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Dr. Ecommerce,
I'm looking for marketing information about commercialization of an b-b ecommerce solution (how do I best advertise my ecommerce order-tool?) . Do you have any sugestions of books, reports etc.?
Many thanks for your feedback
Erwin
Dear Erwin,
There's a great deal of information on the Internet about marketing, and new books on the subject are coming out every day. I can't recommend one over the other. But common sense can often help determine the quality of such information.
I find some of the marketing related discussion groups are ideal ways of discussing marketing methods with experts. Two such useful discussion lists are:
NowEurope at http://nowEurope.com/ (this is a European list that looks at a wide range of Internet and E-Commerce issues)
Internet Sales at http://www.mmgco.com/isales/ (this lists focuses much more so on sales and marketing issues, but it has a strong American bias)
There are many other similar lists which you can find with a search engine. One advantage to becoming involved in discussion lists, is that other participants are also involved in electronic commerce and you may also develop business relationships that will help you to more widely market your tool.
In addition, there are a number of electronic newsletters and other publications geared towards electronic commerce. Many of these accept advertising at relatively low rates, so this may be another good means of promoting your product to your target market. Take a look at http://www.ispo.cec.be/ecommerce/publications.html for numerous publications.
Finally, I think a very useful technique is to have a downloadable demo version of your software. In other words, a version of your software that either has some key features 'turned off' or which ceases to function after a limited time - around 30 days. This allows people to try out your software before they buy. The advantage to a demo is that there are many places to make such a demo available, from your own web site to shareware web sites, to give-away CD-ROMs that are distributed with magazines.
Good luck,
Dr.Ecommerce