What is Indirect Marketing?
Indirect marketing is the distribution of various products through channel which includes one or more than one seller. It is a way for a business to market their products, services or idea without using any appropriate method or direct marketing or advertising (Lopez, 2004). The main purpose behind indirect marketing is that instead of sending message directly to the targeted market; send some friend requests or any vote or some any other way to grasp the attention of the market. The channel in which there is no direct communication with the customers is involved by the respected companies is called as indirect marketing. It is generally taken as the step towards brand recognition and awareness. When the customers have the awareness of the product and the only requirement is to remind them about the product then indirect marketing will be used. In this sort of marketing no segmentation and target marketing is required. The symbolic presentation is provided to the customers without any sort of discrimination between them (Gropp, R., Vesala, J & Vulpes, G, 2004). The issue with this type of marketing is that sudden response of the customers is not recorded but for recording the response in future, questionnaires are used.
In German speaking countries, indirect marketing is taken as a way to improve the critical factors of a business. It is a tool to implement the strategies for a longer period of time. For instance, this marketing is like the branding of the company, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, liked processes and long term orientation to customers etc (Lopez, 2004).
Example of Indirect Marketing
Indirect marketing can be illustrated as there is a new product i.e. iphone video game and a website for a product where it can be ordered easily. for this product the target market will be teenagers and people who spend at least one hour in playing games. Most important thing in choosing indirect marketing is to select a niche and a target area where such type of interact and probably buy it. So for this market, different websites should be targeted like Twitter, mixx’s gamers, MySpace and games.net etc.
Advantages of Indirect Marketing
[large]• According to Roger, the advantage for indirect marketing is that it refers to marketing strategies that offers benefits for the potential customers outside the products and services offered by the company like expertise and entertainment in a specific field that is social and blogging media.
• By adopting this technique, potential customers are invited in order to engage at appoint they are comfortable so that hard selling tactics are avoided and such methods are also assumed to be inexpensive.
Disadvantages of Indirect Marketing
• This marketing is dependent more upon the building relationship so long time period is required for the implementation of strategies.
• This sort of marketing is very difficult to be measure like it is not possible to measure the followers of Twitter the company has which cannot be translated into sales.
• It rely more on creativity and content generation, so sometimes company not have enough resources with it to handle (Roger, 2012).
References
• Gropp, R., Vesala, J & Vulpes, G (2004). “Market indicators, bank fragility, and indirect market discipline, “Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Sep, pages 53-62.
• Lopez. J.E (2004). Commentary on “Market indicators, bank fragility, and indirect market discipline. Pp:67-71
• Roger, K.A. (2012). Marketing: The Core. McGaw-Hill Ryerson. p. 31.