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I read somewhere in a Philip Kotler’s marketing book that the smallest and the simplest definition of marketing is “meeting needs profitably”. Therefore the process starts from identification of needs, designing a product or service which contains requisite features and then the exchange of the same. The exchange will leave all the parties involved in the transaction better off i.e. a win-win game and not win-lose game.

For both (assuming there are only 2 parties involved, although there could be more than 2 as well) the parties to gain from the transaction, it is important or rather essential that both see some value proposition in the exchange. Due to its extreme importance in the business, the concept of value proposition is taught in every B-School. Every marketer, every business man, every CEO swears by it. They always talk about adding value to their share holders and stake holders.

But does the concept hold any relevance at SME (Small and medium enterprises) level? Do they also understand so called Value Proposition?

Recently I met with one of my friends. He has skates manufacturing unit in Noida (a suburb of Delhi). He happened to mention that he would like to have web presence for his business. We readily offered our (my friend as well) services but he mentioned that the final decision had to be taken by his father, who was running the business. He also warned us that his father is a tough nut to crack as many SEO consultants have found out earlier. So we decided to meet his father to explain to him the benefits of internet marketing and internet at large.

After an hour discussion, we were able to convince his father about the benefits of internet marketing and got the final approval. My friend was ecstatic and surprised as to how did we pull it off!

The answer is simple.

“Value Proposition”

Yes, we tried to show him the value which he would derive out of internet marketing instead of talking about Meta tags, keywords, alternate tags etc. which previous SEO companies did. We understood a very elementary thing that at the end of day, it is the extra business which he is interested in and not “search engine visibility”. He does not see value in being top on Google or Yahoo but generating that extra revenue.

So after this whole experience, I can safely say that yes the concept of “value proposition” is universal, exists even at Small scale level and will never lose its importance

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Ask a layman, “Who do you think are websites made for?” and I am sure the prompt reply would be, “of course humans”. Ask a web developer or a webmaster, who does he think of while developing a website, and I am sure the reply would be “Search engines and humans”.

Websites were always meant for humans. But as time progressed and the number of pages on the internet started growing exponentially, it became difficult to locate them. There entered the Search engines and something happened that changed the way people used internet: Google.

Fast forward to the present scenario. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) became more of a norm than an option. Any serious webmaster or business owner will make sure to put as much efforts as possible to please the Google algorithm to hog the maximum attention by getting in the first page of search results. I do not mean to belittle SEO efforts in any manner whatsoever. It has remained and will continue to be an important tool to get your website closer to netizens.

But somewhere down the line the real target audience (humans) of the web took a backseat and it was the search engines for which majority of efforts were directed to, sometimes at the cost of content. Therefore I always like to call SEO as online marketing for search engines.

But then web evolved further and we had social networking sites and social book marking sites. Social networks are a rage, anybody would testify to this fact. Millions of users around the world visit orkut, facebook, myspace. Just imagine the kind of ready audience available at these platforms. I strongly feel in near future marketing on social forums would be a prime method of marketing and not just an option. Webmasters and business owners should concentrate on putting quality content on their websites, which is appealing to the audience and warrants attention and repeat visits. And then having done that, put efforts to devise sustained market campaigns on these forums with equal vigor as they do in their offline marketing campaigns currently. And this especially will benefit to service providers who are ready for customers from a global marketplace.

And who knows if search engines start indexing and searching social network pages in near future, the marketing possibilities on these networks will rise exponentially.

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