Designing and implementing a marketing strategy that aligns with your brand is crucial for the success of your business when presenting your products and services. Factors such as target audience and competitor analysis, media planning, and the creation of social media strategies are essential to determine the right marketing strategy. Additionally, optimizing the online payment process is a key factor that needs attention. In this article, while exploring the contribution of correct moves in the online payment process to creating an effective marketing strategy, we will also discuss the impact of alternative payment methods on marketing strategy processes.
What is Marketing Strategy and How is it Formulated?
Marketing strategy is a systematic planning process that focuses on businesses directing their existing resources, discovering the strong and potential aspects of their products or services, and utilizing them best. In other words, marketing strategy is a comprehensive roadmap devised by a business to reach its target audience.
The fundamental steps for creating a suitable and effective marketing strategy for your business can be outlined as follows:
- Setting Goals: Setting measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals in your marketing processes ensures the existence of your strategy to achieve success. Moreover, breaking down these goals into specific periods allows for more organized actions. For example, a goal chart can be outlined, prioritizing increasing brand awareness initially and then aiming to increase sales as the next objective.
- Target Audience Analysis: Identifying the target audience within marketing strategies not only enhances the success of your brand but also allows you to understand your customers better. Additionally, it enables you to optimize your brand’s budget more effectively.
- Competitor Analysis: Another crucial point to consider when determining marketing strategy is a detailed identification of competitors. The primary purpose of the analysis is to have information and resources that will give your brand a competitive edge. In this process, competitors’ characteristics, behaviors, and communication methods with the target audience, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, are identified.
- Market Research: Market research is the most accurate method for understanding customer needs and demands. You can gather information by utilizing sources such as customer feedback, industry reports, and trend analyses.
- Selection of Marketing Channels: By identifying effective marketing channels on platforms where your target audience is present, you can design communication in various channels such as digital media, social media, content marketing, and email marketing.
- Monitoring and Analysis: Regularly monitoring the performance of your marketing strategy and evaluating campaign data using analytical tools allow you to steer your strategy in the right direction.
The steps you need to take to design an effective marketing strategy for your business or elevate existing marketing strategy processes can be summarized as follows. However, the steps that businesses of different industries and scales need to take in terms of marketing strategy vary.
Therefore, to develop and implement a marketing strategy, it would be beneficial for your business to seek assistance from a consulting agency specializing in growth marketing. While discussing the steps to ensure your brand remains competitive in the rapidly growing retail and e-commerce world, it is essential to remember other parameters that support your marketing strategy. Among the steps that will enhance your marketing strategy are customer experience, post-sales support, shipping and packaging processes, as well as designing online payment processes to meet customer needs, and ensuring the smooth operation of this step.
In the continuation of our article, when explaining online payment processes and alternative payment methods, we will answer the question, “What is the contribution of businesses diversifying their online payment processes to their marketing strategies?”
What is Online Payment?
Online payment is a digital transaction conducted over the Internet to purchase goods and services, commonly used on e-commerce websites, mobile applications, and other online platforms.
Online payment methods, aiming to provide users with a fast and user-friendly payment experience, are typically carried out using credit cards or debit cards. However, in addition to payment methods involving bank and credit cards, alternative payment methods are also frequently used.
What are the Most Preferred Alternative Payment Methods?
Alternative payment methods continue to gain popularity worldwide. Among these methods, which serve as alternatives to traditional payment methods like credit card payments, the most commonly used ones include digital wallets, shopping credits, and buy now, pay later options.
Digital Wallets
E-wallets, providing payment services with electronic money, are divided into closed-loop and open-loop systems. Closed-loop wallet solutions offer the opportunity for businesses to be used solely on their platforms (website/mobile application), while open-loop e-wallets, as licensed payment service providers according to regulations, can generally provide payment services to all affiliated institutions.
Buy Now, Pay Later
The buy now, pay later model, a widely used installment solution globally in recent times, offers customers the opportunity to make payments for purchased goods or services at a later date or within a specific period.
Leading examples of BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) solutions worldwide, such as Klarna, Afterpay, and Tabby, are frequently preferred by businesses. Many of them not only offer the BNPL model but also provide a digital wallet model.
Shopping Loan
A shopping loan is a method that consumers can benefit from, especially in purchase transactions where they do not want to exceed their credit card limits, cannot opt for installment plans, or wish to make more installment payments. Shopping loan solutions provide businesses with the opportunity to reach more customers and generate more revenue.
The Contribution of Alternative Payment Methods to the Marketing Strategy
Offering payment options with alternative payment methods alongside traditional ones not only enhances the customer experience but also assists businesses in increasing conversion rates.
Supporting such alternative payment methods provides businesses with a competitive advantage by offering more flexibility to their customers. In fact, according to research conducted in the United Kingdom, online retailers experience an annual loss of 2.13 billion euros due to inadequacy in the offered payment methods. One of the main reasons for this is customers not seeing options suitable for their payment preferences at the payment step. Especially considering the growing use of alternative payment methods, integrating these methods into payment strategies is of critical importance for businesses.
To illustrate this point with an example; for a business in sectors where installment options are not available due to regulations, offering a shopping loan solution as a payment option will undoubtedly be a preference for users. This will positively refresh the brand perception of the business while increasing conversion rates, positively impacting its revenue.
As seen, considering today’s competitive conditions, the impact of the payment step is significant in the success of marketing strategies. The common goal of budgets and efforts spent in marketing processes is to reach a larger customer base. Therefore, a payment strategy that encompasses different options while considering customer needs is of crucial importance.
Increase Your Options in the Online Payment Step with Craftgate!
By offering alternative payment methods to your customers in addition to credit card or debit card payment options, it is possible to increase your revenue and elevate your customer experience to the highest level. However, in today’s world where payment options are rapidly increasing, integrating all these options into your website poses a significant operational burden. At this point, Craftgate’s Payment Gateway solution will assist you.
Craftgate provides a solution with its Payment Gateway that allows you to access different options through ready integration with Alternative Payment Methods, offering a single point of access to your desired payment service providers. Thus, you do not need to exert effort for separate integrations for each one.
Conclusion
In summary, the payment stage holds significant importance for both businesses and customers in terms of marketing strategy. A smoothly functioning payment step and the variety of options offered during this stage enhance the customer experience. Accessing different payment service providers from a single point, including alternative payment methods, also provides operational advantages for businesses. Additionally, it contributes to the success of your marketing strategy processes.
If you would like to learn in detail about the advantages our merchants gain with Craftgate, you can review our References page.
To share our experience and knowledge in the world of online payments, we regularly publish content on the Craftgate Blog.
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