With multiple platforms available for e-commerce site development, it becomes tricky to choose the ideal one for your needs. If one needs to initiate an online store and choose the best platform, it is essential that it ticks the right boxes. In that case, we feel that Shopify fits the bill of being one of the best effective e-commerce platforms today.

1) Setting Goals- Planning and setting up proper goals for marketing on these social media networks can be very beneficial.

2) Choose the right social media network- Analyze the target audience of your business and their social activities and accordingly choose the social media platform for marketing. This platform should suit best with the specifications of your product/service.

3) Prioritize quality over quantity- All the content which we post on social platforms should be accurate, relevant and valuable to the customers.

4) Be socially active- One should be as socially active as possible. Just posting your content won’t do but factors like following your customers back, interacting with them, knowing them personally will help in building up a strong relationship with customers.

5) Use data and analytics– keeping an analysis of weekly or monthly development with the help of tools like Hootsuite or Buffer will help in achieving goals more effectively.

6) Be responsive- Giving a quick response is always considered as a positive factor. Factors like replying to the queries asked by customers on our post, responding to their feedback build a good image of brand.

7) Check out competitors- Try to keep a track of competitor’s social media activities also which may include the type of content they are sharing, frequency of post, their target audience, techniques used by them for the same.

8) Transparency – Keeping a transparency with customers is best way to build trust and loyalty with customers. Providing them all the up to date, correct and accurate information would help them to differentiate between your product and other options available to them.

9) Personalize- Personalizing our business and also the offerings to the customer can be an important factor in standing out from others.

10) Keep the content short and simple- This is also an important way to keep customers engaged. The content being posted should be short, simple yet attractive. Links can be added in order to make it more users friendly.                   

DO’s and DONT’s of Social Media Marketing

DO’s-

1) Be Interactive- Interacting with your own followers as well as other users’ helps in getting know about their requirements and building a healthy relationship.

2) Experiment- Finding out new ways and techniques to engage people will help in increasing attention.

3) Publish content – that is user friendly and encourages sharing.

4) Seek trust and loyalty of customers.

5) Keep posts short, simple and accurate because too much of information may lead to people unfollowing you.

6) Value time- Try and post at the same time when more number of people are active or online.

7) Analyze your marketing strategies and then choose suitable social network.

8) Know your potential customers as much as possible.

9) Personalize your business as well as offerings to customers.

10) Try different ways of creating content like videos, info graphics etc.

11) Be innovative

12) Use new technology and tools.

DONT’s-

1) Don’t post so frequently on social media sites that it starts annoying people.

2) Don’t Copy – Bring originality in your post and avoid copying content from other mediums.

3) Don’t remove or delete negative comments/feedback from your post.

4) Don’t ignore the queries of the customers, instead responds back quickly and accurately.

Marketing in simple words can be described as promoting and selling a product or service. It involves advertising, promoting, selling and delivering products to the people. Organizations build various marketing strategies for their products and services and they search for the best medium through which they can promote their brand. These mediums can be social, digital, print or broadcast. Marketing can be of various types but it is mainly categorized into service and product marketing.

Is marketing even necessary?

Yes it is,

• Because it’s a way through which your product or Service is introduced and promoted to the potential customers.
• It covers promotions and sales, public relations, advertising of products.
• It helps in building a brand of your organization.
• Strong marketing strategy helps in keeping the customers engaged

With the brand, builds recognition and encourages loyalty.

Ultimately helps in bringing in clients and growing business & profits.

Service Marketing - This type of marketing focuses on relationship and values and can be described as a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customer which also benefits the organization.

7 P’s you should know about Service Marketing!

• Product – services are intangible, perishable and heterogeneous.
• Pricing – Prices are basically determined by demand and competition.
• Place – An important factor as services can’t be stored or transported and service                 delivery is concurrent with production.
• Promotion – Advertising helps in differentiating with the competitor’s products and also avoids duplication.
• People- It’s a defining factor in service delivery as service is inseparable from the people providing it.
• Process- The process involved in service delivery is crucial as it ensures the quality of the services.
• Physical evidence- It includes adding physical elements to services in order to enhance customer experience.                                          

5 Reasons why service marketing is important?
  1) To understand the needs and requirements of customer in order to build trust and loyalty.

 2) To help the customer to differentiate between the wide varieties of services available.

 3) To help the customer to understand the various characteristics and features of service.

 4) To improve the sales and thereby the business and profits.

  5) To analyze the market position of the organization.

Challenges you may face in Services Marketing!!               
  a) Uncertainty regarding quality of services.
  b) Improving quality of the service
  c) Competition with other service providers                        
  d) Setting Prices
  e) Standardization versus personalization            

1) Referrals- Our existing clients can be a great source of generating leads. It can be done by connecting with them on LinkedIn and browsing their connections and after finding some potential client, we can ask our existing client for an introduction with the new client or we can contact them directly with reference.

2) Direct Marketing- cold calling / mailing system

• Cold calling- Finding potential customers and then contacting them directly keeping all the required information and details up to date.
• Mailing- the content should be accurate, professional, customized according to particular client’s requirements or needs.

3) Content marketing-

• Blogging-
• Social Media Visibility – Using platforms like twitter, facebook etc
• eNewsletters- sending a newsletter to potential clients regularly over a period of time can be very helpful in building a good customer relationship. Publishing a newsletter would help clients to know about a brief view of our services and how we can add value through these services to them.
• Articles on website
• Through videos on website and social media
• Sponsorship in various events
  

4) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Marketing Optimization(SMO)-  select effective keywords which are highly targeted . Pay per click (PPC) is also an efficient way as the companies go to Google for searching initially.

5) Collaborating with companies similar to us with non-competitive background for exchanging the contacts and promoting each other.

6) Participating in Industry events and conferences with brochures /webinar

7) Networking- Building a network generally involves meeting new people, making new contacts and presenting your services to them.

8) Being active on sites likes www.quora.com and www.soolve.com where with the help of few keywords we can reach to the clients who require similar services as provided by us.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)- Can be defined as creating, developing and maintaining a healthy and long-lasting relationship with the potential customers. It basically means improving customer satisfaction, enhancing sales and increasing productivity. It may include

-customer care

-HR management

-lead management marketing

-analytics

Types of CRM-

1) Operational CRM- It mainly deals with marketing, sales and services. This type of service is basically for lead generation and then taking the results further into the process.

2) Analytical CRM- The main purpose of this type of CRM is data analysis. It involves gathering information coming from different channels and then analyzing it to improve the overall effectiveness.

3) Strategic CRM- This type of CRM focuses on distributing all the gathered information to the respective departments and hence bringing all the departments together in order to improve the quality of customer service.

OK wait, Let us first understand, what is a Product and a Service?

• Product is a tangible good which is of value to the Customer.
• Service is an intangible entity which adds value to the experience of the Customer.

An example will help differentiate between the two terms. Imagine you go to ABC restaurant which specializes in famous Hyderabad Cuisine “Biryani”. Here the Product that restaurant offers is “Biryani” and the Services that restaurant offers is

Here the Product offered by the restaurant is “Biryani” and  Services offered are  In room Dining service (waiter takes your food order,provides you with a complimentary snack, puts on the AC along with soft music). Suppose you do not like the Biryani, In that case you may call the waiter and return the Biryani. The biryani amount could be refunded to you whereas you will not be able to return the Service already used by you.

What is Marketing ?

    What comes to your mind when you think of the word Marketing? Advertisements, Banners, TV commercials, Billboards etc. Right? But that’s not all what marketing is about. Marketing is a concept where the 4P's play an important role apart from the modes of marketing like advertisements and commercials. What are the 4'Ps?  The P's signify People, product, price and place. For a Business to flourish, It requires a good quality product/service, proper location, Skilled workers and competitive pricing. In today's competitive market, customers want to buy products from a convenient location at a good price and of a good quality.

In order to gain trust of these potential customers, Businesses implement Marketing strategies which help build a bond between the product and customer. The Strategies vary with the type of Marketing. I have seen business practitioners often getting confused between the two types of marketing. That is, “Product Marketing” and “Service Marketing”. The questions often asked by users is "Are the Marketing strategies same for both Product and Service". The answer is '"Yes". They are different!!

Service marketing

Service marketing implies the marketing of economic activities, offered by your business to the customer for specific duration and skillset. Service marketing strategies are primarily based on the following four principles

Product - To begin with, look at your service as though you were an outside marketing consultant brought in to help your company decide whether or not it's in the right business at this time. Ask critical questions such as, "Is your current service appropriate and suitable for the customers of today”, Compared to your competitors, is your service superior in some significant way to anything else available? If so, what is it? If not, could you develop an area of superiority? Should you be offering this service at all in the current marketplace?

Price - The second P in the formula is price. You need to examine and re-examine the prices of the services you offer to make sure they're still appropriate to the realities of the current market. Many companies have found that the profitability of certain services doesn't justify the amount of effort and resources that go into producing them. By raising their prices, they may lose a percentage of their customers, but the remaining percentage generates a profit on every transaction.

Promotion - The Third P in the formula is price of promotion all the time. Promotion includes all the ways you tell your customers about your products or services and how you then market and sell to them. Small changes in the way you promote and sell your products can lead to dramatic changes in your results. Even small changes in your advertising can lead immediately to higher sales. Copywriters often increase the response rate from advertising by 500 per cent by simply changing the headline on an advertisement. Large and small companies in every industry continually experiment with different ways of advertising, promoting, and selling their products and services.

Place - The fourth P in the formula is the place where your service is actually sold. Review and Reflect upon the exact location where the customer can come and easily avail your services. Sometimes a change in place can lead to a rapid increase in revenue in services.

Packing - The fifth element in the formula is the packaging. Stand back and look at every visual element in the packaging of your product or service through the eyes of a critical prospect. Small improvements in the packaging or external appearance of your product or service can often lead to completely different reactions from your customers. You should think of packaging in terms of everything that the customer sees from the first moment of contact with your company all the way through the purchasing process. Packaging refers to the way your product appears from the outside. Packaging also refers to your people and how they dress and groom. It refers to your offices, your waiting rooms, your brochures, your correspondence and every single visual element about your company. Everything counts. Everything helps or hurts. Everything affects your customer's confidence about dealing with you.

Positioning - The next P is positioning. You should think continually about how you are positioned in the hearts and minds of your customers. How do people think and talk about you when you're not present? How do people think and talk about your company? What positioning do you have in your market, in terms of the specific words people use when they describe you and your offerings to others?. Begin by determining the position you'd like to have. If you could create the ideal impression in the hearts and minds of your customers, what would it be? What would you have to do in every customer interaction to get your customers to think and talk about in that specific way? What changes do you need to make in the way interact with customers today in order to be seen as the very best choice for your customers of tomorrow?

People - The final P in the formula is people. Think in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who are responsible for every element of your sales, marketing strategies, and activities. To be successful in business, you need to think in terms of exactly who is going to carry out each task and responsibility. In many cases, it's not possible to move forward until you can attract and put the right person into the right position.

Services are of different types like financial services, advertising, business and management, consultancy, engineering and medical.

Need for Service Marketing

• To build Customer Relationship
• To gain Customer Satisfaction
• To reach more Customers

Product marketing

 Product marketing deals with advertising a product that you want your customers to buy.  A product which when owned by your customer will provide value to your customer. For this to happen you need to define your strategies based on the following four principles.

Product – The first of the Four Ps of product marketing is product. A product can be either a tangible good or an intangible service that fulfils a need or want of consumers. Whether you sell custom pallets and wood products or provide luxury accommodations, it’s imperative that you have a clear grasp of exactly what your product is and what makes it unique before you can successfully market it.

Price – Once a concrete understanding of the product offering is established we can start making some pricing decisions. Price determinations will impact profit margins, supply, demand and marketing strategy

Promotion – Promotion looks at the many ways marketing agencies disseminate relevant product information to consumers and differentiate a particular product or service. Promotion includes elements like: advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing and more.

Place – It’s critical to evaluate what the ideal locations are to convert potential clients into actual clients. Today, even in situations where the actual transaction doesn’t happen on the web, the initial place potential clients are engaged and converted is online.

Need  for Product Marketing

• To build customer trust in the product
• To gain customer satisfaction.
• To build customer network.

What did we learn?

  Products and Services have their own peculiar characteristics. They differ with one other in terms of Quality, Tangibility, Customization, Return ability and Ownership. Depending upon your type of business (Product or Service based), you may use the respective principals to form marketing strategies that would be beneficial to your business.