E-Marketing Strategic Planning and E-Marketing Objectives - Essay Example

? ………………………….. College ……………………………… ……………….. E-MARKETING PLAN Words count: 3790 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Executive Summary 3 Situation Analysis 4 Environmental Analysis 4 SWOT analysis 4 Existing marketing Plan 5 E-marketing Strategic Planning 6 Tech-walker: a great trendy shoe brand 6 Review of market opportunity and demand and supply 7 The STP marketing strategy 8 Differentiation strategy 10 E-marketing objectives 10 E-marketing strategy 11 Reach faster and market wider 12 Implementation of the marketing plan 13 E-marketing mix tactics 13 Budget for e-marketing plan 16 Evaluating the Plan 17 References 18 Executive Summary Within the last few years, e-marketing has emerged to be an adaptive ‘smart’ technology. In order to achieve marketing objectives, both large and small scale businesses started building and maintaining customer relationship through online activities to exchange ideas, goods and services with a view to satisfy customers. The e-marketing domain is largely affected by competition, technology, newer trends in advertisement, and more importantly dynamic strategies used by firms and therefore e-marketer has to foresee how these variables may significantly impact his business and how they can be effectively managed so as to create a long-term sustainable competitive edge. As market orientation is at the very heart of contemporary marketing concept, it is very important to continually learn and evolve in response to changes in the business contexts and thus to constantly adjust, update and revise marketing practices and techniques to maintain ‘value’ to both organization and its consumers (Dann and Dann, 2011). E-marketing plan is a strategic tool that helps a firm implement or to revise its marketing activities by analyzing marketing situations, strategies, objectives and e-marketing strategy. This paper presents an e-marketing plan for Walker, which is an international footwear company that markets normal shoes, slippers, sports shoes, and other related products through third party sellers and its own online marketing. Walker Pvt Ltd Company has launched its website ewalker.com two years back and has recorded a wonderful financial success mainly through online selling worldwide. This paper presents a brief marketing plan for ewalker.com including major components such as situation analysis, strategic planning, objectives, e-marketing strategy, and implementation, budgeting and evaluating the plan. Situation Analysis Situation analysis is a comprehensive overview of a company’s current situation, mainly pertaining to the marketing activities. It helps a business identify and concentrate on the key variable that can impact the business in terms of revenue, profitability, competition, and performance (Smith and Taylor, p. 36). SWOT analysis and review of firm’s present environment, existing marketing plan and e-business objectives are outlined below: Environmental Analysis Walker Private Limited, started as small footwear retail shop in 2003 near to Ontario in Los Angeles, has been very successful in expanding its business to a manufacturing company with help of venture capital and other financing. In 2006, the company started manufacturing of modern and trendy shoes and footwear products by installing latest technologies and in 2011 it launched its online marketing to market walker’s sports shoes and other footwear items worldwide. Its online business through its website ewalker.com has not only promoted its business but also provided wider reputation and publicity for one of world’s highly rewarded trendy shoes. SWOT analysis Strengths Weaknesses Focus on value creation and customer relationship Wider opportunity of global market Innovation and R&D advantages- Tech-Walker Product recalls Higher pay to employees in manufacturing units Opportunities Threats Growing trends of customers towards trendy shoes and sports shoes Highly differentiated products Severe competition from world renowned brand and from online sellers Damages and sales return occurrence in online marketing Internal environment The above SWOT analysis of Walker describes that its focus on continually ensuring of improved quality and maintaining better relationship with customers, wider marketing opportunities for its products through e-marketing and extensive investment on R&D are some of its major strengths. Tech-Walker brand will be a major strength of the company. As the company designs and develops trendy shoes, any manufacturing defect in its design and appearance can impact the reputation. Walker operates only one manufacturing centre in the US and that the wages or salary payable to US workers is more or less higher than it would be if it manufactures same in China or other emerging countries. External Environment Nowadays, people are very attracted to trendy and fashionable sports and other shoes. It increases the opportunity for Walker’s shoes. With higher investment in innovation and R&D, Walker proposed to differentiate its products with varying and trendy designs and this differentiation can helps the company achieve competitive edge. It faces rigorous competition from world renowned brand like Nike and Adidas. The company also experiences losses due to damages or returns in shipping the goods. Existing marketing Plan The previous marketing plan, which was prepared before the launching of ewalker.com, has briefly provided fundamental marketing strategies and major marketing activities related to its ecommerce program. Though the plan had no mention about trendy shoes and maintaining customer relationship, the strategic marketing team in the beginning of 2012 thought about the wider marketing opportunities of trendy shoes and the significance of maintaining relationship for achieving customer loyalty. Previous plan took an integrated approach to the marketing mix components and depicted certain success metrics such as focus on quality assessment and quality control, customer feedback and employee’s high performance working etc. As far as e-marketing strategy is concerned, the plan proposed to set up social networking profile of the company in major sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc and thus to widely inform the public about how Walker’s shoes can change the way people walk, entertain and play football and other games. It also planned to use event and sponsorship marketing to promote its online business. The company also planned to use Google’s advertisement so that customers clicking on ad-link in other millions of websites will be automatically redirected to walker’s online portal- ewalker.com. E-marketing Strategic Planning Tech-walker: a great trendy shoe brand Generating newer ideas, identifying a hidden marketing opportunity by finding demand for new goods or service and developing products to meet these requirements are undeniably a very effective marketing strategy. Walker’s R&D team has designed and developed a new brand Tech-Walker to gain wider attention of people with an amazing experience of new generation shoes. As today’s technology-driven business and life-style provides dynamic marketing opportunity, Walker Company plans to develop shoes and slippers built-in with micro-chips. These shoes truly going to be a mere micro-computer in every one’s foots that can measure distance one walks, count his footsteps, measure the speed of a sports man, measure blood-pressure and bone-density both before and after exercises etc. With unique features such as count-down, safety walk, remote sensor, speedy walk etc can provide an appeal of surprise to its customers. Tech-walker can electronically track one’s footsteps and this will certainly attract thousands of badminton and tennis players worldwide. Tech-walker’s extremely attractive and driving force will be a remote controlling facility that customers can control all the electronic functions of tech-walker from remote controller in their hand or with android application available for Smartphone and other devises. Review of market opportunity and demand and supply For Walker Company, it is never unclear as to what direction to steer its ewalker.com and the marketing of Tech-walker shoes. It is because the company is very confident about the marketing opportunity of Tech-walker. A market research conducted under the guidance of a marketing research firm has shown that nearly half of the total football and other players are looking for a shoe that can give numerous helps such as counting their footsteps, measuring their blood pressure and bone density, helping them improve their exercising etc. The company expects nearly half a million customers to demand for its Tech-walker shoes both from the US and other countries within the first 12 months. However, the company plans to produce only half of this demand, because the company proposed to produce the rest with Just-In-Time manufacturing technique. This is meant to facilitate customization option for customers in ewlaker.com so that customers can opt only those functionalities that are required for their individual requirement. By entering ewalker.com, a customer has wide option to place order for a Tech-walker brand by choosing only those functions or facilities that he requires. Once company receives a customized order, the company will manufacture it according to his requirements and ships the same to him. The STP marketing strategy The STP marketing is the result of sequential activities and marketing tactics involves in segmenting, targeting and positioning. STP marketing provides a sound basis for effective communication and advertising (O'Guinn, Allen and Semenik, p. 212), discovering right customers and identifying their specific requirements, attaining customer loyalty through right positioning etc. The STP strategy of ewalker.com is illustrated below: Segmenting Strategy Almost all the marketers worldwide segment their markets by breaking the total market of their product or service in to distinct sub-groups (Lancaster and Reynolds, p. 68) and as one of the main key marketing dimensions to set strategic framework to identify and thence to target right customers (Bygrave and Zacharakis, p. 170). Markets are segmented on the basis of geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral factors. Walker’s online selling portal, ewalker.com, has facilitated storing, retrieving and disseminating data regarding visits, clicks, placing orders etc from customers worldwide. Based on this information, the marketing management has segmented its markets in to four major groups, football players, athletes, young men and women and others. Football players worldwide will represent around 40 % of all its customers and athletes will be around 30 percentage. Young men and women including school and college going students will be around 15 percentage and the rest will be all other people such as small children and people of 40 and above. Out of 40 and above people, a good majority will be those who are concerned about blood pressure, bone density and other health related issues. Targeting Strategy Why a company segments its market is to target them with right product or service for right price in right place and with right methods of communication. Lamb, Hair and McDaniel (p. 220) discussed that a marketer usually targets a group of people or organizations by designing, implementing and controlling a proper marketing mix with a view to meet the wants and needs of that specific group after these groups and their specific requirements are identified. Targeting a specific segment of the market requires developing various marketing mix elements in right proportion. As Ferrell and Hartline (p. 178) emphasized, a marketer may adopt any or more of the targeting strategies to target his customers. The targeting strategies are a) single segmentation strategy, b) mass market targeting, c) product specialization, d) selective marketing, and e) market specialization. Out of these five methods, Walker Company uses mass marketing strategy because the company targets all the four segments together and develops distinct marketing mix for each. Positioning Strategy Positioning is a powerful tool to help a firm retain customers and achieve customer loyalty. When it comes to Walker Company, position will be the place its products and brand occupy in consumers’ mind in relation to its quality, benefits and unique value propositions. Positioning influences customers’ overall perception of the brand, product or service and the company in general. Walker’s marketing management is very keen about maintaining long term customer relationship and customer loyalty and therefore the management proposes to ensure maximum effectiveness in brand communication and other promotion activities by ensuring consistency in messages communicated to the customers. Differentiation strategy In marketing, differentiation refers is how one particular goods or service stands apart from the others. From management and economic perspective, with innovation, creative thinking and increased R&D focus, a business will be able to differentiate its products or service by designing certain differentiating features to differentiate its products or service from the similar articles of competitors. The business idea of Tech-walker brand, heavy investment on R& D and greater focus on innovation etc will certainly help Walker Company differentiate its products from other footwear and shoes such as Nike and Adidas and thus to gradually grab a better slice of the total market pie. Some literatures argued that differentiation is much more than merely differentiating the product. Differentiation refers to the speed and accuracy that a firm can understand and fulfill the needs of its customers that how accurately or faster its competitors do. So as to respond to customers’ wants and requirements faster than other companies do, the marketing management of Walker Company believes that customization and just-in-time manufacturing facility will help the company respond to customers’ requirements much faster than other do. E-marketing objectives Walker Company doesn’t plan to be just one among many thousands of footwear companies that produce and market common types of footwear, but its dream is to seize the opportunity for electronic shoes and to create an unparalleled market of its own. The main marketing objective is to make use of highest possible technology to deliver value, benefits, quality, fun and entertainment in people’s experiences of sports, running, walk and athletics. As far as its e-marketing is concerned, the company aims to use ewalker.com as a channel for direct communication and marketing of its products worldwide. Other objectives are outlined below: To gather right information about customers and individualized requirement and their attitude towards buying of trendy and tech-walker shoes To track records of customers visits and to see which segmented group they fall in To facilitate live-chat with customers to clarify their concerns and doubts regarding products, features, quality etc To get customers redirected from their click on ads provided by various other websites To provide customization facility to customers so that they can choose certain tech-features they want and to avoid some other features they may not want. To help its customers compare price and features of different brands in footwear e-marketing domain To sell walker’s trendy and tech-walker shoes worldwide To analyze customer satisfaction and gather the feedback to find out how effective are the goods and services Find newer customers to expand the market Maintain constant communication with customers as part of the customer relationship and customer loyalty program of the company E-marketing strategy Literatures in the field of e-commerce and e-marketing have provided brief categorization of e-commerce revenue generation models. These models are 1) product or service sale model, 2) subscription model, 3) transaction fee model, 4) advertising supported model and 5) sponsorship model (Botha, Bothma and Geldenhuys, p. 279). Ewalker.com will generate revenues by directly selling Walker’s footwear products, mainly its Tech-Walker brand. Reach faster and market wider The reason behind why Walker sells its trendy and tech-walker shoes through its own online portal- ewalker.com- is to ‘reach faster and market wider’. Online marketing has helped companies to reach wide markets across the world and overcome the hindrance of distance and time in communication and transportation of goods or services. As mentioned earlier, Tech-Walker is a very dynamic and innovative footwear product that can meet numerous wants and needs that customers have including measuring, calculating and counting of footsteps, runners’ speed, blood pressure, bone density and so on. It is a very new product in the contemporary footwear industry. If the company plans only to use marketing through third party sellers, it will take quite a long time to reach the potential markets worldwide and also that the likelihood for product infringement is more. More importantly, Walker Company aims to gain benefits of wider marketing opportunities with ewalker.com. Product offering, value and distribution According to marketing perspectives, customers pay not for the mere goods or services, but for the benefits, utility and values they expect the goods or services to deliver to them. Why Walker thinks about innovating, investing in R&D and differentiating its products with high-tech features especially in the brand of Tech-Walker is to offer its targeted customers shoes and other products with which they get more values than those that they give up (Fifield, 2012). More specifically, the company is keen about the customer value proposition. In order to ensure customers’ feeling of supreme value and utility, ewlaker.com will provide 24/7 services and live-chat so that customers will be able to get any time services and support. Customer satisfaction is also affected by convenience and availability. Ewalker.com ensures availability and convenience too. Implementation of the marketing plan E-marketing mix tactics When a firm completes defining its targeted market, developing strategic ideas about meeting customer requirements and identifying the competitive advantage metrics, it then requires to create the marketing mix by blending of product or service offering, pricing, promotional methods and distribution system (Gitman and McDaniel, p. 295). The concept of marketing mix emphasizes the need for effective and careful coordination and integration of the four Ps, namely product, price, place (distribution) and promotion. Product, Price, Place and Promotion tactics The diagram below illustrates the marketing mix elements and salient features of each component in brief. In order to achieve highest possible marketing synergy, maximum care should be given in designing, developing and implementing the marketing mix tactics. Based on the four components and marketing tactics outlined in the figure, the following factors can be summarized. Ewalker.com, the main platform for Walker’s e-marketing activities, is not only meant to facilitate direct marketing, but also to promote its sales and generate revenues from across the world. One of the most unique features of Walker’s product is that its shoes will be very trendy and modern in style and design. The Tech-Walker brand is the first one in the global market to meet customers’ requirements to use shoes than can meet numerous requirements such as counting footsteps, calculating distance one walks, measuring blood pressure and so on. Though R&D spending is quite huge, the company never plans to make any burden of higher cost on customers. It plans to reduce costs in advertising and other spending and thus to adjust cost-per-unit in to an average market price so that customers can easily afford for high-tech facilitated shoes. Its products will be moderately priced. Customers have facility to customize and select the features they want, and then place the order for it. When they do so, they have to pay only for the additional feature they require. This will be a great attraction to customers. As far as distribution is concerned, goods are directly distributed to customers through services such as FedEx so that middle-men margins and third-party’s profits can be eliminated and thus to make goods more competitive in the market. Ewalker.com provides the advantages of wider markets worldwide. Online ads placed in other thousands websites will redirect people to ewalker.com. This can not only increase the traffics to ewalker.com, but also to increases total revenues. For promoting sales, Walker Company plans to use Integrated marketing communication (IMC) so that different media for promotion can be integrated along with ensuring consistency in messages communicated to customers. Customer Relationship and information gathering Building and maintaining better relationship with customers are key requirements in customer focus, market orientation, and customer retention and customer loyalty. The marketing management of Walker company perceives customer retention and customer loyalty as significant force to help the company achieve competitive edge and therefore the management has designed a clear future plan to continually serve customers better, deliver superior values and maintain long term relationship with them. For this purpose, ewalker.com will keep retrieving customer data, feedback and other information for further use such as analyzing customer requirements. Ewalker.com itself is the major channel for gathering information related to customers. Ewalker.com can gather data in following ways: From the analysis of customer visits and based on their geographic and demographic segments Through live-chat and feedback of customers From customers orders especially through customization facility Organizational Structure for implementing the plan The main responsibility of implementing the plan is entitled with the marketing management of the company. There are four senior marketing management executives and each of them has been assigned with duties of managing individual section in the plan. There are marketing executives for assisting the senior management team. Budget for e-marketing plan Implementing this plan is not going to be an easy task. There are two major challenges for the company, one is to successfully launch Tech-Walker brand, and the second is to market it through the ewalker.com. Ewalker.com is not a well-established site, but the plan is to attract more than ten- thousands of serious visits a day and at least nearly 200 to 500 orders a day. Hence, expanding the website along with Google’s ads expense is going to be of high cost. Creating and increasing the traffics is the main way for attracting serious customers. The initial cost for expanding the present plant, install additional technology and for meeting other expenses including engineer’s salary is estimated to be $7 million and the expenses for expanding website along with advertisement cost will be nearly $ 4 million in the first year, . But, the total e-marketing cost is just below four million US dollars. The financial projections of e-marketing activities are depicted above: The financial projections show that the company will generate a total revenue of $ 3 million, $ 5 million and $ 6 million in the first, second and third years respectively. Since the total cost is above the revenues in the first year, the company projects a loss of nearly $ 1 million. By the end of the second year, the company will be able to generate a net profit of nearly $1.5 million because total costs will fall below $2.5 million. In the third year, total costs will fall below $ 2.5 million and therefore the company will generate a total net profit of nearly $ 3.5 million. Evaluating the Plan Once the marketing plan is designed, prepared and implemented, it is highly important that the marketing management should evaluate whether marketing activities are going according to the plans. Evaluation helps to identify any deviation from the plan and thus to take corrective action to overcome shortcoming or pitfalls that cause the plan to be unsuccessful. Evaluation is corrective measure. Some of the major performance metrics for Walker’s e-marketing plan are outlined below: Evaluate whether marketing managers are fully aware about the plan and its contents Assess whether or not all the marketing activities, mainly in relation to marketing Tech-Walker and ewalker.com are carried out according to the plan Evaluate how successfully the company could maintain customer relationship, retention and customer loyalty Evaluate how customer feedback and information retrieved through ewalker.com are utilized for improving customer satisfaction and customer experiences. Evaluate whether or not the e-marketing activities can generate revenues and profits planned. References Botha, J., Bothma, C. and Geldenhuys, P. Managing E-commerce in Business, Juta and Company Ltd, 2008 Bygrave, W. D and Zacharakis, A, Entrepreneurship, Second edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2010 Dann & Dann, E-Marketing: Theory and Application, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 Ferrell, O.C and Hartline, M.D, Marketing Strategy, Fourth edition, Cengage Learning, 2008 Fifield, P, Marketing Strategy, Third edition, Routledge 2012 Gitman, L. J & McDaniel, C, The Future of Business: The Essentials, Cengage Learning, 2008 Lamb, C.W, Hair, J. F and McDaniel, J. C, Essentials of Marketing, Sixth edition, Cengage Learning, 2008 O'Guinn, T. C, Allen, C. T & Semenik, R.J, Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion, Cengage Learning, 2011 Smith, P. R & Taylor, J, Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach, Kogan Page Publishers, 2004 Read More