Peculiarities of E-Marketing - Essay Example

? E-MARKETING Submitted By Contents Introduction 3 Background 3 E-Marketing 4 Difference between E-marketing E-business and E–commerce 5 Marketing Strategy 5 E-marketing Strategy 5 Marketing Mix 6 Marketing Strategy for Tourism 6 Case Study 6 Visit Britain: Satisfying online market demand 7 Analysis 8 Brick and click 8 Advantages 9 Challenges 9 Promotion 9 Conclusion 11 We have discussed here various aspects of E-marketing. How much similar and different it is from traditional marketing. In today’s world where internet and web has become part of our lives, we cannot ignore its importance in the business world. Business world and ways of doing business is also revolutionized. Marketing has evolved in the last decade or so. Marketers are no more restricted to traditional marketing now. They have moved forward and making use of both the e-marketing and traditional marketing. The right mix of the two is the key to success these days. E-marketing has enabled marketers to offer more customized services in response to the ever increasing demand for customized services. E-marketing not only helps in reducing costs but it is more efficient in terms of reaching to the wider audience. It reduces the hassle of managing things manually which was both costly and required a lot of time. Advancement in e-marketing and a good and efficient utilization of it is a key to the competitive advantage these days. Marketers tapping this opportunity have evolved their whole marketing mix by emphasizing on complete product giving value to the customer. Same is true for promotional techniques which are now based on search engine registration, advertising banners and other online promotional schemes. Tourism industry specifically has come a long way in E-marketing. 11 Bibliography 12 Introduction In this report we will discuss e-marketing as a form of marketing. What is E- marketing? How is it different from traditional marketing? What was the need for it? Its scope and effectiveness will also be analyzed. As we all know marketing is a very vast topic. To cover all the aspects of marketing is beyond the scope of this report. What I have done is to select just one area of marketing i.e. promotion. Through this I will try to analyze the revolution which E- marketing has brought in to the modern world. To prove my point I will not only discuss the theoretical aspect of it but will also discuss a case study from the tourism industry. E-marketing is not a different subject altogether. It is built on existing marketing theories. It only incorporates the emerging body of e-business, e-commerce and e-marketing in the light of the difference between internet and other Medias. Background The innovation in technology and the ways in which we interact with them has changed dramatically. These days’ people just go to internet to save some time and do shopping online. People these days use internet as social and professional networking. People use internet via web or mobile to spend time and for entertainment where they don’t want to be interrupted by marketing messages. With the onset of e-marketing marketplace actually transform into electronic market space, already inhabited by more than a billion customers. Keeping in view the scale and benefits of it most customers now spend a good part of their life in virtual world. So contacting customer in this wired up world is the need of the hour. For this particular reason I have selected the marketing tool, promotion, how it is being used in e-marketing. In this ever increasing virtual world customers are using automated tools to find the best fit for their needs. They have this luxury of having access to a variety of options available to them. They can choose whatever product or service best suits their demand. Marketers need to adapt to this new change and analyze demand by consumers for online services and must strive to meet them. In this report I will analyze how this e-marketing has affected the tourism industry especially in reference to promotion. Promotion although is one of the founding pillars for every product and service but its importance relevant to tourism industry cannot be denied. Tourism is one industry where it is needed the most. Promotion in e-marketing is a little different. There are website advertising and marketing specialists available who specializes in facilities like blogging etc. Any company can do its advertising on its own also if they don’t intend to hire professional help. Companies need to develop their e-strategy to achieve their e-marketing objectives. It includes a revised marketing mix and a vast array of tactical tools. So in short we can say that E-marketing will continue to grow in future. Those companies will be winners who utilize it to its full advantage and overcome the minor weaknesses associated with it such as sloppy sites and services etc. the key objective of e-marketing is sell, serve, speak, save and sizzle. Literature Review E-Marketing E-marketing requires the same management process2(Chaffey Dave ,2009) required for traditional marketing with a little difference i.e. identifying customers through internet, anticipating consumer demand for digital services and achieving customer satisfaction through electronic channel. Difference between E-marketing E-business and E–commerce We can call e-marketing as a subset of e-business. There is some degree of overlapping between the two and broadly speaking E-business and E-marketing are synonymous. E-marketing is essentially and predominantly customer oriented and it has lesser emphasis on supply chain and procurement activities as compared to E-business. Marketing Strategy Marketing strategy of any organization is actually based on the Company’s overall strategic planning.3 (Phillip Kotler, 2010). This strategy guides marketer in planning to create value for customers while keeping in view indigenous and exogenous factors. Marketing strategy and planning involves steps like choosing target market, positioning of market offering, developing a marketing mix, and managing marketing plans. It also includes measuring and managing return from marketing investment. E-marketing Strategy E-marketing can be the deciding factor for customers to choose your services. The nature of e-marketing demands marketers to gain insight into customers psyche and understand what is important to them. Your marketing strategy should be designed to deliver value. The farther you reach the better will be the outcome. Engagement bling 4(Ardath Albee, 2010) is the positive outcome that the company achieves for sustained and trustworthy relationship with prospective customer. Dedication in e-marketing strategy makes a lot of difference. It is not only beneficial for the company but also for the potential customers. Marketing Mix Integrated marketing demands marketers to device and manage marketing programs that maximizes the ability to create, communicate and deliver value. 5(Phillip Kotler, 2007) Marketing tools has been classified into four broad groups by McCarthy i.e. product, price, place, promotion. Marketing mix offers product, services and prices utilizing communication mix of advertising, promotion, direct sales etc. Marketing Strategy for Tourism Since hospitality and tourism is strictly customer driven service we first need to identify our target market. (Philip Kotler, 2010). There are two types of travelers, business travelers, who want moderate prices and comfortable surroundings or pleasure travelers, who want quality. Marketing strategy should outline the planned price of the product, distribution and marketing budget for the first year. It should also forecast the planned long run sales, profit goals and marketing mix strategy. Internet has brought revolution in tourism 6(Victor T.C. Middleton, 2009) over the last decade when first business to customer (B2C) sites was launched. In tourism industry traditional and new methods are used side by side. Traditional separate processes of marketing mix are used along with corporate websites and associated internet portals. Case Study Here we will discuss a case study about tourism. We will study how the advancement in internet has brought changes in the industry. We will study how e-marketing has affected the tourism industry. Is the change positive, desirable and acceptable to both customers and suppliers? We will study different aspects of e-marketing and how it is different from traditional marketing. I will discuss various advantages and disadvantages of using e-marketing. Its impact will be analyzed not just in monetary terms but from different aspects of management. The case we are going to discuss here is visit Britain. Visit Britain: Satisfying online market demand England Net was established in 2002 as a national database and content management system. From its inception it has come a long way. Its original task was to interlink industry and regional partners booking systems. England Net was then redesigned and developed into VisitBritain website. The path chosen was to increase interoperability via a web platform. Their target was to move England tourism industry from brick to click i.e. from traditional to internet based system. There were many strategic and technical challenges involved. One of them was to develop a separate interface for each partner. Regional tourist board, (RDP), and local destination organization were all incorporated into EnglandNet. It gave advantage to RDP to reach to wider audience through internet irrespective of whether their business was e-business enabled or not. The visitor has variety of options to have access to detailed information through telephone, e-mail or business own website. Even booking can be made in this fashion, real time online booking. This flexibility allows visitors greater choices and more business to tourism industry. This restructuring places the responsibility of marketing England on the EnglandNet. EnglandNet is not an agent of sale or operator but it only acts as a platform for delivering English tourism products content. For the small to medium sized tourism enterprises (SMTE’s) which constitutes majority of the tourism industry, the primary relationship is still with their local or regional DMO’s. This restructuring has also given Visit Britain the opportunity to provide and develop various services to the customers. It has relieved them of the burden of financial transactions or visitors personal and financial details. They can just concentrate on developing various services and promoting them to customers. In this way they can provide maximum flexibility to their tourist and industry partners. This kind of interoperability requires investment in upgrading partner system so that they are able to meet minimal level of data standards. To provide further facilities to customers such as providing flight engines, real time accommodation booking and an online shop VisitBritain went through further development. All this is basically an extension of the EnglandNet platform model. This provides a complete package to visitors of UK. It starts from various flight options to many accommodation options which a visitor maybe interested in. It just don’t end here it also guides and helps tourists and visitor about one stop shops where they can find anything they need. It gives a complete holiday package. It contributes a lot in the competitive advantage of VisitBritain. VisitBritain basically has the overall vision of being the one stop shop for visitors of UK. Analysis After discussing the case study of VisitBritain I will try to analyze it in relation to the specific area of e-marketing i.e. promotion which I have chosen as my field for discussion. Promotion is extremely important for the tourism industry, to make people aware of your product and attract and entice them Brick and click The tourism industry has actually moved forward from traditional business model to brick and click business model. In this type of model a company integrates both brick (offline) and click (online) presences. It is also known as click and mortar business model. The tourism industry in England as discussed in the case study in its current state is a step behind from being totally click or online. From the case study it can be inferred that the tourism industry of UK has successfully managed e-business in providing value to stakeholders and customers. It could only be achieved by persuading industry and tourism partners to work in collaboration. This competitive advantage helped in reaching to wider international audience. Advantages The advantage of VisitBritain can be categorized into three broad categories. They are EnglandNet, Flight engines, online shop. Whose benefits we have already discussed which provides a complete package to the customer ranging from giving complete encyclopedia of products and services to the all travel arrangements and ability to respond to expressed demands such as multi currency service. Challenges Challenge for the tourism industry of UK is to deal with tracking of referrals and clicks. So that business generated through site could be measured. Another challenge is to provide all these services via mobile as well as the computers. They need to develop and maintain technology so that these functionalities can be extended to other product types. They need to work in collaboration with all stakeholders so that services promised can actually be delivered. Promotion Promotion is probably the most difficult, interesting and creative variable of marketing. Promotion is the process of communication through which we communicate products, company benefits to the target audience to prompt them to take buying action. E-marketers make use of the traditional and electronic channels to create and send messages to the target market to initiate buying action. The message has to be clear, easily understandable and the process should be user friendly. Every customer have a complex and unique belief system depending on his culture, religion race etc. It is not economically viable to create different advertisements, trade shows etc for different type of customers. E-marketing has solved this problem of promotion. 10(Ira S Kalb, 2007) .Through e-mail, website some customization can be provided. Complete product based on marketing information system is the real answer. E-marketers have to be very careful about promotion as well. Promotion is the vehicle that reflects the image of the parent. Customers get influenced by the medium that is used to inform them. So a quality product has to be promoted in a quality way. Same is true for websites an amateurish website can ruin the image. This is exactly what we observed in our case study. Special emphasis has been given to VisitBritain. The quality of the website in a way promises the quality of service. A good website should have the following qualities. 11(Doug R Addison, 2007) These are Information, user friendly, fast loading pages, consistent design, privacy policy, SSL encryption to safeguard confidential information, well written error messages, immediate response to customer and consistent updating. VisitBritain has all these qualities. Promotion has a wide range of meaning. Promotional or communication mix has many elements. Online promotion has to make three decisions regarding investment. Investment in site creation and promotion should be planned according to the budget. (Chaffey Dave, 2007)E-marketing plan should include all this so that promotion is not underfunded. There should be a balance between online promotion techniques and offline promotion techniques. Investment in different online promotion techniques should also be allocated such as banner advertising, online PR and search engine registration. In our case study this balance of investment issue was solved by incorporating regional development agencies. No charges are made on the booking via business partners. This loss in booking charges is tackled with increased no. of booking. Conclusion We have discussed here various aspects of E-marketing. How much similar and different it is from traditional marketing. In today’s world where internet and web has become part of our lives, we cannot ignore its importance in the business world. Business world and ways of doing business is also revolutionized. Marketing has evolved in the last decade or so. Marketers are no more restricted to traditional marketing now. They have moved forward and making use of both the e-marketing and traditional marketing. The right mix of the two is the key to success these days. E-marketing has enabled marketers to offer more customized services in response to the ever increasing demand for customized services. E-marketing not only helps in reducing costs but it is more efficient in terms of reaching to the wider audience. It reduces the hassle of managing things manually which was both costly and required a lot of time. Advancement in e-marketing and a good and efficient utilization of it is a key to the competitive advantage these days. Marketers tapping this opportunity have evolved their whole marketing mix by emphasizing on complete product giving value to the customer. Same is true for promotional techniques which are now based on search engine registration, advertising banners and other online promotional schemes. Tourism industry specifically has come a long way in E-marketing. 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Middleton, Alan Fayal, 2009, Marketing in Travel and Tourism, UK, Butterworth-Heinemann) 7(Philip Kotler, 2010, Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, UK, Pearson Prentice Hall) 8 (Roman Egger, Dimitrios Buhalis, 2008, e tourism case studies: management and marketing issues, UK, Butterworth Heinemann) 10(Doug R Addison, 2007, Website Cookbook, UK, O’Reilly) 11(Ira S Kalb, 2007, E-marketing: What Went Wrong and How to Do it Right, K&A Press) 12(Chaffey Dave, 2007, Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, Pearson education) 9(Chaffey Dave, 2002, E-business and E-commerce Management, Pearson Education Limited) Read More