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Web Marketing PMI: data from the Italian context

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Web Marketing PMI: data from the Italian context


Have you ever wondered what the best tools are for Web Marketing for your SME?

Every entrepreneur is bombarded daily with proposals for digital activities, new channels to promote the company with the Internet and sensational information on how social media can help the sales of a small and medium-sized business.

But in the end , how much does an average SME sell online ? How much does an average Amazon store generate revenue? When is there enough of a market to exploit digital marketing in an SME?

An analysis that every company can do to make an informed choice

We answered these questions last October 23 during an in-depth seminar organized by Bergamo Sviluppo at the Bergamo Chamber of Commerce.

Our proposal was to:

  1. First of all, inform entrepreneurs about the real context of online sales

  2. provide some basics for studying the potential customer's purchasing path

  3. provide a method to understand if there is online demand for your products and services

  4. give an overview of the web marketing tools available for an SME

  5. Know what results to expect and how to measure them with conversion goals

To facilitate learning, as always, we have created an operational work scheme:


web marketing tools selection scheme for SMEs

... and we filmed the speech in the seminar to publish it "in installments" here on our blog, on our YouTube channel and through Facebook and Linkedin.

What is the context?

The video above, taken from the seminar, highlights the main data of the Italian context of online sales in SMEs. It talks about B2B and B2C ecommerce, but not only.

Statistics are also highlighted that describe which channels are most used by a potential customer in the information phase and shortly before purchasing.

The video, which lasts about 13 minutes, is therefore an indispensable smattering of knowledge to know "the numbers that count" when talking about online sales in Italy.

The next video will be about online demand analysis, don't miss it!


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Video Transcript:

so concept one whether you like it or not the web is already influencing your company I think you have understood this because you are here there are two main approaches that you can have with respect to digital marketing you can have an approach linked to e-commerce B2B and B2C e-commerce that is you can sell to other companies or sell to the end customer or you can have a direct and indirect influence on sales with respect to the use of the web with the consumer ROPO that is research online purchase offline that is people who in some way do research for products or services online but who buy in the store who buy by calling the company rather than sending an email are obviously two completely different things I will give you

data on each of the two scenarios in both cases on business to business and business to consumer. B2C ecommerce in Italy is worth approximately 26 billion euros there is the ranking of sales in Europe for billions of euros Italy is the fifth country so Italy is an excellent market for

ecommerce but how many Italians buy online? simplifying a bit because obviously the data is segmented by age group by geographic area by sex and so on we can say that in Italy the segment of the population most likely to buy online are men between 24 and 34 years old living in the north east ok if you start to think about this data it means that when you do online advertising campaigns let's say to bring traffic to your ecommerce on your website especially if an ecommerce you could also decide to exclude the areas of the center south ok because you start to buy traffic that arrives on the site but does not convert so you are throwing money out the window this is a general data what is done in practice is to test different campaigns by geographic area to see how they convert often it happens that on converts less and then eliminate them. Is everything clear so far? So penetration of online shopping centers I have put the ranking for you as I anticipated a little while ago

you have the list of the largest online shopping centers divided by the main European markets in Italy the leader is Amazon, followed by Bay and then there is Eprice as regards the product categories there is a little more diversification even if obviously consumer electronics reigns supreme ok how many of you buy on Amazon? Half more or less half, then follows clothing and then some categories including emerging ones such as food ok Amazon is making large investments to sell food even daily consumption food in our countries in America it has purchased a chain of organic supermarkets the future as I think you have seen as it will explain to you shortly is that Amazon opens stores in Italy too another thing that might interest you is the average turnover generated by a company on marketplaces like Amazon ok because one of the proposals and ideas is often there it is ok I can't do it alone I hook onto Amazon I let myself be pulled by the Amazon audience and with this I support my business it could be an idea that comes to mind so 56 percent

of the companies that sell on the marketplaces declare that the sales component generated is less than 10 percent of the total is the data clear? so almost 60 percent of the companies that sell on Amazon on Amazon sell 10 percent of their turnover so only 18 percent of the companies have a turnover generated greater than 50 percent of the total is everything clear about the relationship between e-commerce and final consumers? Well, let's move on to talk about the relationship between companies that do commercial exchanges via e-commerce so we are always talking about transactions that take place via a company e-commerce company e-commerce therefore B2B

in Italy it is worth 15 percent of the total exchanges between companies which is not bad it is not such a negative figure and 26 percent of the total transactions towards foreign countries this other figure is very interesting

so I put on the total transactions how much is transacted in B2B and how much is transacted through e-commerce so you will see that the majority of these sales take place in the automotive sector, then mass consumption and then large-scale distribution, orders to large-scale distribution textile clothing pharmaceutical electrical material and household appliances

so even in this case we are generally talking about medium-large companies. The average percentage of turnover generated by e-commerce in Italy is 9 percent.

the euro area is at 15 percent this is a figure for non-financial companies with at least 10 employees we are talking about the segment of smaller companies that has been analyzed so once again there would be a good margin for improvement here too but the figure is not so cheerful let's go and see instead how web marketing activity can influence sales without a direct transaction on e-commerce the first thing you absolutely have to assimilate is that online sales are obviously not separate from all the other channels I'm talking about the shop I'm talking about when someone calls you at your company I'm talking about emails I'm talking about the office I'm talking about the distribution network the trend is towards an omnichannel approach that is where the different channels contribute coherently to the purchase so I can connect to your company in a first case with the smartphone then I go back with the computer then I come to visit you in the shop and everything must be coherent so much so that there are some new forms of retail ok that foresee the shop as a showroom where you don't buy where you go try touch and then it is delivered to your home in the evening this is amazon go! I told you about it before, I don't know if you've already heard of it, it's the store where you go in and you don't pay but you buy directly with your Amazon account, so this is data relating to the USA but in my opinion it's also valid for the European market. You should know that for every dollar spent in a physical store, 64 cents were

influenced by digital marketing activities so it means that whether you like it or not even if you don't sell online obviously your business is influenced by 64 percent by what you do online because people before during and after the purchase go through a series of processes in sequence these are aggregated data that lead them to the purchase decision first of all they visit the website or the App 58 percent so in the era of Facebook Instagram Amazon and so on doesn't this data surprise you? No? It does to me especially because many companies when they ask us for advice and support tell us but I would start with the Facebook page and maybe we do a bit of Instagram but not the website because... obviously for a saving on the initial costs looking at

what would you answer to this data? Site yes! so first yes ok 54 percent used search engine mainly in Italy Google with a little bit of Bing but we already knew this right so

if they don't find you on the search engine because you don't have a positioned website let's talk about it they visited a store or other places of the company they visited a website not of the retailer or they used an online map so there are also 31 percent search via map companies, brands and products we're talking about Google Maps rather than other mapping systems frequency of online search so how many times do you go to do an online search before making a purchase 26 percent 3/4 times followed by 17 percent who do it half of the time

times and so on so the interesting fact is that obviously the purchasing path in many cases requires more than one visit ok here I'll put another seed in your head then you'll see later what you need which is remarketing are you all clear on what remarketing is?

I'll give you an example, you go to a specific product on Amazon and then in two weeks you are listed by that product everywhere on the web, social media and websites in general, right? For retailers on the most advanced of arrival, targeted email, that's remarketing, when you're ready to buy again, people return to the website for 27 percent, they do a search probably to get confirmation, they ask a friend or relative for an opinion, they go to review sites or they go looking for coupons, they sign up for newsletters and so on, once again the website returns, this data should make you understand that the purchasing process is a sort of complex obstacle course, if the main mistake of small and medium-sized businesses is not to do this entire process because it is considered too difficult, in reality it is not difficult, do you believe me?

no? It was a rhetorical question so to say... ok and in business to business because this is the face I find from entrepreneurs who work in B2B

I can't buy but I have vendors, there are fairs... I said can, but it also happens in other provinces

there are also some in the provinces we are in business to business and 67 percent and even more with a different use of tools ok but in an even higher way here if you have to sell to other companies that the market is large, that it is not large, that there are 10 sellers in all of Europe where to do the same types of reasoning some data these are data directly from Google the 58

percent of business to business purchases related to industrial production start from the initial research on the product online so product I mean not the brand I gave you the example, lawnmower, tire, sprinkler and then continue with the name of the brand ok? This thing for

you is a very powerful weapon because it means that there is curiosity towards the search for suppliers

potential it is not so obvious that a purchasing office this is data from Google it is not obvious that a purchasing office intervenes to do this type of research open regardless of the reference category the majority of buyers who carry out online searches take into consideration more than two brands and companies ok so it means in some way obviously also in the B"B you have to think about what? Remarketing other data an interesting thing the purchasing path also in business to business is speeding up so there is 60 percent of people who get information online and then purchase the first direct visit with the company for industrial producers, for industrial suppliers 79 percent of customers get information online and purchase again on the first visit which therefore means that for a small and medium enterprise this is a very powerful tool for

work both in Italy and abroad because it helps to get in direct contact with buyers obviously because when everything is in the hands of the buyer


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