SMS Marketing, for businesses, provides great benefits. The cost to reach people via text message is very low, especially in comparison to traditional forms of advertisement. With 94% of text messages being read by the recipient, response rates are very high. The ability to instantaneously communicate with your target audience, is what every business dreams of, and SMS Marketing provides just that, and within budget.

With credit being more scarce in the US, and Americans concerned about their finances, it has become more important to consumers to make smarter purchase decisions. Americans are looking for deals, and what better way to let them know about your next offer, than by sending them a text message? No matter where they are, or what they are doing, you can be sure that they know about your next sale, or your new product, or whatever it may be that you are trying to communicate to them. Saving money is becoming a more “trendy” thing to do. Shopping around, and finding deals is the new cool thing to do these days, and consumers love the feeling of making a smart purchase decision.

SMS Marketing allows consumers to receive great deals and information about the products and services they love, and allows for businesses to communicate with the consumers they need to reach. In the end, communication is essential when it comes to hitting the goal of a transaction, and SMS Marketing bridges the gap, giving both sides, exactly what they want. Businesses generate more sales, increase retention, and get a great return on their investment, while consumers stay informed, and receive the deals they are looking for, right on their mobile phones, no matter where they are.

With over 270 MILLION mobile phones in the United States, and over 2.5 billion text messages sent each day in the U.S. alone, SMS Marketing is a great way to communicate for any organization. Businesses are not the only ones that can benefit from communicating via SMS. Any organization, whether it is a non-profit, a church, school, or community, can utilize SMS. Bulk text messaging is used to keep people informed, keep people safe when natural disasters occur, and to promote business. The possibilities are limitless. If you need to reach people, SMS Marketing is right for you.

ExpressText offers Mobile advertising at a fraction of the cost. Expand your customer profile by utilizing our custom marketing SMS campaigns. ExpressText also offers SMS API at affordable cost.

To better understand the latest trends in online car shopper behavior, consider the following statistics:

• According to PEW Research, almost three out of four U.S. adults use the Internet. It is an amazing resource for many people to do product research and purchase as it is a hassle-free approach to shopping.

• More and more individuals are using the Internet to research vehicles. Almost 90 percent of consumers use the Internet to research vehicles – Capgemini Cars Online Study 2009/2010.

• According to the J.D. Power and Associates, 68 percent of used-vehicle buyers and 77 percent of new-vehicle buyers use the Internet in their shopping process.

• According to National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), nearly 90 percent of car buyers today are using the Internet to help make their purchasing decisions.

• Investments have been steadily increasing over the past few years in Internet marketing. According to a survey from Autobytel, 93% of dealers have increased their Internet marketing budgets in the last five years – more than half (56%) have increased their Internet marketing budgets by 50% or more.

These numbers clearly show that it’s more important than ever for auto dealers to have an online presence. Despite this, some auto dealers still dedicate only a fraction of their advertising budgets to Internet marketing.

Advantages of Internet marketing over traditional marketing
A dealership that does not use Internet marketing is more likely to lose all these important prospective buyers. If you are one of them, consider the following reasons why you should choose Internet marketing over traditional marketing.

One-to-one approach
Using Internet marketing, a dealer can send marketing messages personally to the targeted user. When a prospective buyer browses through the Internet, he/she typically goes through the sites online and refers to the products and services offered. This enables him or her to communicate personally with the dealer. This way a dealer can maintain direct contact with prospective buyers.

Appeal to specific interests
Unlike traditional marketing, which reaches out to a broad demographic, Internet marketing appeals to specific target audience or interests of people. Dealers can post advertisements and boost their websites with full knowledge that the audience is interested in.

Improved Return on Investment (ROI)
Auto dealers spend hundreds (sometimes even thousands of dollars) on traditional advertising methods such as TV, radio, and print. They still do not have any precise way to measure whether their target audience is paying attention or not. When it comes to Internet marketing, a dealer can accurately target anaudience and measure the visitors without spending much. This means, a dealer can get improved ROI using Internet marketing. A survey from Autobytel shows that Internet has provided highest return on investment (ROI) for auto dealers over the last 5 years. Almost 8 in 10 (79.5%) of the survey respondents reported that Internet has been their highest ROI. In contrast, only 7.5% (TV), 6.5% (newspapers), and 2.5% (radio) of respondents ranked traditional media as first.

Cost effective
One of the best things about Internet marketing is that you don’t need a large investment to get started. It is very economical and fast way to promote a dealership. This is not the case with traditional marketing, which is very expensive and takes more time to show results. When compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience, Internet marketing is many times inexpensive than the traditional marketing. With a small fraction of traditional marketing budget, a dealership can reach a wide audience.

24/7 advertising
A dealer can promote a vehicle or service 24 X 7 x 365 using Internet marketing, which is not possible in traditional marketing. The moment a dealer implements an Internet marketing campaign, the dealership’s products or services will be on the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience and comfort. This advantage of appealing to consumers can bring in quality results quickly.

Makes you go global
The main advantage of Internet marketing is its ability to make your dealership global. By advertising on the Internet, a dealership can capture the attention from people all over the world. Without any additional cost, a dealership can promote its products or services globally. Traditional marketing consumes a lot of time and is very expensive way to go global.

Geo targeting
Auto dealers can effectively leverage Internet marketing medium as it allows ads to be targeted very precisely to the search location – helps to target a specific geographical location. A dealer can target a specific city, state or a country. Though it has no geographical limits, a dealer can restrict services to certain locations.

Given the latest trends in car shopper behavior and advantages over the traditional media, it is essential for car dealers to re-evaluate their advertising strategies and focus more on Internet marketing.

Search Optics, Inc. is a leader in digital marketing solutions for the automotive industry. Search Optics interactive marketing services include custom websites, search engine optimization, paid search and mobile solutions that generate leads which result in sales opportunities. Search Optics specializes in automotive internet marketing and automotive marketing services.

Communicating via text message is the most effective way to reach your targeted recipient whether you are looking to get in contact with the person for personal reasons, or for business. Because of this, SMS Marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing today. There are several benefits to being able to reach your target audience, instantaneously, no matter where they are, or what they are doing, which in itself is a benefit.

The efficiency gained by being able to communicate via SMS provides a great benefit. The speed and reliability can help employees be more effective communicating with multiple people at once, which can save a business a lot of time, and in turn, reduce costs. Rather than making multiple calls and having to leave voicemail messages, an employee can be sure that their SMS message was received and read by the recipient(s).

Another great benefit of SMS Marketing is the ability to know the delivery status of each and every message that you send. Delivery reports can be simple, or provide all types of analytics, but the most valuable piece of information would have to be knowing as to whether or not your message was received by your recipient. Ninety-six percent of SMS messages are read by their recipients, so if the message was delivered to the mobile device, then you can be sure that the recipient will read your message if they have not done so already.

SMS Marketing is a great way to retain customers as well. It typically costs less to retain customers, than it does to acquire new customers, so staying in contact with your existing customers can be extremely valuable to your business. Rather than just focusing on acquiring new customers, businesses should always monitor their retention rate, and work at increasing it. SMS Marketing is a phenomenal way to increase your retention rate, and requires very minimal work. Simply have your existing customers opt-in to receive mobile alerts, and you can send them all coupons with a special promotion with a single click and drive sales immediately.

There are several aspects of a business that can benefit from a guaranteed, fast means of communication, and SMS Marketing is the best way to do just that. The benefits are numerous, and the results are proven. With over 2.5 billion text messages sent each day in the United States, text message marketing is the “email”, of the new, faster, information age.

ExpressText offers SMS marketing campaigns at a fraction of the cost. Expand your customer profile by utilizing our custom SMS marketing campaigns. ExpressText also offers Bulk sms plans with lowest cost.

Requirements:
The mobile websites need to satisfy various parameters to ensure that the mobile website gives quality user experience, is reliable and accessible.
Website Load Time
Faster mobile website load time ensures that the prospective customers will have to wait for less time and can browse more thereby increasing the chances of lead generation. Faster load time adds to the overall user experience and significantly impacts the potential customer. Providing additional bandwidth can help improve the website load time. Providing quick information ensures that customers are retained and does not jump off to other website.
Site Navigation
Simplicity in mobile website navigation is a rewarding experience for the car buyers. Easy navigation helps customers to find information quickly suiting their needs. Optimized website navigation provides customers with specific requirements that they are looking for. Easy navigation to inventory pages, coupons, contact forms, and directions provides a superior user experience. Efficient navigation enhances the usability of the mobile website and allows customers to search the inventory effortlessly similar to automotive dealer’s website. The customers can conduct inventory search in mobile website with specific information like model, make, year, color, price, and trim.
Web Page Layout
A good mobile website page layout helps in effective presentation of the dealer information. Effective information presentation enables customers to use the website easily and quickly. Information about new and used car inventory, services offered by dealers and more can be effectively incorporated in mobile screen space for easy viewing by customers. Web page layout especially designed for mobile website ensures better presentation of content and thereby increases chances of sales and lead generation.

Advantages:
Automotive dealers can effectively leverage the power of mobile websites to tap the growing market of mobile web users.
Improves Online Web Presence
With faster processors, faster download speeds, and more smartphone subscribers, the number of mobile web users is rapidly growing. It is essential for automotive dealers to have strong online web presence to ensure mobile web users segment is effectively targeted. Apart from PC based dealer website, mobile websites can enhance the online web presence of the dealer in this competitive market. As more potential customers nowadays access information on web through smartphones, they can also search for automotive dealer’s website. Thus, having a mobile website improves online web presence as customers can find dealer related information quickly.

More Opportunities for Sales
Mobile websites help to target specific customers and provides more opportunities for sales by receiving quality leads. Better usability of mobile website, faster load time, navigation, and good web page layout provides superior user experience thereby increasing the chances of lead conversion and improving sales. With the fast changing market trends, mobile websites helps to tap emerging segments of customers and provide more opportunities for sales.

Get Quality Leads
The main objective of maintaining online web presence is receiving quality leads. The mobile websites provides potential customers with easy access to automotive dealer information from anywhere and anytime thereby increasing the website traffic and bringing in more quality leads.

An optimized mobile website for mobile users will grant automotive dealers a competitive advantage by increasing their brand awareness in a positive way. Mobile websites are also an excellent communication channel to explore new markets and generate more revenue.

Search Optics, Inc. is a leader in digital marketing solutions for the automotive industry. Search Optics interactive marketing services include custom websites, search engine optimization, paid search and mobile solutions that generate leads which result in sales opportunities. Search Optics specializes in automotive marketing and automotive SEO.

Positive Impacts:
Online reviews positively impact the dealership sales by increasing the confidence among both existing and potential customers.

Credibility
Potential customers perceive online reviews as authentic, genuine opinions from other customers and feel that they are receiving accurate information. Online reviews are an effective way for dealers to communicate with customers. A good number of positive reviews on dealer website mentioning satisfactory experiences of customers are likely to instill confidence among potential customers. The potential customer can feel more comfortable and satisfied when reading a comprehensive evaluation of the dealer from a large number of customers. Even, the way dealers handle negative reviews by customers by quickly and efficiently resolving problems increases the trustworthiness of the dealers. It is likely that such unhappy customers will revert back to the same dealer.

Included In Consideration Set
The customers usually have a pre-defined set of vehicles that they prefer to buy. The automotive dealers in order to increase their sales needs to persuade the customers to alter their consideration set. The customer generated content like vehicle ratings and reviews, consumer ratings and reviews, dealer ratings and reviews can be effectively used by automotive dealers to alter the consideration set of these automotive internet users. The information given through dealer ratings and reviews can effectively target the new-vehicle buying customer segment. Online reviews enhance dealer consideration among customers as both positive and negative reviews increases awareness level of the particular dealer. Also, positive reviews improve the attitude of customers towards dealers. Thus, expanding the consideration set helps to increase automotive dealership sales.

Reassurance
The online reviews and testimonials at automotive dealer website provide reassurance to the new customers that the dealer stands for professionalism, quality, credibility, and security. Reviews by previous customers reassure the potential customers that it is safe to deal with this dealer and there is commitment to customer’s privacy. Providing online reviews on dealership website also increases conversion rates as it increases trust and confidence among first time visitors. Thus, existing and new customers will confide upon the dealership that helps to increase sales.

Negative Impacts If Not Monitored:
The negative online reviews can have impact on the attitude of customers towards automotive dealers.

Left Out From Consideration Set
Online reviews influence the purchasing decisions of automotive internet users. Also, they are checked while researching for a particular car on the Internet. Thus, ignoring or not monitoring the online reviews means failing to effectively target the large segment of automotive internet users and getting left out from user’s consideration. Poor online reviews and testimonials can fail to persuade, build confidence and trust among first time visitors and lose out on important prospective customers.

Needs More Time To Convince The Buyer
Online reviews and testimonials indicate the satisfaction of other customers due to better services and quality offered by dealer. Potential customers reading improperly monitored reviews are likely to view the dealer as less reliable and not trustable. Thus, the dealers may have to put in more efforts and time to convince the customers.

As online reviews are like online conversations between customers, automotive dealers need to actively get involved in them that can result in sales growth. The automotive dealers can leverage online reviews and testimonials by existing customers to generate new customers by efficiently targeting them at each step of car buying process.

Search Optics, Inc. was founded in 1998 in San Diego, California, as a pioneer in providing online strategy, E-commerce development, and automotive internet marketing services with a core competency in the retail automotive industry. Approaching a decade of service, Search Optics, Inc. has grown into a leader in providing online interactive automotive marketing solutions for retail automobile dealerships.

Unlike large corporate executives, small business executives or owners are hands on. They can easily have direct customer feed back and see actual ground reality. However, they also need big picture perspective and this is what it is missing. Earlier to get holistic picture of their industry environment, small business owners had to wait for a magazine or newspaper to do a cover story. Now they can search and find lot of information on Internet. Let us see how web research can help small businesses -

Defines marketing problems and opportunities in local markets
Small business owners are close to their customers and have a clear sense of their needs. However, there is chance to get carried away in identifying the opportunities and threats in the market. Web research begins with identifying the issues on a broader sense from different angles and defining the problems and opportunities. It captures the vital information on product consumption, the product substitutes and their reputation as well as other data that can trace out the problems and build the case.

Helps in setting objectives and budget
Lack of proper planning is one of the major reasons for failure of a business. A survey by Michigan CFO Associates on 500 firms states that 99 percent of small business had no written plan for growth. They are ‘driving without a map’ risking their companies. Web research helps small businesses to predict future trends and helps them to be aware of issues. This makes them prepare for both positive and negative outcomes that may occur in the future. As web research predicts future trends and issues, it helps in planning the budget accordingly to avoid unexpected surprises.

Helps in pricing the products
Most small businesses do improper pricing of their products in order to gain more profits or to sell more products. These kinds of false beliefs will result in loosing out a business opportunity. Statistics state that only 23% of businesses price their products or services properly. Web research provides the crucial information on the pricing of the products. It helps you understand how much consumers are willing to pay, what is the pricing structure of your competitors etc.

Provides information on competitors
One of the important things a small business owner needs to remember is that his company faces local, national as well as international competition. Many small businesses succumb to the intense competition in the globalized business environment. In order to survive and sustain, it is necessary to be aware of the competitors’ business strategies and developments. Web research could provide key information such as strengths, weaknesses, products, pricing, distribution etc. of the major competitors.

Less investment on research
Though some of the small business owners are aware of the advantages of market research, they are not willing to invest in it, as quality market research is expensive. However, the fact is web research that can provide crucial information is inexpensive. Generally, business owners presume that research means only primary research, which is expensive. Though web research is not a complete alternative to primary research, it can satisfy the basic needs of the research. Many of the small businesses owners are running their companies without necessary information needed for sound decision-making. At least, they can be directionally accurate with the help of web research.

Small business owners and executives can use Internet to find information. However, this can be done only for small data requirements. To get reliable information, analysis and expert suggestions to make serious decisions, they need the help of qualified specialists. This is where professional web research helps small businesses to take well-informed decisions.

Marvist Consulting is an Internet marketing research firm providing professional seo, pay per click management and web analytic services to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist Consulting also provides custom Internet market research Services (Professional and affordable) to find, analyze and summarize published information by our expert researchers to help you find information for decision making.

Search Engine Optimization
A weak presence on Internet and an ineffectively optimized website of a Real Estate business can lead to loss of business and potential clients. A search engine friendly design of a website is a prerequisite for the optimization process. Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the ranking of a website using business specific keywords, effective content, informative articles, and blogs. A Higher ranking on the search results page leads to higher traffic to your website and lead generation. As potential clients use a city name and a specific geographic location to search for potential property, the specified keywords can be used on a website for maximum optimization. Informative articles, resource pages, and blogs describing the subject property can encourage the customers to visit the website again.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising
With pay-per-click search engine advertising, sponsored links are put on search engine results page. The advertisers pay only when their link is clicked. Any commercial real estate business, which targets a specific region, should be ensured that campaigns and advertisements are formed with the business specific keywords. The Pay-Per-Click advertising can generate significant amount of traffic to the real estate website and can generate leads. Pay-Per-Click advertising allows you to track the results of your keyword campaigns and helps you optimize which specific keywords work or don’t work for the business.

Online Classifieds, Banner Ads / Contextual Text Ads
Banner ads are the small advertisements put on webpage intended to bring traffic to advertisers’ website. Putting banner ads with city specifics helps to promote real commercial estate businesses. Properly placed and targeted Banner Ads catch the attention of potential clients thereby increasing the chances of lead generation. Commercial real estate businesses are increasingly using online classified advertisement websites for a range of real estate related services and offerings like searching for vacant retail space in a specific market, researching rental rates for office space etc. A larger number of customers can be reached by putting advertisements on websites dedicated to online classifieds, as Commercial real estate related services are searchable from any place, region, or country. Customers perform city specific searches for real estate on online classified ads websites. Contextual Advertising targets customers by putting ads, which are relevant to the context of the webpage the customer is viewing. Thus these ads in the form of banner or pop-ups helps to target the buyer based on his needs, promote real estate businesses, and generate leads.

Various methods of Internet marketing make it easier to tap potential clients interest by generating traffic to website as more and more people are shifting towards the Internet to search for various real estate opportunities. Some techniques like pay-per-click, banner ads, and contextual ads directly target the potential client and results in lead generation.

Market Your Center is a commercial real estate marketing, advertising and consulting company that offers fast, cost-effective, high-impact designs and advertising solutions. Market Your Center helps commercial real estate firms as their professional commercial real estate consultant with a comprehensive suite of products, services and solutions to meet their marketing needs. It also provides shopping center marketing services for various commercial real estate professionals and organizations.

Only off late, due to increased competition, customer awareness, and changing buyer preferences, companies have started realizing that increased production does not translate into higher sales. Since sales has been called as marketing in India, when a real position has been created it causes much confusion.

Here is an approach to let you know what Marketing actually mean. Marketing and sales are two separate and distinct processes, but they are very much intertwined. Marketing exists to support sales.

Marketing is the wide range of activities involved in focusing on customer needs before developing the product, aligning all functions of the company to focus on those needs and realizing a profit by successfully satisfying customer needs over the long-term.
The marketing cycle is composed of four segments:
•    Market research,
•    Planning,
•    Visibility, and
•    Client development.

The marketing research includes knowing the marketing environment (external and internal), gathering the market information (about competitors, commodities, supply and demand situations), studying the market segments and market trends. Once the research is completed, it can be used to make a plan to determine how to market your product.

Would you start a business without a proper plan? If you are among the majority of business owners you probably answered no, similarly marketing also needs planning. The Marketing plan includes setting clear objectives and explaining how to achieve them.  This will help in identifying new product areas and new or potential customers and also helps in identifying the competitors, their advantages and disadvantages to stay ahead of the competition.

After execution of the plans there must be a proper visibility/communication to the outside world is required and is called Marketing Communications. It is the actions of a firm to communicate with end-users, consumers, and external parties.

Marketing communications consists of four channels, which include:

•    Advertising: Advertising is getting the attention of potential and current customers towards a product (or service). It mainly focuses on attracting the customer and is done by using signs, brochures, commercials, direct mailings or e-mail messages, personal contact, etc.,
•    Public Relations & Publicity: Public relations include communicating the information to the investors and public to understand the company and its products/services. The higher authorities of an organization will play an important role in building public relations. It is generally done in the times of crisis. Public relations and publicity are not similar; publicity is the spreading of information to gain public awareness for a product, person, service, cause or organization. We can say that publicity is an unpaid advertisement.
•   Promotion: Promotion includes the ongoing activities of advertising, sales and public relations. It tries to project the image of the product in the minds of the customer and encourages demand for the product.

Sales: Sales mainly focus on product/service. It involves directly interacting with the people to persuade them to purchase the product by conveying the features, communicating the advantages and benefits of a product or service, and closing the sale. It may also involve delivering the product and collect the payment.

In most situations there are many companies offering similar products in any specific product/service category. Sales involves finding potential buyers and selling their company’s product despite the competition from other companies having similar product.
The sales goal simply is to beat the competition to get as many customers as possible the sale with little regard to customer satisfaction.

Locate many potential buyers and contact each one on a one-to-one basis through phone calls or personal visits. Understand their company’s product features, advantages, and benefits. Find the issues, problems, and challenges that can be solved by the product. Explain how that particular company’s product is a better choice for the issue or the problem. Convince the customer to buy the product explaining how it can be helpful comparing with the competitor’s product. Get the orders, deliver the product, raise the invoice, and collect the payment.

Good marketing facilitates the success of the sales. Marketing plus sales is the winning equation.

Marketing-guru.in provides information on state of marketing India, history of evolution, current development in marketing in India and marketing sales difference. It caters to educate people at ground level to know what marketing really is and to understand the importance of marketing. It also acts as a refresher for marketing professionals.

Google accounts for 73% of total US online searches
A recent report from Hitwise, says that the share of Google in US search queries has reached 73% in April 2009.  This is 7% YOY growth from April 2008. Yahoo Search is in second place with 16.27%, but reported a sharp 20% YOY decline in US search market share. Search shares of other major search engines are MSN search – 5.68% and Ask.com – 3.95%. The US online population seems to be comfortable with the search monopoly of Google.

Increase in usage of lengthy search queries over the past year
The length of search queries used by US online population has increased during the period April 2008 – 2009.  Searches with 8 or more words reported a significant 18% increase over the past year. Overall growth in search queries averaging five to more than eight words in length is reported as 7 percent during this period. However, search queries with 2 words are still leading with 22.95% share of overall searches, followed by 3-word queries with 21.84%.

Search engines – the primary way for navigating key industry categories
Search engines play an important role in navigation of US online population into websites of all the key industry categories. Moreover, traffic to the websites of all industry categories through search engines over the past year reported a significant double-digit growth in major categories like business and finance, sports, online video, etc. Health and medical category websites are major gainers of search traffic with 46.29% of share followed by travel websites 36.82%.

The growing search query volume represents the increase in more specific search queries by search engine visitors.  Search engine marketers must continue to focus on the specific keywords rather than very generic keywords to appear to the specific target markets. Though the usage of lengthy search queries has increased, a majority of search share is still dominated by keywords with an average of 1 – 3 words. The growth in search traffic of almost all key industry categories shows the importance of businesses to focus more on search engine marketing.

Marvist is an Internet advertising agency providing Internet marketing services to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly growing since then and has clients now in 11 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Internet subscribers stood at 12.85 million by the quarter ending 31st December 2008 as compared to 12.24 million during the preceding quarter registering an increase of just 0.31% approx, according to TRAI. Broadband penetration is estimated to be at 0.5% in India, and the country added only 52,000 broadband connections between September 2008 and December 2008. By December 2008, India has only 5.52 million broadband subscribers, far short of the target of 9 million by 2010 set by the broadband policy in 2007.

Besides this, several neighboring countries including China, South Korea and Malaysia are far ahead of India in the broadband penetration. India has 0.2 broadband connections per 100 persons, while South Korea and even China have much better penetration numbers with 27.4 and 3.7 respectively.

Causes for These Discouraging Figures:
Despite the 19% jump in urban domestic Internet usage, home access is still a novelty in India. This is true especially in the case of broadband. The two biggest barriers for the growth of the broadband in India are affordability and the quality. Broadband in India is very expensive when compared to Western Europe and USA.

A 3 MBPS speed unlimited download broadband connection in US is available from a premier ISP like Verizon at $29.99 or Rs.1200 per month. A 512 KBPS speed, unlimited download Internet connection from VSNL or Airtel or Reliance is available from Rs. 1499 or $37.5 to Rs.1799 or $45 per month. This is 6 times slower and 25 to 50 percent costlier than in US. In India, the monthly charge for a broadband connection accounts to 47 to 56 percent of the per capita income*, while it is less than 1 percent in the USA.

There should be no reason for such overpricing in India. Especially, where the costs are a fraction of wages in the US – the minimum wage in US is approximately Rs.327 per hour, where as in India, it is only around Rs.10. Most Internet service providers in the USA built their infrastructure when the telecom equipment prices were at their peak several years back. Right now, Indian ISPs are able to purchase equipment at far lesser prices. Unlike earlier,  the last few years saw an abundance of capital for Indian companies with booming equity markets and hundreds of  FII’s and Private Equity companies actively investing in India.  It is also unlikely that Indian ISPs are paying higher costs for high speed Internet links to connect to the Internet worldwide.

Essentially the ISPs have not passed the benefits of lower operating costs in India to the customers. Until such profiteering is indulged by ISPs, Internet prices will be beyond the reach of most Indian and Internet usage will not become common. You have to remember that mobile usage became viable for the common man only after both the mobile equipment prices and the mobile usage charges became one of the cheapest in the world.  That led to the rapid growth of mobile users.

The worrying aspect of the disappointing Internet growth in India is that it will result in lagging of eCommerce in India. This would also lead to loss of job opportunities in the new age industries in a country aggressively looking to create jobs. Further, it would make the Indian eCommerce market lag not only against developed countries but also against the Asian ones.

* Nominal per capita incomes of India and US are taken as $1,043 and $47,025 respectively, according to IMF – 2008.

Marvist Consulting Private Limited offers Internet marketing and Internet marketing research services to clients globally. Marvist Consulting is recognized as a premier offshore Internet marketing consultant that offers result-oriented services. As an Internet marketing India based provider, we have helped businesses in North America and Europe seeking expert SEO India based consultants.