Marketing plan development and implementation strategies

E-Commerce Marketing Plan

Overview of Marketing Plan

Central to any marketing plan is the identification of the potential customer base for a company's products or services. In some cases, the match is relatively easy to make. A new filter system designed for saltwater fish tanks over 500 gallons has a relatively narrow potential customer base: High-end saltwater aficionados. With such a narrow possible range of customers, the marketing plan used by the company making them can be equally narrow.

However, for a firm like MocFish whose potential customer base extends to tens of thousands of other companies, the marketing plan has to be able to connect to a highly diverse range of potential customers -- while still making each of those potential customers feel special. MocFish is laboring under the additional challenge of attempting a significant expansion during a recession. While e-commerce has been relatively resistant to the current contraction in the economy, this does not mean that it has been entirely resistant.

MocFish will have to provide -- at least in some cases -- independent research to its potential clients documenting how effective ecommerce strategies are within that client's own field.

Moreover, MocFish is dependent for its income on the marketing budgets of other companies. While it is generally acknowledged as a poor business choice, the first aspect of a company's budget that is often reduced during lean economic times is the marketing budget. Thus MocFish will have to convince many of its customers that a recession is the time to expand marketing, not to contract it.

Thus a key part of MocFish's task as it markets itself to other companies that wish to improve their own marketing is to demonstrate the effectiveness of e-commerce.

Data for the ongoing effectiveness of ecommerce strategies is available from a number of sources. MocFish will provide links to a number of these sources on its own website. It should be clear that one of the most effective and cost-efficient methods for MocFish to market itself will be to provide demonstrations of the range of design attributes that it can create for its clients' websites.

If You Build a Better Website & #8230;

MocFish's strategy, as it plans to expand its offices throughout its region, is to produce a product that companies will be attracted to as being more appealing than the products offered by similar companies -- sufficiently more attractive that companies will believe that they cannot market themselves effectively without a multilayered ecommerce strategy. MocFish is in fact able to offer this along several different dimensions. Depending on the client, what companies will want from MocFish must be marketing in different ways. Some companies will want an emphasis on the technological while others will be more easily sold on aesthetics attributes of the websites.

The first of these dimensions is the technical quality of its product. MocFish will provide various levels of support to companies that use its services, depending on how complex a system the company wishes and how much expertise the customer company can supply. MocFish provides robust platforms to all its customers, platforms that allow either MocFish or designers at the client companies to develop highly complex websites. Robust platforms also reduce ongoing site maintenance costs and upkeep time and expertise for the client. Most clients will be interested both in the finished product and in reassurances that another company will be responsible for the upkeep of the site.

MocFish provides some of the most Content Management Systems (or CMS) in the industry. While this is not something that client companies may even know that they need, the right CMS system is key to providing the most attractive website and thus to support and increase internet sales for any company. MocFish's CMS allows for more than one individual to contribute to a site while at the same time limiting access to only those individuals who have direct contributions to make.

A CMS can also improve communication among those individuals who update and maintain a site. Well-designed CMS sites allow for highly effective ways to create frequent updates to a site without any confusion over which version is the most current. CMS design can also make it easier for a company to implement an integrated IT strategy. This is a direction that more and more companies are taking.

Flash and Video

In addition to what can be described as a purely technical advantage that MocFish has over similar firms, it has an advantage along aesthetic lines. The degree of visual sophistication that the most effective websites now have is so far beyond the stage when Amazon's one-click check-out system was state of the art that expert wed design has become almost a necessity. MocFish can offer both videos and Flash elements that will make any company's website attractive.

One of the most difficult aspects of marketing in terms of ecommerce is how to make a company's website stand out. Incorporating Flash elements is one of the most effective strategies in terms of visual elements. It is also too complicated technically for most companies to handle themselves, even if they are using outside consultants. Individual consultants are unlikely themselves to have the expertise to create high-quality Flash or video elements. Even if they can do so, they are not able to do so in a way that is as financially as advantageous as the rates that MocFish can provide. MocFish has what can be seen as the ability to take advantage of a highly trained staff that is large enough that there can be a range of specialities.

Rates and Services

One of the ways in which MocFish can attract and maintain an expanding client base is to provide a range of services at market-competitive rates. The company offers hourly pricing. Because the services are priced per hour, the client can mix and match various services. For example, a client might choose to employ MocFish to create the Flash elements of its site because it has no employees with such technical skills. Developing Flash elements is relatively time consuming and so a client might save time/money by using in-house resources to build other aspects of the site. It would be advantageous for MocFish to build a client's entire site, and effectively most clients will probably follow this strategy, many clients would appreciate the fact that MocFish is attentive to the costs to the client.