Essay - Strategic Competition vs. Team Cooperation Marketing Strategy of Herbaladvisor.com Introduction...

Strategic Competition vs. Team Cooperation

Marketing Strategy of HerbalAdvisor.com

Introduction

An online retailer of nutritional supplements and alternative medicine, Herbal Advisor has a marketing staff ***** 10 Product Marketing Executives (PMEs) among whom; around 10 thousand products (incl. variations) of the Web Site are evenly distributed for their paid Web Marketing. The study reveals how strategic competition proves to be more effective than team cooperation in achiev*****g the company's targets.

Methodology

***** team member's initial assignment was to generate as many "specific" search terms as possible from every unique product name for paid submissions in Overture.com, and Google.com which were two of ***** main search engines where the company's Web Marketing was done.

Through the help ***** ADManagerTM - a state-of-the-art Tracking System of the company, every PME could monitor the revenue generated from each search term, as well as the advertising cost incurred thereon, specifically in each search engine.

Flaws in ***** Cooperation

***** ***** *****itially followed a ***** policy that w***** based on Team Cooperation. According to this, the team was given a collective task ***** search term generation and submission without evenly distributing the products for marketing ***** them. The results led to an incredibly high advertising cost ***** was beyond budgeting, and sales way *****o low than that which was forecasted.

When discovered, it ***** noticed ***** the team did not take ***** pain in even understanding the product types, or knowing ***** ***** carried by the ***** Site's inventory. They ********** generated all heath-related search ***** that they found to have high click-through ratio. Consequently, the generated search ********** ***** general words like "nutrition," "weight loss," "hair c*****," "fitness," "diet," etc. ***** got the website innumerable visitors, but almost none that converted to a buyer.

When it was individually inquired from each PME, the general reply was that they knew web marketing, but ***** not know how to generate r*****ue through the activ*****y. They had collectively done ***** job with loyalty, but if their ***** no *****, it was as a result of consumer psychology that he comes to the Web Site for in*****mation, and goes ***** the local pharmacy for buying.

Results of Strategic *****

The management, instead of replacing its entire marketing staff, revised its marketing strategy ***** assigned all the products among the *****. They were told to ***** search terms by their names. Thus, each ***** had his search terms that he / she **********. The basic salaries were reduced and a commission was ***** upon revenue generated ***** the sales of the products of ***** PME. Any search term incurring advertising cost ***** a set cap, ***** the extra ***** recovered from ***** respective PME's commission.

The ***** s*****ed the following:

All ***** search terms ***** au*****matically removed as every PME refused to take them in his / her account due to the ad-cost recovery policy

The Search Term Inventory got over 4000 "spec*****ic" search terms per ***** Eng*****e

The ***** showed a monthly increase ***** 31.47%

***** advertising cost