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Marketing

What is The Gray Market, and How to Protect Against it?

The gray market, gray economy, and gray securities. Here we are talking about gray market products rather than gray securities or the gray economy.

Published

2 years ago

September 16, 2021

TwinzTech

5 Things To Learn Immediately To Succeed As An Online Marketer

Three things could be confused with one another: the gray market, gray economy, and gray securities. Here we are talking about gray market products rather than gray securities or the gray economy. Gray securities are shares of a corporation traded before being publicly distributed. At the same time, the gray economy is made of assets and services that elude state taxation.

1. So, what is the gray market?

Anti-counterfeit items that are sold legitimately but outside sanctioned distribution ways are called gray market goods. It hurts the brand and violates the intellectual property protection of any business. The gray market includes everything from vehicles and cameras to software and medicines. The gray market has been running for a long time. To quickly explain it, let’s take a more straightforward example.

The first thing that a manufacturer or brand does is sell a product to a distributor. After that, the distributor sells it to accredited retail shops. Subsequently, those outlets sell the product to buyers. Although this might be a way to sell anti-counterfeit items, it still hurts a brand. In a perfect system, the precise quantity of products would be produced and put up for retail, hoping that the public would purchase all of it.

Nevertheless, the reality is a bit different. If a merchant or retailer is left with surplus or old stock, they can sell it at slashed rates to other traders. This violates intellectual property protection, but some merchants still chose to sell surplus stock to such dealers.

These traders later market the store to the public at further discounted prices. And it is way easier to fool the public because unauthorized sellers often look the same to customers as authorized sellers. The only noticeable contrast is lower costs. But these traders can’t provide company warranties. And some of the products might not satisfy regulatory criteria for the country in which they are being sold.

Gray Market

Sometimes the brands or distributors supply the gray market themselves. However, brands usually refrain from doing so as it hurts their reputation and helps those retailers who sell counterfeit items.

2. How to protect against the gray market?

The first step is to identify unapproved dealers. Knowing who is running the gray market is the key to stopping them. And the best way to monitor the gray market dealers is to look for the products at lower prices than the official retailers or sites. For brands, they must watch the MAP of the products. Most of the MAP violators are often connected to the gray market.

Secondly, the brands must educate their consumers about the official stores’ sites. While advertising and marketing products, the brands can easily throw in the knowledge and importance of buying the products from original and authorized stores and locations. Consumer education helps offline and online brand protection, allows customers to purchase anti-counterfeit and authentic products, and gives the customer a warranty.

If the brand spots gray market retailers, they can send a cease-and-desist letter. It serves as a prelude for the subsequent legal actions that the brand can take in case the dealer doesn’t stop selling unsanctioned products. The brands can take legal steps because they violate intellectual property protection and MAP violations, including many other offenses.

Business

What is a Customer Data Platform?

Published

2 months ago

January 27, 2023

TwinzTech

A customer Data Platform (CDP) is a new approach to centralizing your business’s promotional and sales information. Learn how companies use CDP to get ahead of the competition and effectively address their clients.

Table of Contents

1. Understanding a Customer Data Platform

A customer data platform stores and organizes customer information in one place, making it accessible to various customer care, sales, and marketing departments. The software can do its functions because it compiles information from multiple channels, such as your company’s social media profiles, website statistics, and live chat sessions.

You may best analyze your consumer’s needs and produce more targeted marketing campaigns with a customer data platform. Your marketing and sales activities will be more efficient, saving you time and resources. The advertising, sales and other teams that you manage will be able to make more informed decisions with the help of detailed prospective customers.

2. Reasons Why Businesses Should Implement a Customer Data Platform

A customer data platform is essential for modern businesses for many reasons.

The Elimination of Third-Party Cookies

Given the development of privacy rules and the shifting security expectations of consumers, marketing methods dependent on cookies set by third parties are becoming more unsustainable.

First-party consumer data, collected directly from your clientele, is the new gold standard. You may better serve your clients’ individual needs by creating a unified database of their information and using that information to send them tailored messages. By adjusting to the world of first-party cookies, your digital advertising will be able to draw on a far richer pool of data, including consumer interactions, choices, and transactions.

Development of Comprehensive Channels of Interaction

Advertising platforms like Google Ads and social media are becoming more popular among businesses. Direct mail campaigns are one kind of marketing communication, sales call to prospective clients, and in-person visits from clients. Whatever channel your consumers choose to engage with your company, it’s essential to provide them with a smooth, customized experience.

Omni-channel success begins with a detailed consumer profile fed by a customer data platform. If you do not have the proper marketing software, your clients may have a poor experience with you on several platforms. That is an issue since clients who are unclear on what they want cannot make a purchase.

Adopting a More Personalized Approach to Advertising is The Norm Now

Marketing Messages that are universally sent to all customers, both present and prospective, are no longer appropriate. Consider the impact of brand loyalty on advertising, for instance. One customer’s connection with your business is not the same as another’s, even if they have made many purchases from you.

With marketing technology, particularly a customer data platform, it is now feasible to personalize marketing communications in response to individual customers’ actions. The most excellent way to learn what a consumer wants is to tailor your marketing to their purchases, purchasing habits, and associated activities.

Upgrades That Will Help Your Business Thrive

3. Benefits of Customer Data Platform

Track the Most Productive Advertising Avenues

Knowing who you are selling to enables you to focus on the most effective methods of communication. Their use patterns may help you determine the best places to advertise to them, increasing your chances of success.

Make Better Products and Services Available

Understanding your clientele has applications beyond advertising and sales. Customers’ pain concerns are a goldmine of information for developing fresh offerings that appeal to your target market.

Upgrades Your Advertising Language

With a deeper understanding of your target demographic, you can craft more persuasive marketing communications. Knowing your potential market’s language, pain points desired solutions, and previous purchases allow you to communicate with them more effectively.

Accumulate All of Your Client Information in One Centralized Database

There are many different places where data on your customers may be found. A customer data platform consolidates data from several sources into a centralized repository, giving you a complete view of your clientele in one convenient location. There is no need to go between applications to compile data on your clientele.

4. Final Verdict

Consolidating real-time data sources, linking them to a customer profile, and making them instantly deployable in a campaign gives a CDP a great chance of winning over your present marketing team members. As the pace of your campaigns increases on a global scale, you may find yourself in the advantageous situation of improving the degree of customization and targeted advertising. This aligns with a decline in time spent on data cleansing and making ads.