Business to Business Marketing Strategy Planning for the SME Marketplace of XYZ

Abstract

This research is motivated by the establishment of the SME Marketplace (SMP) platform as a provider of digital products for SME entrepreneurs. This study aims to plan a marketing strategy for the SMP platform by knowing segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) and e-marketing mix. This study uses a qualitative method by conducting in-depth interviews with internal sources of companies providing SMP platforms, members of the SME community, consumers, and experts. The results showed that customer segmentation had been carried out from the beginning by SMP platform providers, namely Business to Customer (B2C), Business to Business (B2B), and Business to Government (B2G), then dividing the B2B into smaller segments namely Large Enterprise (LE) and Small Medium Enterprise (SME), from which SME segment of the SMP platform appears. Targeting of the SMP platform is the owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in big cities which digitally have minimum literacy at the basic level, namely having a smart phone. Meanwhile, the SMP platform’s positioning is to become a one stop marketplace for various digital SME solutions. E-marketing mix, from the product side, the SMP platform as a complete and integrated SME digital product provider, is expected to be able to offer products by providing more values and benefits to customers with market-oriented and fixed pricing. Product distribution is mostly online, while some is offline. Integrated Communication Mix (IMC), the SMP platform using owned media, namely official websites and an application that can be downloaded, paid media by utilizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in search engines, SMS Campaigns, endorsements using public figures and hold activities that can directly build interaction with SMEs and the community, and earned media that run by provoking positive testimonials in their own media or initiated forums.