On the Construction of Marketing Channels for Internet Enterprises

On the Construction of Marketing Channels for Internet Enterprises

Marketing channel refers to all enterprises or individuals that obtain or help to transfer the ownership of a commodity or service when it is transferred from producers to consumers.

With the development of China's reform and opening up for more than 30 years, the IT industry is also groping forward with the development of market economy. Every few years, there will always be some companies that become unicorns in a certain segment. These software companies are industry leaders in this period. From Kingdee and UFIDA, to Netease and Sohu, to 360, Tencent,? In the era of vigorous development of Internet applications, especially in the era of popularization of mobile Internet, many large traditional software companies also hope to find effective ways of strategic transformation and survival in the Internet era through emerging Internet technologies such as e-commerce and social platforms.

Keywords integrated marketing; Channel construction; Partner management system; Regional underwriting

I. Introduction

(A) Research background

Since the industrial revolution, informatization has gradually become the first driving force for human society to enter the post-industrial era. Today, with the rapid development of mobile Internet, a large number of mobile applications have emerged. In the era of mobile Internet, technology companies pay more attention to scale and personalization. In this context, traditional IT enterprises are facing great challenges. As a large domestic e-commerce enterprise, Company A covers B2B, B2C, Internet finance, enterprise social and collaborative platform, enterprise cloud computing platform and so on. At present, B2C business accounts for the largest proportion of A company's revenue. As of 20 16, its business accounts for the following: In the development process, Company A has been aiming at serving small and medium-sized enterprises and providing e-commerce infrastructure for small and medium-sized enterprises, and put forward? Let there be no difficult business in the world? This slogan provides a package of comprehensive e-commerce solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises from the aspects of website construction, transaction guarantee, logistics distribution, financial leasing, financial management and customer management. The products included in the overall solution are expanded through regional general distribution, provincial distributors and provincial service providers. These business partners, trained by Company A, help traditional enterprises who don't understand e-commerce to establish online sales channels, which not only provides human resources support for the business development of Company A, but also enables these partners to gain economic benefits in the process of tutoring small and medium-sized enterprises to do e-commerce. After doing e-commerce, small and medium-sized enterprises have expanded their sales network and scale, and gained greater economic benefits by using the platform of Company A, while Company A has created a win-win market situation, thus establishing its leading position in the field of e-commerce in China and even the world.

(B) the purpose and significance of the study

Taking A company, a domestic e-commerce giant, as an example, this paper expounds the ideas and methods of the construction of marketing channels for Internet enterprises from the perspective of marketing, and combining with the integrated marketing theory, makes an in-depth study on the management problem that Internet enterprises should not only meet the economies of scale, but also meet the individual needs. Through this study, the aim is to expand the thinking of traditional IT enterprises in the transformation of Internet business and provide some reasonable solutions for the construction of Internet business channel system.

Second, the problem of Internet business expansion.

(1) Problems existing in the business development of the company

Company A was established in 1999, and its headquarters is located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. In the early stage of business development, due to the influence of American Internet development, Company A once focused on the construction of website system, ignoring the market expansion. At that time, China's national conditions were very different from those of the United States. American citizens' ability to use the Internet far exceeds that of China. Many families in China don't even know how to connect their computers to the Internet, let alone trade goods through the Internet. Therefore, after the e-commerce website was launched, the growth rate of users was very slow. Obviously, it is impossible to quickly open the market situation in China through online marketing and 800 telephone customers. A company's' target customer base' is the vast number of small and medium-sized enterprises, and the purchase decision of enterprises is more complicated. Therefore, although it is an internet business, it should also expand its business through the traditional multi-level dealer system. On 20 1 1 year, Company A adjusted the operating rules of online stores and upgraded the new back-office management system, including online store business through train and dealer customer relationship management system. Due to the new policy and the great upgrade and revision of the system, many users can't adapt to it, and the agency business can't be carried out normally. As a result, the online merchants went on strike and the dealers were angry. 2011/in June, the founder and CEO of company a held a press conference in Hangzhou to publicly apologize to the majority of SME users and distributors. It can be seen from the above events that the formulation of channel policies and the version upgrade of the system need to be carefully considered. Before the revision, we should do a good job in user research, listen to the opinions and suggestions of all parties, and put forward a perfect improvement plan.

(B) Analysis of the problems in the development of Internet enterprises

Many technology companies (including existing Internet companies) believe that Internet marketing mainly relies on online marketing plus advertising, such as SEO search, WeChat marketing, Weibo marketing, outdoor media and so on. , while ignoring the construction of traditional marketing channels. The reason for this kind of thinking logic is that technology companies generally believe that the service crowd of Internet business is consumers, so the marketing method naturally adopts the marketing method similar to consumer goods. But after careful analysis, at present, except Tencent, the direct income sources of other domestic Internet companies are corporate customers, and so is e-commerce. Therefore, the expansion of corporate customers must rely on the strength of dealers to achieve a multi-level agency channel system. From another perspective, Internet business sells services, which is different from traditional hardware products. Therefore, Internet commerce not only pursues scale, but also pursues personalization. If we can't find a balance between scale and personality, it will probably lead to polarization and eventually turn into an embarrassing situation of dilemma.

Third, channel construction solutions based on integrated marketing

(A) the status of the company's channel system

The channel system of Company A is divided into two modes: regional underwriting and hierarchical distribution, which are suitable for different business lines. For example, financial services, such as financial leasing and third-party payment, all adopt the policy of regional underwriting, because this kind of business is relatively simple, and after the products are sold to users, they don't need much follow-up services, but the requirements for dealers are to cover as much as possible and win by quantity. Therefore, it is suitable to divide each region by industry, and each divided region can only set up one dealer, such as commercial retail in Hunan Province and financial industry in Jiangsu Province. Other businesses, such as e-commerce, cloud computing, enterprise social networks and collaborative platforms, adopt a hierarchical distribution model. This kind of business is characterized by the need for refined services and high qualification requirements for dealers. Dealers should not only regularly participate in the business and technical training of Company A, but also constantly give users product training and deal with various technical problems.

Therefore, each region has a regional service center, which is equivalent to a regional general agent, and each province has several provincial agents. For example, there are two regional service centers in East China, one in Shanghai and one in Nanjing, and then there are four provincial-level agents in Jiangsu Province, which are responsible for Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Suzhong and Subei respectively. In this way, provincial agents will generally open up new users, and at the same time, the 800 customer service center of Company A will assign users who have been consulted by telephone to different provincial distributors. This process is called. Dispatch from headquarters? If the business is completed, the provincial distributor will sign a service contract with the user and submit a work order through the partner management system. After consultation with users, select a regional service center in the work order to complete the opening of corresponding services. In this way, users can consult provincial distributors for ordinary daily use problems, and the regional service center is responsible for guiding and solving complex technical problems or technical failures.

(B) Internet companies marketing channel construction ideas

It is not difficult to see from the current situation of the channel system of Company A that Internet companies need to strengthen the investment in marketing channel construction and establish a marketing channel network with wide coverage and professional service. Company A not only pays attention to the construction of marketing channels, but also develops a professional dealer management system. Through this system, dealers can not only manage customer relationship, apply for promotion rebate, contract management and work order management, but also watch online training courses, live online videos, listen to the experience sharing of other excellent dealers, and download the official product data and technical data provided by Company A for dealers.

Internet products have their own characteristics. For service products, the online and offline integrated marketing scheme can be used to improve the dealer's market expansion ability, such as online advertising marketing support and dealer's market cost support. For some well-qualified dealers, they can hold several positions, such as acting as an agent for both financial business and cloud computing business. Company A has also set up a number of dealer titles such as gold dealer, silver dealer and bronze dealer for dealers with different performance. Once the performance reaches the corresponding dealer title, you can enjoy more rights and interests, such as priority scheduling at headquarters and extra annual rebate plan. This channel incentive plan can effectively stimulate dealers to do more business expansion and cover a larger user group.

Four. Conclusion and thinking

As a domestic Internet giant, Company A has gradually realized the importance of distributors in the process of developing core businesses such as e-commerce, and has always regarded the construction of marketing channels as the focus of its market expansion plan. Many non-Internet technology companies try to find new growth points in the Internet field when the traditional business development encounters bottlenecks. However, from the successful experience of Company A, it can be seen that both online and offline businesses cannot avoid the problem of channel construction. As a platform product, the Internet sells service capabilities, so the ways and means of channel construction are different from the traditional dealer system. Therefore, it is necessary to combine network marketing, hierarchical distribution, regional underwriting and other ways to promote channel expansion through integrated marketing. As a distributor of Internet products, it relies more on the partner support system than traditional channels. Providing convenient and efficient back-office management system for dealers at all levels is one of the key factors to improve dealers' ability to expand customers. The functional design of this system and the formulation of supporting distributor channel policies need to listen to the opinions and suggestions of distributors and end users, which are not recognized by system engineers or company executives, so as to effectively drive distributors and promote the whole Internet business in an orderly manner.

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