Why Emerging Markets Should be Part of Your eCommerce Strategy

Many regions of the world still have small online emerging markets. However, eCommerce continues to present a significant chance for economic growth. Businesses may reach more customers both domestically and internationally through online sales. In auxiliary industries like technology firms, payment service providers, and shipping firms, new jobs are also created. The number of people shopping online has considerably increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In developing economies, there is still a sizable latent demand for e-commerce.

Table of Contents
What are Emerging Markets?
Marketing Tips for Emerging Markets
Analyzing the Different Market Types
To sum it all up

What are Emerging Markets?

The most critical difficulty facing multinational firms today, according to their CEOs and top management groups, is globalization. This is especially true in North America, Europe, and Japan. They are also well aware of how difficult it has become in the last ten years to determine internationalization strategies and which nations to do business with. However, the majority of companies have continued to use the tactics they have always used, which prioritize generic approaches to new markets while occasionally experimenting with a few local tweaks. As a result, many multinational firms are failing to build viable strategies in emerging regions.

Local business owners are ideally situated to seize the opportunity presented by the internet trade. For e-commerce behemoths, a small national internet market may not attract much interest. But it can nonetheless allow plenty of potential for the emergence of low-cost local enterprises

The crucial role that “soft” infrastructure plays in the implementation of businesses’ business models in their domestic markets is typically taken for granted by companies in industrialized nations. However, in emerging markets, that infrastructure is frequently lacking or inadequate. There are plenty of instances. In order to personalize items to individual demands and raise people’s willingness to pay, businesses are unable to locate competent market research organizations that can provide them with accurate information about client preferences. 

Few end-to-end logistics providers, which allow manufacturers to reduce costs, are available to transport raw materials and finished products. Companies must screen a significant number of applicants themselves before hiring because there aren’t many search services that can handle this task for them.

In the journal shared by Harvard Business Review, it shared that numerous corporations shied away from new areas when they should have engaged with them more intimately. The majority of goods and services have seen the fastest global market growth in developing nations since the early 1990s. By locating manufacturing and service facilities there, where skilled labor and qualified managers are comparatively affordable, businesses can cut expenses. 

Additionally, the number of multinational firms from developing nations have expanded into North America and Europe using creative business models and low-cost techniques, such as China’s Haier Group in the home appliance industry. Western businesses must expand farther into emerging markets in order to create counter strategies since these markets support different types of innovations than mature markets.

Marketing Tips for Emerging Markets

Even for bigger businesses, conducting business in undeveloped nations can be difficult. What works in one area frequently doesn’t work in another in emerging markets. Finding techniques that work in emerging markets and making judicious use of your resources are the keys to success in this situation. This article has been put together to teach you how to conduct business in emerging markets and to provide you with suggestions for developing a lean emerging markets strategy.

  • Choose the audience that fits your brand.

The initial step of extending your business to new business sectors is to pick 3 or 4 potential nations that match your profile. Generally speaking, it comes down to choosing markets with a huge enough market and little enough contest.

One of the advantages of picking developing business sectors as your objective is their size and quick monetary development which, joined with expanding shopper interest, offer an enormous measure of chances. They likewise will generally have section obstructions that keep the opposition somewhat low.

As per the OECD, ASEAN nations experienced a quick Gross domestic product development of 5.1% in 2017, promising a hopeful financial standpoint for Southeast Asia in 2018 too.

  • Create a run-through.

    The possibility of the lean market passage technique isn’t to direct detailed statistical surveying, foster an ideal methodology first, and afterward to execute it. It’s a remarkable inverse, as a matter of fact. With this technique, you will invest less energy “picking” the business sectors and a larger part of it testing them, in actuality. The following are a portion of the strategies for evaluating new business sectors. Those strategies frequently cost under a return flight ticket from your settlement.

Understand the different demographics: 

  • Age
  • Location
  • Occupation
  • Economic Standpoint
  • Needs
  • Gender
  • Interests
  • Educational Background
  • Take the calculated risk.

At this phase of the procedure, you as of now have reasonable involvement with the new business sectors. When you track down a market with clear potential, now is the right time to zero in your assets on those business sectors and get them before your rivals do.

In any case, we are as yet remaining consistent with our lean methodology. Rather than pulling out all the stops and slow, your attention ought to be on developing your center business while reevaluating all the other things. Remember, your marketing strategy is dependent on your business goals, so make sure you consider the bigger picture as you plan how to market your product or service.

Analyzing the Different Market Types

There are plenty of opportunities in e-commerce for the Philippines and digital marketing specialists can put their expertise to good use in helping businesses reach out to target audiences. It’s about creating a rapport through these platforms, be it around selfies or food trends, that drive engagement with the target audience. The success of an e-commerce business will also depend on how well it connects with its customers and how useful they perceive the resources they get from them.

In general, you can use the results of your market analysis to make better marketing and business decisions. For example, if you conduct a price sensitivity survey, you’ll know how much money to ask for your product or service in order to appeal to customers. If you run a competitor analysis, you will be able to assess your competition, create a marketing plan, and make pricing decisions accordingly.

The four general types of market research are marketing, sales, customer satisfaction and business analysis. Depending on your purpose and the type of business you are conducting, you may be required to conduct research in more than one market research category. For example, if you are thinking about widening your market to a neighboring town, you might want to conduct some preliminary research on that area’s population and employment rates if you are evaluating the potential success of the expansion. When done correctly, market analysis will help you better understand your business objectives and therefore, how to achieve them.

With a better understanding of your target market, you can begin to think about how to reach out to them. Whether you want to use digital or traditional marketing methods, you should now be able to determine how much of your budget should go towards each avenue, which is good because research shows that businesses cut back on their marketing budgets when the economy slips. Segmented customer targeting allows you to better refine your marketing budget and time so that you are getting results from your efforts as opposed to wasting resources.

Speaking of attracting potential customers, you can also venture into working on your business through an eCommerce platform. There’s one company that specializes in the eCommerce market – Shoppable! The company is the pioneer in the Philippines to be the first digital procurement platform that specializes in business-to-business transactions. 

Here’s why you should join Shoppable…
  • It’s FREE – It’s free to start selling on the Shoppable platform. As long as you’re a legally registered business, you’ll be able to list products for free on Shoppable. You only pay a commission if an item sells on the platform, and you get paid.
  • Expand your Customer base – Through Shoppable, you’ll reach thousands of new customers for free. Think of Shoppable as your marketing arm that you only pay when you have a sale.
  • Get your eCommerce Store – Increase sales by digitizing your product catalog and reaching customers worldwide. Print catalogs are dying, costly, and not environment friendly – digital is the future. Sellers can get their eCommerce store on Shoppable Business that can be given to any client.
  • Procurement Technology – Enable your customers to pay you online through Bank Transfers, Credit Cards, Over-the-Counter Payments, Recurring Payments, and more. Easily track and manage orders, payments, and shipping through the Shoppable platform.
  • Shipping Technology – Shoppable has integrated directly with multiple shipping couriers, enabling you to provide same-day to next-day delivery to your customers.
  • Compliance – Sales invoices and 2307’s required? Don’t worry. Shoppable has got you covered! The platform keeps sellers fully compliant, never worrying about missing documents.
  • 3PL & Fulfillment Services – Need additional manpower? Shoppable can provide you with warehousing and fulfillment solutions so you can expand your brand to different locations enabling you to get products delivered faster to your customers.
  • Real Sellers, Real Buyers, and Real Products only – We vet and interview sellers that join the platform, so you will be assured that all of the products and transactions are authentic and legitimate. 

Going back, when you’ve calculated your market size and analyzed who your customers are, you can more easily come up with a marketing strategy to reach them. There is a certain amount of trial-and-error involved with marketing, but not as much when you know who you’re targeting. 

Once you’ve taken a look at the different factors that matter to your target market, use customer surveys and interviews to learn more about their behavior and the predictors of their future behavior. This is when you’ll need to get your hands dirty with those emails and phone calls! The final step in this process is deciding which subset of your target market – your job market avatar – you want to go after. When you make that choice, it will be time to really start marketing products!

The strategies you come up with for this analysis will depend on the type of market you’re selling to. A key point here, however, is to focus your efforts on one particular section of your target market at a time, testing and refining that before moving on to the next group. That way, you’re sure to make the most effective use of your company’s resources.

A marketing strategy can help you achieve your goals, given all the options and information out there, how do you know what you should be doing? How can you ensure that your marketing strategy is correct for your business? It all starts with a good grasp of your market and a firm understanding of your goals.

Use demographic data to inform your marketing strategy. By knowing who your market is, you can target them more effectively with certain types of ads. And the better understanding you have, the easier it will be to decide what specific elements appeal to them most.

To sum it all up…

This is just a basic breakdown of the most common market types and the newly emerging markets in the eCommerce industry. You can find more information on determining an appropriate target market by consulting a fairly wide variety of resources. Once you have determined your target market, the next step is effectively marketing to them. This is where many businesses begin to struggle and it is up to you to overcome this obstacle and make the sale!

The takeaway here is to know who your customer is, and to know what they are thinking. When you do a good target market analysis, you get your customer segment right, and can then develop a marketing strategy that will resonate with those particular customers. The key focus behind this article is to help you find the right market strategy and make correct assumptions of your brand’s future growth in the marketplace.

The Philippines is one of the most advantageous countries in digital marketing. It’s a globally positioned nation that consistently outperforms other Asian countries in digital marketing. With the highest internet penetration rates and hours spent online, Filipino digital consumers constitute a substantial target market for e-commerce companies or start-ups. By formulating a well-integrated e-marketing strategy, businesses can harness digital marketing to effectively penetrate overseas markets.

If by any chance you’re an eCommerce business looking to enter emerging markets, a marketplace like Shoppable can help your business with digital marketing strategies especially to new and emerging markets. Our marketplace allows sellers to sell more efficiently with SEO-optimized web pages, categories, and products, helping you market your products in emerging and existing markets. Drop by and say hello to [email protected] or click here to join in one of the fastest growing eCommerce B2B marketplace in the Philippines.

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