership with retailers in a very important position.

With the increasing concentration of retailers and the increase in the number of private brand products, companies have chosen to cooperate with those who are determined to work with them to build future retailers.

In a few cases, manufacturers will find themselves able to deal directly with consumers by completely leaving the retailers.

Although most of Nestle's revenue comes from retailers, its Nespresso brand is quite successful.

Customers usually buy Nespresso coffee machines from retail stores, but they buy coffee beans directly from Nestle, most of which are purchased online, thus bypassing the retail links.

Three, information technology: using data to build advantages

Many companies have invested in the information infrastructure to collect, store and manage data on customers, sales, inventory and company resources.

How to get the right data and how to make the data correct is a challenge for all enterprises.

Another challenge is how to obtain and convey clear analysis from these data.

According to a recent survey, 54% of B2B marketing managers listed "information for decision makers" as one of the top five marketing challenges of B2B, while 53% thought that "measuring marketing results" was one of the top priorities.

Many B2B companies collect direct customers' information and paction data.

However, the foundation of smart information strategy is the awareness that the role of a company must be reflected in the Chinese side of the value chain.

Therefore, the leaders of these companies collect information about their customers' operation and customers' customers' information.

For example, five years ago, the times, the largest publisher of consumer magazines in the United States, decided to follow the footsteps of Phillip Morris to integrate data from various publishers and set up a national database to capture all the magazine paction data at the store level.

In retailing, a publisher's customers are wholesalers and chain retailers.

Although maintaining customer relationship does not require store level sales information, this information enables publishers to greatly improve delivery and customer service levels.

In addition, the benefits of this database are far greater than its cost of creation.

The amount of paction data generated is generally very large, that is to say, companies need to use complex software tools to generate output results for managers to interpret and act as a basis at any time.

The analysis tools used in time magazine can generate optimal inventory levels for each product of each customer, identify sales opportunities for each retail outlet of all the thousands of customers, estimate sales and revenue changes based on price and sales changes, and provide other information interpretation functions.

In this way, "times" not only optimizes its own operation, but also wins the favor of customers. It is regarded as a valuable partner and can bring real insight and value to their own operations.

Companies that are successful in information are good at creating information value chains, that is, collating raw data into clear and responsive decisions.

The success of time magazine relies on its internal cooperation in the analysis, IT, sales and marketing sectors, as well as the seamless cooperation between the company and its publishers and the third party Data Processing Inc.

Companies that use information technology to stand out in competition will strive to make decisions based on facts and have strong vision, but at the same time they will pay close attention to various processes that produce information value chain.

If companies can effectively use data, analysis functions and analysis tools, they will be widely considered to have strategic competitive advantages.

Many well-known B2B companies have this advantage, including West Max (CEMEX), John Deal (John Deere), Federal Express (FedEx) and United Parcel Service (UPS).

Four, formulate strategy: create a new "value space".

In the struggle against product homogenization, three general approaches have been more successful.

In general, the aim is to improve core services or products through any one way to increase the differentiation of core products and to locate this product as the main product.

The company can add value to non differentiated core products or services at three levels, that is, classification, customization and binding, and may lead to the following four results:

Core value: core value is often the cause of the problem, that is, the lack of products and services provided by a company to avoid falling into the homogenization trap.

There is no obvious difference between the customer and the other competitors.

Targeted expansion: by expanding the company's core products and services to more