Posts

Showing posts from 2013

Happy Cross Border E-commerce 2014

Image
I wish everybody a happy , healthy and especially a great cross border e-commerce and marketing year. I have combined a few presentations about digital trends for 2014 in this combined slideshare presentation so everybody can keep up with the trends and be prepared for a great digital 2014!! Combined Presentations: Digital marketing trends 2014 , social media trends, consumer trends, ecommerce trends 2014 from Alex Baar

Cultural differences, marketing and management

Just because it is such an interesting subject, a short video about cultural dilemma's, management and marketing.

Top 30 world's most attractive e-commerce countries

Image
It is almost 2014. So, one of my last posts this year about 2013 figures.. But an interesting post! ATKearney  released an interesting report a few weeks ago. The so called "Global retail e-commerce index 2013".For everybody who is interested in cross border marketing and e-commerce, this is a must read report. Very useful for those who are busy with a global e-commerce strategy. The report ranks the top 30 countries for their online market attractiveness and it explains differences in e-commerce approach for a few major e-commerce countries. China tops the report, as ATKearny expect China e-commerce to explode in the next few years, thanks to improvements in infrastructure, urbanisation and the increase in consumption inside China. This article for example explains a path to a consumer led grow in China and explains about improving consumer protection (and thus more trust in online sales) China tops list of top 30 e-commerce countries AtKearney describes three g

Internationalise your online business

Image
You are a (small) retailer, and you want to expand your online business abroad. But how to start? In a series of blog posts, I will try to find some answers at questions like this. However every retailer has it's own current situation and a "one answer fits all" is impossible: If you do not have enormous budgets, for developing new websites and hiring international e-commerce experts, you can do things yourself. In my opinion a localized site and localised promotions are absolutely the ideal situation. There are to many differences in culture, legal and commerce, to just copy paste your website. First make sure you have (or find someone who has) e-commerce or website experience in your home country. It will give you many insights that will help you make you succesfull abroad. It is not of any use to sent traffic to your website, if the website is not delivering what you want it to deliver (orders, leads, brand value etc). If your current website is not performing, d

International e-business and online marketing channels: some quick thoughts

Image
Today, I am in the mood for writing something. Just a quick blog post today about international e-business. A few things to take into account when practicing international e-commerce. Email marketing E-mail marketing is an excellent channel to use for generating traffic to your website. A lot of people often forget about "deliverability". Deliverability means the percentage of the e-mails you sent out, that arrives at the subscribers. I won't go into details now. But if you go abroad with your email marketing campaigns, make sure you focus at deliverability. If your  e-mail does not arrive at many people of your database, you lose a lot of money! Make sure your e-mail service provider can help you with e-mail deliverability in the countries you are active. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing can be a good alternative source for traffic and sales. At this moment there are no global affiliate marketing agency's. Note that the affiliate marketing maturenes

Presentation "Dutch Export Event 2013" : international digital online strategy

Below the presentation, I gave at the Dutch Export event 2013. The topic was international online marketing and the differences between countries and how to setup an international digital online strategy. Thank you Fenedex for organising this very interesting day! Dutch Version: Presentatie nationaal export_event_internationale_online_strategie from Alex Baar English version:

The Effortless Experience: Book Review

Image
We all know the stories about Zappo's.com or Dutch Coolblue.com and their extreme focus at customer service. The stories are often very inspiring and motivating (for marketers and customer service professionals). After reading these stories, I often get very much motivated to use these experiences in my daily job. But not all companies can differentiate with such extreme customer service. W hat if the holy grail of service for many companies is not customer delight, but customer relief?  It's always good to see things from a different perspective.  Besides that, to have a great customer experience (and conversion) in your digital channels you have to understand customer service!  So I decided to buy a book about customer experience. " The effortless experience "  by Nick Toman and Rick Delisi. I've read it and below a short summary of my findings combined with my personal opinion and the relation with digital. First the book starts with asking the question:

E-commerce strategy and third party advertising - the pro's and con's

Image
Many company's who are into e-commerce, sooner or later will ask themselves the question "is it an advantage or disadvantage for us to promote our products at third party websites like Amazon, Ebay or local variants"? This question is not so easy to answer. It really depends per organization, but we tried to establish a list with pro's and con's. You have to remember that the philosophy of many of the real large "third party" marketplaces like Amazon, Rakuten, E-bay, is that they expect, that in a few years time there will be only a few real large webshops available for the mainstream products. They are tend to be one of them! They need your product feed to establish that! The position of third party advertising in your e-commerce strategy? Pro's (why sent your product feed to a third party webshop) Reach Third party webshops usually have an enormous reach! Millions of people search for a product and because of price of reputation