E-commerce : Chapter 2 : Marketing Mix

This chapter is about creating your digital marketing mix. Normally marketing mix was first crafted by McCarthy (1960) which was product-oriented, then the industry was evolved with the passage of time and they have to modify it because of the evolution of Service industry. Then afterward technology prevailed in the market and they have to add one more ‘P’ which is known as 'Partnership'. Since the partnership is very important in digital marketing because the whole Affiliate program runs on it.

Product in the digital world is basically how can you create value by giving them an excellent product and fast delivery. The main concern is the trust issues where people can only see the product and cannot touch or feel it. Most of the people, research online and buy offline (ROPO). Choosing new design online and then they buy offline through the traditional store. Since the value of the product is created through extended product or augmentation, giving them free returns and warranties, basically to remove all the ambiguities of customers from online shopping.

Price is totally different from the offline medium. In traditional, we have multiple buyers and few sellers, here we have one buyer and many sellers all around the world. This process is known as Reverse Auctioning. Since the middle-man is removed in digital marketing, so the price is charged low as compare to the traditional business. You cannot be the jack of all trades in digital, you need to select a selective domain and have expertise in it. Lastly, we have price comparison websites like Skyscanner for airline ticketing and hotels.
'New approaches of Pricing' consist of Subscription model (you pay for a time period for e.g. 3 months or 6 months) best example is Netflix. Pay per view is you have to pay for every time you have to watch or read anything e.g. you have to pay every time to watch UFC fights. Bundling technique is basically you buy in a bundle for e.g. Videos and news content from the same website, they will charge you lower than the individual. Lastly, Ad support content includes CPM (Cost per mille (thousand), where the advertiser has to pay to the publisher once the ad is seen by 1000 people. This technique is basically when your objective is awareness). PPC (Pay per click, the advertiser only pays to the publisher when the ad is clicked. It is for highly targeted ads.). Difference between impression and page view is, the impression is, for example, a page has 4 ads so every time a person visits your website you have 4 impressions but the pageview will be only 1.

In digital marketing, the Place is how your product is distributed. Disintermediation is a concept where you remove the middleman between the company and the customers. For example, Bahria University wants to buy 1000 laptops, they will order it from HP website rather than giving their order to the middleman. Re-intermediation is including the middleman to increase the element of trust for e.g. Ebay introduces Paypal to increase the trust between both parties.

Promotion is, what kind of advertisement you will be using banner ads, display ads or a skyscraper ads. Selling includes virtual selling. Public relations is about publishing newsletters or news releases to your loyal customers and personalize their email according to them.

People are basically who are running operations both front and back. Since in digital, customers query and their requirements are very diversified. It’s the people who are working to put a smile on their customer. Happy staff means happy customers and happy profits.

Physical evidence and Process are basically how smooth is your website and how friendly your site architecture is.  The website should not be heavy to load, that will increase your bounce rate. As in Daraz.pk, only in 3 clicks, you can buy your product.