Wholesale Dropshippers & Dropshipping Product Suppliers Blog

Monday, February 28, 2011

Utilizing demographics in online marketing

In simple words “demographics” is the data or information about some specific group of population. These groups are formed on the basis of distinctions like age, gender, monthly income, race, education, marital status, etc. The word demographics has stemmed from demography which is the study of population. In modern marketing, marketing persons tend to use psycho graphics in conjunction with demographics (demographics is the classification on the basis of age, sex, race while psycho graphics is the study of their attitudes, values, lifestyle, etc). Though some experts are not in favor of mixing up these two, you shouldn’t be too concerned about making out if the information you are going to use in your marketing falls under the label of demographics or psycho graphics (because in all likelihood you’ll be using both).

Using Demographics in Online Marketing:

The most commonly used demographic profiling is based on age, where we have groups like baby boomers, adults, teens or children. Other profiles include men, women, African American, Generation X, Hispanic, and so on. As you can see, knowing the demographics of your target market is imperative when making your marketing strategy or advertisement, or else you’ll be shooting in dark when making your marketing strategy. Therefore, the first thing when planning your internet marketing campaign is to make a demographic profile of your target market.

For example, if you are going to start an extreme sports blog, you must be aware of the fact that the majority of the visitors will be coming from the age group of say 18 to 35, most of them men (the figures are not based on some research but just been quoted as an example). Such generalization helps when deciding what kind of ads you can place on your website or what sort of design or features your target audience would like to see.

Similarly, when you are planning to start an e-commerce portal for some specific region, you must get hold of the information like internet usage in that particular region, online habits, online shopping behaviors and the likes. Users from one country or region can typically have quite a different set of habits, preferences, routine, etc. Furthermore, studies have shown a clear difference between the online habits of men and women. You can find plenty of survey reports doing rounds on internet with a focus on online shopping behaviors. Going through these reports and knowing the facts will definitely help as opposed to a marketing plan which has been put together around assumptions or wild guesses.

Source:
USA Wholesale Suppliers, Distributors, Dropshippers & Manufacturers

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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Improving productivity by removing bad working habits

Have you ever wondered how big an impact our habits can have on our destiny? Do you have any idea as to how much of what we do or what we think is actually habitual? You don’t need any stats or figures to understand the gist, as a little bit of pondering will reveal that most of the time what you do is nothing more than you following a pattern, set by No one else but yourself. You are not to be blamed though, because most of the times you were not even aware of the negative bearing some particular habit might have on your career. One wicked thing about bad habits is that they are hard to break, however the good thing about these habits is that we can replace them with new, more productive ones

Punctuality:
Often, we found ourselves reaching late at offices, day after day, despite the fact that we would like to get there in time. It almost works like a curse. Every time you find yourself behind schedule, you make up your mind to be on time from now onwards, only to find yourself behindhand once again, that too for no obvious reasons. There’s no need to describe how unpunctuality can hurt your professional life as everybody is well aware of the importance of punctuality. If your lateness is limited to reaching late at your workplace then maybe all you need to do is to sleep early and use alarm clocks, however if you are behind schedule in most of your business projects or meetings, then you may need some serious planning.

Unprofessional Conduct:
Maintaining a professional behavior is very important. There are many kinds of inappropriate behaviors, for example arrogance, humor, bullying your coworkers or dressing unprofessionally. There should be a friendly environment at the workplace, but some people go overboard and start cracking jokes and calling names in a manner that spoils the working environment. These funny fellows then proceed to ridicule some relatively shy ones, resulting in hostile feelings among the coworkers. Therefore, you must keep your anger, attitude or sense of humor in check while at office. The focus must be on official assignments, all other things (socializing, having fun, gossip) should be secondary.

Wasting time on irrelevant stuff:
One of the very few evils of internet is that it allows us to burn hour after hour of our precious working time, without us even noticing it. There are protocols in place at most offices now; however the time-wasting habit keeps hampering those who work from home.

Source:
Wholesale Suppliers

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Monday, January 03, 2011

Social group influence on buyer’s behavior

It is the customer, who makes the decision of buying something, right? But how does he/she reach to that decision? There's a complete procedure and different stages to this decision and as a marketer, you must know the process. For the reason that you are not going to win a customer unless you are well in terms with the factors that influence the buying behavior. Generally, the process starts from the moment a customer feels the need of a particular product (or service), next step is to look for different options available, after weighing up these options, the customer then reaches on a final decision to pay for one of these options.

Very few customers are capable of making an entirely independent and rational decision, without getting influenced by any of the external factors. One of the most important factors is the social influence, which plays a very important role in a customer purchase decision. Let’s have a look at how these social influences can affect the buying behavior.

Family Buying Behavior:

Among all social groups, family of course is the closest, hence the most influential. Knowing the answers to the questions like … who in the family is going to make the final buying decision, or who is going to pay the bill, can help a lot. Because even if your product has got nothing to do with parents, and is mainly intended for the children use. It is actually the parents who are going to pay the bill, therefore you are supposed to market the product from parent’s perspective and not of children (unless the product is some inexpensive toy or candy that the child can purchase from their pocket money).

Social Class:

Society is normally divided in three classes by sociologists, namely upper class, middle class and lower class. Some divide it in further sets like upper-middle or lower-lower classes. All of these classes have their own characteristics, social values, set of needs and spending patterns. Obviously, the buying behavior is going to be different for people belonging to any of these classes, you need to address the right set of needs when marketing for a specific class of society.

Cultural Influence:
American, European, Indian, Chinese … all of these cultures are poles apart when it comes to the people’s needs and preferences, who are a part of some specific culture. Your marketing tactics should be strictly in line with these cultures and their moral values.

Source:
Wholesale
Wholesale Suppliers

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