The word marketing may be simple but difficult to explain. What is marketing in the first place?
“The ideal of marketing is to eliminate the need for sales. The goal of marketing is to understand customers, tailor products and services to customers, and to sell naturally.”
Marketing basics
Even in web marketing, the importance of “knowing the customer’s needs”, which is the basis of marketing, remains unchanged. For that purpose, let’s have a firm understanding of the basic theory of marketing. In this article, I will focus on 4P and 4C, which are highly versatile marketing frameworks.
First of all, before we get into the full-scale explanation of 4P and 4C, let’s start with the marketing framework called STP. STP is essential for marketing planning using 4P and 4C.
What is STP?
STP is, “segmentation ( Segmentation)” “targeting ( Targeting),” “positioning ( Positioning)” initials of three words that represent a series of flows that.
Dividing the market into groups (segments) according to needs is called segmentation. Targeting is the stage in which we focus on which segment and what needs are targeted. Positioning is the process of clarifying how the value provided by the company is relative to the competitors in the market.
Next, we will explain 4P and 4C, but regardless of which framework is used, first of all, let us understand that the target selection by STP is a major premise of marketing planning.
What is 4P?
4P represents four elements: Product (product), P rice (price), P lace (distribution), and Promotion (sales promotion). It is a framework for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service in the market by analyzing your product or service or market from these four perspectives. Also known as a marketing mix, it was advocated by Jerome McCarthy 4p of the United States in the 1960s.
What is 4C?
Thirty years after the advocacy of 4P, 4C was advocated by Robert Lauterborn. If it is a framework that is deeply related to 4P, and if 4P is the idea of product out from the selling side, then 4C is a deep digging of those from the customer’s perspective.
Relationship Between 4P and 4C
As mentioned above, 4C corresponds to each element of 4P and is a framework for analyzing from a customer’s perspective. It is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each framework and to effectively utilize both, rather than thinking as to which is old and which is correct. 4P, 4C, and STP are explained in detail in the following linked articles, so please take a look.
Three characteristics of web marketing
Now that you have a basic understanding of marketing analysis techniques, let’s take a look at the characteristics of web marketing. What is the difference between traditional marketing and web marketing? Here, I will explain it by dividing it into three points.
1. Speed
First of all, compared to traditional mass advertising marketing, the lead time required to implement measures is much shorter. In addition, unlike print media and video advertising such as commercials, the Web is easy to change and highly updatable, so it is relatively easy to repeat trial and error. These unique characteristics of the Web make it possible to implement measures with a sense of speed.
2. Personalization / segmentation
Web marketing allows you to develop ads based on customer attributes (personal data/segments). While mass marketing, such as magazine ads and commercials, have limitations in target segmentation due to their characteristics, the Web makes it possible to specify the target of an ad in detail and subdivide it into different measures, such as changing the content of an ad according to the attributes of the target.
3.Quantitativeness
Marketing measures on the Web can often be measured numerically. Compared to other marketing methods, you can get detailed quantitative data such as the number of times of displaying and clicking the number of web advertisements, the number of website visits, sales through advertisements, and the number of applications.
3 Steps of web marketing
What are some ways to use your company’s website to generate sales? Let’s introduce concrete measures for web marketing in three steps.
Step 1: Pre-access for attracting customers
The first step is pre-access, or preparing to get users to come to your website, which is the step to work on increasing the influx of prospects to your website. What you need to be aware of here is that attracting customers in web marketing is not about increasing access to your website, it is about increasing access to your prospects.
As a concrete measure, the first step is to enhance the website itself by sending out attractive, high quality content. At the same time, we should also implement measures to promote your website, such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), listing ads, display ads, network ads, affiliate ads, and SNS ads.
The distribution of press releases is also effective. By using a press release distribution service as well as your own website, you can get more exposure and spread your information.
Step 2: On-access for hospitality
This is the on-access step, or how to cater to the users who visit your website. We will take measures that will lead to target actions such as sales, applications and inquiries, rather than just access.
The key here is how to provide a pleasant user experience and prevent people from leaving your website. These efforts include Landing Page Optimization (LPO), Entry Form Optimization (EFO), and smartphone optimization through the introduction of responsive design. In terms of systems, enhanced payment methods will also be effective. For example, if you can’t use a credit card as a payment method on your e-commerce site, your customers may leave at the last minute.
In addition to these, it goes without saying that improving the quality of content and an easy-to-use UI (user interface) are important. It is important that the information the user is looking for is posted, that it is easy to see and read, and that it is easy to transition to related information.
Step 3: Post access to encourage return visits
After a user leaves your website (post access), follow them closely and encourage them to come back. Don’t waste engagement with users once they’ve visited your website, take steps to deepen the relationship and keep them coming back for more.
Specifically, email marketing, which is a direct approach to customers via email, and email newsletters, which are sent to customer lists, are also effective. Re-engage your users and trigger them to visit your site again. Retargeting ads are also effective because they allow your company’s advertisements to be shown to users who have already visited your website.
In order to efficiently implement these measures, consider introducing marketing automation (MA). Marketing automation is a system that organizes and optimizes a series of web marketing flows for users who visit your website. For example, you can make a list of prospective customers who have visited your website, and then narrow down the number of customers with strong engagement prospects by using email marketing and email newsletters.
As I mentioned in Step 1, simply gathering access is not a true draw in web marketing. The key is how to attract access from your prospects, so it’s essential to follow up with them once they’ve visited your site.
To better understand customer needs
It’s not just knowing your customer data that’s important in web marketing. It’s about understanding the needs of your customers and creating a flow and structure to attract them. If you are able to capture the needs of your customers, you will be able to reach out to prospects quickly and on a low budget.
However, on the other hand, analyzing access and advertising data and measuring its effectiveness requires a certain level of expertise, so there are many cases where in-house marketers alone are unable to handle the task. In such cases, marketing automation tools can be a powerful aid to sales efforts on the web. In addition to accurate data analysis, you will be able to tailor your email marketing to your customer’s characteristics and thus measure effectiveness more efficiently.
In this article, we’ve covered the basics of marketing and the use of marketing automation in web marketing from pre-access to on-access and post-access, so you can practice web marketing, get a better understanding of it, and consider implementing marketing automation for maximum efficiency.
