Tune your b2b b2c portal store for upcoming season and festival

Press Release Summary = Optimize your b2b / b2c or c2c portal for upcoming seasons or festival, this is right time to market for christmas 2006.

Press Release Body = Marketing your products or services to your business clients offers many challenges than marketing directly to consumers. Here are some steps to help you optimize and boost your B2C and Shopping Portal marketing and promotional efforts.

* Search your target market and audience

Make sure you clearly defined your targeted customers. Find out who are the key decision makers. You can waste a lot of time and effort trying to sell to those who do not have the power to make buying decisions. Maximize your resources by targeting the true decisions makers. If you are not talking directly to the decision maker ensure that all information and collateral stands on its own with a clear message. The decision makers may only see your summary, so make sure it communicates your message clearly.

Make sure your marketing plan is aligned with your strategic business plan. It sounds simple, but in many organizations this does not happen. Marketing plans may get reorganized on a near daily basis due to reductions in budget, re-focusing of ideas, or changes in sales initiatives. By keeping in touch with your strategic business plan you will reduce your risk and also make better decisions. This will help you to deliver your marketing communications with maximum impact.

Most of B2C / B2B portal are not utilized to their maximum potential. Rather then thinking of it as an on-line catalog, one sees it more as a strategic competitive weapon. It is usually the first view of your company that many people receive. What do they see when they first look at your site? A global leader or another follower?

Today, the search engine results page for your company in like name in the new digital front page for your company. When you conduct a search for your company\'s name in Google, what do the first ten search results say about your company? Remember that this is what many potential clients read about you before they even visit your site! There are companies out there whose sole purpose is search engine reputation management. This involves ensuring top ten results for your name turn
favorable.

90% of technical buyers use the internet to seek products, so make sure you optimize your business opportunities being visible in the major search engine results.

Optimizing your site to be found in search engine searches is critical in today\'s economy. But this is only the first step. Once on your site, the visitors have to be converted into leads. Study your web analytics to find out the habits of your visitors. Invest in usability studies. Constantly update the site based on your findings to improve the user experience. This has paid huge dividends for many companies involved in B2B/ B2C and Online Shopping.


Remember, that your website is a low cost way to communicate about your product and brand to your target markets. Also bear in mind that the same is true for your smaller competitors! It is essential that you stay on the leading edge of the technology and maximize your online potential.

This is right time to gear up your website for Christmas 2006 Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing. Take the right step today, and you have six month to optimize your products. Besides, you save your cost on Pay Per Click or other paid Programs. Think about natural search engine optimization today, because when one goes for PPC program, it is too late by then and results are just anybody’s GUESS!!!

KARCHER USA OUTSOURCES B2B FUNCTIONS

Hosted Service Handles B2B/EDI Integration, Transactions & Operations Support
SEEBURGER has announced that Karcher USA, the U.S. division of the global cleaning equipment manufacturer, is outsourcing its trading partner management and other business-to-business functions to SEEBURGER Managed Services. SEEBURGER’s hosted service is handling all B2B/EDI transactions with Karcher’s U.S.-based retail customers as well as all transactions that pass through UPS Supply Chain Management (UPS-SCS), Karcher’s logistics provider, eliminating the time and expense involved in maintaining e-commerce systems in-house.

The engine that drives the service is the SEEBURGER B2B Gateway, a comprehensive EAI and B2B integration suite that is tightly integrated with Karcher’s SAP R/3 system to enable all transaction information to be automatically populated into SAP in real time. The gateway is processing thousands of Karcher messages per month, representing purchase orders, shipping notifications and other transactions with all U.S. customers ranging from Wal-Mart to Costco, Lowe’s, Menards, Sears and the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES).

That message volume also includes communications with UPS-SCS, which fulfills a large percentage of Karcher orders. All orders to be shipped directly by UPS are transmitted by the SEEBURGER service over a secure FTP connection, loaded into the UPS system, and confirmed with a shipping notice that is sent back to the SEEBURGER system and automatically imported into SAP.

SEEBURGER Managed Services is also handling Karcher’s eBusiness integration and operations support needs. Before deployment, this included all message mapping, workflow development and system testing with each trading partner as well as integration and testing with UPS’ information systems. Since deployment, responsibilities have included 24x7 system monitoring, error handling, and ongoing message maintenance to accommodate changes in trading partners’ needs.

“Our parent company in Germany and several other European offices use the installed SEEBURGER B2B Gateway for their B2B/EDI operations, but our business model in the U.S. is better suited to a hosted service because our staff here is relatively small,” said Oliver Schmid, Manager of Information Systems at Karcher USA in Duluth, Georgia. “It is more cost-efficient for us to outsource this service rather than investing in an internal infrastructure, including a developer and technician, even over the long run.”

Like other users of SEEBURGER Managed Services, Karcher pays a fixed monthly fee, avoiding the upfront costs associated with software, hardware, training and internal staff. Customers can use the SEEBURGER hosted platform as long as they wish, with the option to bring the system in-house at any time without having to invest in a completely new solution.

“Our hosted service reduces risk and lowers the total cost of ownership for any organization with B2B/EDI needs, whether it’s a smaller company, a larger enterprise, or a division like Karcher USA,” said Rakesh Harji, Managing Director of SEEBURGER UK. “Users have access to our mature B2B platform and our 20 years of experience in providing B2B solutions and services without having to install and maintain their e-business infrastructure in-house. These benefits and others make our Managed Services offering a practical alternative for managing B2B

Podcast Use Growing in B2B Marketplace

According to a recent survey, podcast usage among B2B technology buyers is significant and growing. 41% of survey respondents claim they have listened to podcasts on more than one occasion, while 13% stated that they “frequently” download or listen to them.

The KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann survey was completed by more than 3,900 business and IT professionals, representing a variety of job titles, vertical industries and company sizes.

“The objective of this study was to explore the impact new forms of media, concepts of Web 2.0 initiatives, such as podcasts and blogs, are having on content consumption and purchasing influence within the B2B marketplace” says Matt Lohman, director of market research, KnowledgeStorm. “This is one of the first surveys focused specifically on the B2B audience and it clearly shows that podcasts, blogs and other new media types are viable mediums for reaching B2B technology buyers.”

Thirty-two percent of survey respondents stated their usage of podcasts has “Increased” or “Significantly Increased” in the last six months. The same question yielded 39% for blogs. And, there is plenty of upside as the innovative media types, like podcasting, blogging and RSS, are still gaining momentum in the technology buying community.

“With this particular study, our goal was to determine marketing opportunities with podcasts by closely examining the behavior of podcast users as well as non-users,” says Stacy Malone, vice president, interactive media director, Universal McCann. “The results of this study prove that opportunities with new media are growing rapidly. In fact, podcasts have moved into the Top 10 most frequently accessed types of online content. This spike can be directly attributed to the addictive nature of this on-demand medium.”

B2B technology buyers are listening to podcasts for business interests, specifically technology-oriented topics, according to the study findings. Respondents are listening to a combination of personal and business interests in most cases — 65% responded that they listen for both personal and business interests. Furthermore, these respondents are listening to technology specific topics — 72% claimed that they have downloaded or listened to podcasts on technology topics on more than one occasion. Twenty-three percent do so “frequently.”

The study also revealed that B2B technology buyers want research content, such as white papers and analyst reports, delivered as podcasts. Nearly 60% of respondents said that information on business or technology topics, currently delivered as white papers or analyst reports, would be more interesting as podcasts. Fifty-five percent of respondents would be more likely to consume white papers and analyst reports if they were delivered as podcasts.

“Business and technology-related subject material is a perfect match for podcasting content,” says Malone. “Podcasts are no longer being used only for pure entertainment value. They are turning into an indispensable, business-critical information tool.”

“This survey presents a lot of encouraging findings for marketers considering podcasts as a content format. Not only are business and IT professionals tuning in, but frequent users are eager for more business and technology podcast content,” says Lohman. “Fifty-seven percent of the frequent podcast users stated their biggest challenge with podcasts is the scarcity of interesting content. That represents real opportunity for savvy marketers.”

This is the first in a planned series of joint research studies focused on the effect of new media with the B2B marketplace. Upcoming studies will cover topics such as: blogging, RSS feeds, Wikis, Webcasts and mobile technology.

Source: KnowledgeStorm