A couple of days ago we published an article titled "eBay Vs Alternatives - You Get What You Pay For" and this is a follow up to highlight some of the discussion that article spawned about the marketing eBay does and other sites perhaps don't.

Pheebayer Leapingcat wrote:

While I can largely agree with many of the "nuts and bolts" complaints like this being levelled against eBay from many quarters I do feel many users and even some alternative venue managers are failing to realise the scale of the challenge they face and what it will take to be seen as a genuine option for sellers and buyers.

My follow up in the discussion focused on the marketing (or lack of it) as the key difference between eBay and almost every competitor bar Amazon:

In my view, being the best, pretty average or even the worst does not dictate whether you will be seen as the leader or the failure in your field of industry. The quality (and quantity) of your overall marketing plan is what makes you a "player" and possibly the market leader.

Speak to those savvy guys that will offer you 1001 reasons why Linux is so much better. But what's still by far the market leading OS?

Speak to Mac users about their opinions. But what machine is the market leader?

I completely agree that eBay may eventually regret some of the recent changes it is making and I've no doubt there will be some reversion in future. I also completely agree with many of our forum members that eBid is a much better auction venue in many functional ways.

But eBay has a proper marketing plan and ranks among the very top online marketing organisations worldwide in my opinion. That is why they are at the top and will stay at the top for the foreseeable future regardless of whether or not you think their product is worse than other websites offer, worsening compared to others, or even downright crap.

Compared to eBay, nobody is marketing eBid. Compared to eBay nobody is marketing OLA. But both of these alternatives are technically just as able to host a P2P transaction. The trouble is for me that neither make anywhere near the effort eBay does to get the traffic needed to make sellers confident most of their listings will sell. And, more important to note, is they price their product in such a way that it is crystal clear they will never try to get that volume traffic either.

If eBid, for arguments sake, were to get someone like Richard Branson involved what would change? Bear in mind Branson has made a success out of selling other peoples products for decades. He knows how to market. He knows how to make a product "cool". He knows that the Virgin name will carry a lot of kudos and the brand instantly adds vaue to any product or service it labels. Most importantly he knows how to use money to make money.

If a Branson type of figure were to get involved at eBid you would very quickly see the pricing structure overhauled and people would see a hell of a lot more of eBid's name (or perhaps Virgin's) almost instantly. He knows you don't succeed in business by being the cheapest option. Of course the existing eBidders would bitch like hell but that can be overcome with the right pitch and some accomodation.

Within weeks of getting involved this Branson type figure would solve the eBid.com domain problem. He would have the Irish eBid pretender buried in "passing off" litigation. He would have eBid's name "out there" daily. He would identify the places and people that can be incentivized to get eBid recognized and put the eBid name in those places and get the people recruited. He would recognize that he is not constrained by todays income but constrained by the projected income. He wont fear under-performing compared to projections because he will have already bought in to the marketing plan and associated projections 110% before anything else.

He would also make sure that all of these goals are achieved ultimately at the users expense because business is about making money and not losing it. He would be cute enough to know that you have to tell people and convince them you are the best and make them honestly believe they are missing something by not using the eBid product.

Relying on loyal users to produce crappy looking cheerleader videos on YouTube or post banners on blogs that get viewed 6 times a day (and three of those are bots) is playing at marketing and that's exactly what it looks like to eBayers passing by. The copper wire and fibre optic internet will be long superceded by the time that kind of effort makes any impression in a large business sense.

But, conversely and some may think peversely, if you can get competitors, critics or haters of your product to post crappy looking videos on YouTube slagging you off then this is potentially evidence of good marketing. The quality of the video doesn't impact on your reputation at all and the more extreme and absurd the accusations or abuse they spew then the more it will raise your profile. Apart from the nutters themselves, the vast majority of people recognize "nuts" for what they are and enjoy the entertainment they provide. As a wise person once said; "all publicity is good publicity".

Amazing how many negative websites, blogs and forums there are out there talking about eBay isn't it? The fame business is a devious game but, if fame is what you want, then there's something much worse than people saying horrible things about you in public and that's if they say nothing at all about you.

Do people really think posting another anti-eBay rant hurts eBay? Quite the opposite. After reading such a rant the haters carry on hating (and most of them will still use eBay at the same time too) and the rest will either ignore it, think it's wrong or some may even think it's wrong and argue it to keep the entertainent and publicity going. But what little is achieved by such a rant is likely all positive for eBay.

Now look behind the advice you will see offered to naive sellers at various places on the net. Instead of taking everything at face value ask yourself if some of it could be motivated a little more deviously? My favourite bit of advice people throw about is the "forget eBay alternatives, start your own website instead" pitch. Now this advice is aimed more often than not at people who have in many instances never run a proper ecommerce website. At best they've managed a form based site using Blogger. What better way to virtually guarantee people return to eBay in the not too distant future re-energised to make a success of their eBay business? Even those that claim to be making mega-bucks from their own website often leave me scratching my head when I look at the reality of their search engine indexing. But they usually have very active eBay accounts. Sure, there are a few people that make a great go of their own website, but for each one of them there are many more that don't. So is "get your own online store site" good, sweeping advice to give out without any qualification or explanation? Hardly.

Rather amusingly too I can also guarantee that some eBidders will naively read this post and object to some of the things I'm saying because they will see it as being negative toward eBid. Such is life.

If a site like eBid genuinely aspires to be a global marketplace akin to eBay then they have to think, behave, plan and expect to be as great as eBay NOW. Tomorrow never comes and if getting that resolve known outside of their own domain means attracting a certain level of investment or a quality of person that can do it then they should be on the case immediately. Get the pitch out.

If, however, they don't have the ambition to become a global player akin to eBay and they would rather stay small and attract sufficient natural search traffic to make a living on the user generated content via Adsense then that's fair enough too. But if the latter is the future eBid plan then serious profit minded sellers should look elsewhere and allow the site to cater for the users that want to list items as a hobby while socialising and remove the pressure on eBid to create a worthwhile sell thru rate for sellers.

Here's a sporting analogy; "If you are a good soccer player do you aspire to be a substitute or a first team player?". So why market yourself as a substitute to eBay?

Being from a marketing background this is a subject close to my heart so please forgive me being a little blunt. For anyone who isn't really sure about what marketing is and how it impacts on virtually every aspect of a business then this is one of my favourite quotes, I wish I knew who first coined it to credit them and I hope I've got it largely right:

When the circus comes to town and you paint a big sign that says; "Circus Coming To Town Saturday" that is advertising. If you put that advertising sign on the back of an elephant and then walk it into town then that's promotion. If you get the elephant to walk thru the mayor's precious flower bed while a camera crew is conveniently present then that's publicity. If you can then get the mayor to laugh at your publicity stunt afterwards then that's great public relations. If the town's folk going to the circus are shown round the many entertainment booths, told how much fun they can have and get answers to all their questions meaning they ultimately go on to spend a lot of money at the circus then that's good sales.

All of that, from advertising to SALES, is marketing the circus....

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