Obstacles and prospects of online tool marketing

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

While online tools are seen as an important and effective part of marketing strategies, marketers will increasingly rely on digital advertising media, but they are also aware of the many hurdles that may slow down the process of using these tools. The lack of capacity of companies or their agents is the most worrisome issue for companies already doing online advertising, or for businesses that have not yet done online advertising. For example, about 60% of businesses already doing online advertising believe that lack of capacity is an obstacle. Even in businesses that often use online tools for marketing purposes, 50% of them emphasize the ability barriers to online advertising. The lack of online capability is much more than just marketing! If the initial investment in enterprise capacity development, it will make the enterprise in the Internet technology to invest more effectively. Another often-cited hurdle-the lack of indicators to measure impact-is a violation of common sense, as easy measurement of ROI is one of the key selling points of many online media. Notably, more than half of the companies that are doing online advertising see a lack of metrics as an obstacle, much higher than the proportion of companies that share the same view in companies that have not yet done online advertising. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that some of the common concerns (such as the belief that doing online advertising will risk the corporate brand) do not seem to worry most corporate marketing executives.

Collaborative tools such as blogs, wiki, and social networks are being used for advertising, product development, and customer service. On the simplest level, for example, some say their businesses host user forums that enable customers to help each other. One-third said their businesses use some kind of collaborative or interactive tool to advertise. About 22% of businesses use these tools to keep their customers in line with the consensus that online tools can help build relationships between customers and businesses. More interestingly, almost as many (19%) of people use collaborative tools primarily for brand building. The motivation to try these tools is quite obvious: more than one-third of people do not know what marketing goals they are investing in in collaboration and interactive tools, but about 15% of these companies ' online advertising budgets are invested in such tools.

Another two-thirds of companies use online tools to get their customers involved in product development, and about one-fourth of businesses do so regularly. The reasons for this vary widely, for example, from banking services and manufacturing marketing executives focused on testing concepts and screening ideas, while marketing executives in High-tech Industries focused on generating new ideas. In addition, 31% of companies are using product development collaboration tools, such as launching discussions on blogs to test ideas, engaging customers in collaborative design tools, or testing product sales in a virtual world. Companies that often apply digital tools to all marketing purposes are more likely to use these products to develop collaboration tools than other businesses.

The evolution of digital marketing reflects the fundamental changes in consumer behavior. More and more people have used the Internet to search information, replacing the past use of books, yellow pages, libraries, car sellers, department stores or real estate agents and other information channels. By doing so, they can often learn about new product information and make price comparisons. How far will these changes go? According to marketing executives, by 2010, for most consumers, the network will play an important role in the first two stages of the consumer decision process-product awareness and information collection-although there will be significant differences between industries. The expectations of most consumers of online search for new products may be a factor in how companies plan to dramatically increase their investment in several digital advertising tools that they think are most useful for branding. Only a small number of customers will use the network for trading or access to services. Even so, there are still a considerable number of marketing executives predicting that over the next three years their companies will have more than 10% of their sales through online channels, more than twice times the number of companies currently doing so.

In addition, some companies, especially those that often use all of their online marketing tools, have begun to integrate their online and offline marketing efforts. However, most companies have not yet done so, and only 42% of enterprises have such an integrated marketing campaign, and 32% of companies use online tools to influence offline sales. These numbers are likely to continue to grow as online tools and technologies play an increasingly important role in marketing strategies. Through successful efforts, increasing the likelihood of communicating with a large number of online consumers may also gain the benefits of offline marketing.