Enabling a Small/Medium Enterprise to Succeed Online

Sandeep Krishnamurthy
sandeep@u.washington.edu http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep

The Situation

An entrepreneur owns a small or medium enterprise. The company produces an interesting product or provides a novel service. The problem: How do we use the Internet to sell the product or service?

EMARKPLAN

General methodology to plan, analyze and enact E-Marketing activities. Methodology can be used by anyone who wants to use the Internet to access customers.

EMARKPLAN COMPONENTS

Goals- What do we wish to achieve through EMarketing? Resources- What resources can we expect to support our actions? Actors- Who are the marketing actors in the EMarketing process? Spaces- Where will our E-Marketing take place online? Actions- What specific E-Marketing actions should we take? Outcomes- What outcomes should we expect from our E-Marketing activities?

How is Competing on the Internet different?

Highly fragmented.

More than eight billion web pages.

Winner-take-all market

A few winners get a lot of traffic. Most sites get low traffic.

Goals

A short-term goal may be stated in this wayour goal is to attract 100,000 visitors to the page in one week. A long-term goal may be described in this way- our goal in the next 1 year is to get 3,000,000 visits and 50,000 downloads of application forms for new accounts.

Typical Goals

Traffic to a web site.

How many hits, unique visitors? How many visitors buy the product? How many visitors write about the product and tell others? How many visitors come back to buy more?

Product purchase.

Brand excitement.

Repeat visits.

Resources

Existing resources

Web site Staff

New resources

Do you have a marketing budget to attract more customers to your site? Do you have a technology budget to build a better web site and other digital services?

Actors

Orientation towards the company

Friendly, agnostic or hostile

Impact on company

Primary actors take actions that directly impact the company. Secondary actors take an action that has an indirect impact on the company in that it influences the general environment in which the company operates.

Actor Map
Primary Friendly Satisfied Consumer Brand Community Secondary Affiliate Distributor/Broker/Service Provider Partner Retailer Promotion Intermediary Competitors Affiliates Competitors Partners Competitors Distributors

Agnostic Hostile

Platform Media Competitor Dissatisfied Consumer

Important Decision

Should you create your own web site or go through a platform? Own web site

Hard to build awareness and traffic. Risky investment. Not a sure bet. Must share revenue with platform.

Platform

Spaces

Theaters of engagement. Types

Advertising, content, community and promotional spaces. Direct, Indirect, Reflective

Role of e-marketers

Advertising Spaces

Media Web Sites (e.g. nytimes.com, espn.go.com). Consumer Web Sites, including blogs. Affiliate Web Sites, Search Engines/Portals. Consumer E-mail InBox

Text ads (e.g. gmail.google.com) permission e-mail

Content Spaces

Own web site

Platform web site Blog

Community Spaces

Destination Community
Hosted Community

Promotional Spaces

Brand sites (e.g. www.tide.com) Deal aggregators (e.g. www.findsavings.com) Product comparison sites e.g. www.froogle.com, www.mysimon.com .

Actions

Communication actions
Analytics Customer relationship management

Communication Actions

Advertising

Text ad, immersive advertising, banner ad, popup ad, pop-under ad, advergame. Permission-based e-mail, e-mail newsletter, viral e-mail.

Direct message dissemination

Content creation and management

Frequently asked questions (FAQs), product information, downloadables.

Simple Traffic Analysis (Yahoo.co.jp)

B-COP Methodology (Googles Competitive Overview)

Relative Page View

3.00
Yahoo.com

2.50 2.00 1.50 1.00 0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50
Relative Rank

go.com lyvos.com ask.com aol.com altavista.com

Xgoogle.com

msn.com

Googles Competitive Landscape

LEGEND
Indirect competitor Direct competitor Tertiary traffic Traffic to google.com only Traffic from google.com only Two way traffic

Outcomes

Those involving no personal information capture. Those that require capturing personal information.

Registration, Shopping Cart

Case Study-1

Situation: A small enterprise in Asia decides to market a product to American companies. Goal: To create product acceptance among ten Fortune 500 companies in one year. Resources: Web site, Marketing Staff. Actors: Marketing staff, Web design staff. Actions: Communication (professional web site including Flash demos), Analytics (traffic and competition analysis) and CRM (direct customer contact). Outcomes: Product adoption at five companies.

Case Study-2

Situation: A small enterprise in Asia decides to market a software product. Goal: To create product acceptance among hightech users. Resources: Web site, Staff. Actors: Marketing staff, Web design staff, bloggers. Actions: Communication (interesting web site, blogs), Analytics (traffic and competition analysis) and CRM (direct customer contact). Outcomes: Product excitement, traffic.

Sandeep Krishnamurthy University of Washington

sandeep@u.washington.edu http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep