Internet Marketing in the Modern Context - Essay Example

E-Marketing Strategy Executive Summary Internet can be duly considered to be a revolutionary development in the field of information and communication technology. The development of internet has offered numerous opportunities for almost all the business segments. Currently, it is used by both large and small sized organisations for various business and non-business purposes. Over the previous few years, internet has accorded significant attention of marketers as one of the cheapest sources of marketing products and services. The growing popularity of internet related to its usability associated with marketing of products and services has led to the emergence of the term e-marketing. In a nutshell, the aim of this report is to analyse the fundamental issues related to e-marketing strategy and making recommendations to Michelle who is currently running an outlet Michelle’s Fancy Dress Costumes’ located in the Metro Centre in Gateshead. Correspondingly, it is recommended to create her website as the most important step for achieving the goal of e-marketing strategy. Moreover, extensive range of e-marketing strategy is suggested to her. Alongside, the use of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) including placing of keywords on-site and off-site was recommended to her. The use of banner and affiliate adverting is also suggested for marketing of her products and services. In the backdrop of increasing effectiveness of direct marketing, the application of e-mail based permission marketing is also recommended to her. Owing to the increasing popularity and wide spread use of social media for marketing, Michelle is also recommended to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to reach wide masses quickly and in cost effective manner. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 1. Introduction 4 2. Overview of Michelle’s Fancy Dress Costumes 5 3. E-Marketing Strategy for Michelle’s Fancy Dress Costumes 6 3.1 Website Strategies 7 3.2 Website Development 8 3.3 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 9 3.4 Online Advertising 10 3.5 Permission Marketing 11 3.6 Social Media Marketing 12 4. Summary 12 References 14 1. Introduction The evolution of internet has provided significant opportunities to businesses across the world. The continuous improvement in technology and greater access of internet to large populaces have offered marketers with an opportunity to market both directly and indirectly and conduct their business in an efficient manner. Currently, internet is being used by various business organisations for conducting online sales as well as marketing their respective products or services. Marketing through internet is becoming extremely popular among the marketers in the present day context. Marketing through internet is known by several names such as digital marketing, web marketing and internet marketing. However, e-marketing is the most commonly used term, which has gained considerable popularity amid the marketers. It is worth mentioning that e-marketing differs significantly from the traditional forms of marketing (Salehi & et.al., 2012; Chaffey, 2008). E-marketing, unobstructed by time and location has offered marketers with fast and flexible way of marketing their products and services. In the contemporary business environment, e-marketing has become imperative for building strong brand, generating adequate awareness about the products or services as well as enhancing product sales offered by the marketers at diverse marketplaces. Undoubtedly, it can be firmly stated that marketing mix strategies combined with e-marketing have offered significant growth opportunities for the marketers (Yazdanifard & et. al., 2011). Besides, the effectiveness of e-marketing can also be identified from the fact that current businesses are burdened with increasing cost of offline advertising, which has dramatically influenced the revenue earning capacity of the businesses. In such circumstances, e-marketing has provided marketers with a major platform to promote and advertise their products and services. However, it cannot be denied that success of e-marketing greatly relies on the effectiveness of e-marketing strategy. On the contrary, ineffective e-marketing strategy may not render the desire outcome for the business. Thus, it is crucial to determine effective e-marketing strategies for seeking largest possible benefits with the use of e-marketing tools (Yannopoulos, 2011). Correspondingly, this report intends to identify and critically analyse the fundamental issues related to e-marketing strategy in order to provide e-marketing strategy recommendations to Michelle who is running an outlet, ‘Michelle’s Fancy Dress Costumes’ located in the Metro Centre in Gateshead. 2. Overview of Michelle’s Fancy Dress Costumes Michelle’s Fancy Dress Costumes is an outlet located in Metro Centre in Gateshead. The outlet stocks an assortment of costumes featuring popular themes including movie and TV characteristics, sports, villains, heroes, fantasies and music among others for the purpose of renting. However, the costumes being offered by the outlet are readily available both online as well as offline. Besides, the costumes that are available in the outlet are targeted towards higher-end markets where the customers hire the costumes for night out particularly for traditional fancy dress parties, balls or events. In addition, Michelle who is the owner of the outlet also provides certain additional services involving customizing or altering costumes for a better fit and look. Nonetheless, customers are required to pay for the additional services availed by them. The outlet primarily deals in renting of costumes rather than selling. However, the outlet stocks a wide-range of costumes that are mainly made for selling purpose rather than renting. Since the service offered by Michelle is highly customized in nature, she has decided not to sell or take orders online. Although Michelle has used internet for business and pleasure purpose but she has no experience of marketing through internet. She recognises that marketing through internet offers effective and a cost efficient source for marketing the services offered by her. Thus, despite of her decision of eliminating online sales and taking orders, she intends to use internet for marketing purpose instead of relying on offline marketing. 3. E-Marketing Strategy for Michelle’s Fancy Dress Costumes In the contemporary business environment, internet has emerged as a pivotal component for organisations’ marketing strategy. It is due to the reason that marketing through internet has offered the organisations in the modern world with newer ways of reaching people as well as delivering the messages necessary for generating awareness among the people that are necessary for increasing the sales of the products or services offered at the market place. Organisations are using their respective websites as a source of their product and service information to the potential customers. In other words, the emergence of e-marketing has offered organisations with better communication opportunities with their customers (Epstein & Yuthas, 2007; Becherer & Halstead, 2004). There are various e-marketing strategies that are currently being used by the organisations at the market place (Krishnamurthy, 2006). Thus, the e-marketing strategies that can be used by Michelle are outlined below. 3.1 Website Strategies It is crucial for Michelle to frame website strategies prior to the website development. In this regard, selection of the domain name is a vital element for developing a website. The internet domain is regarded as the unique web address, which can be purchased by Michelle from the domain name registration company. The selection of domain name involves two major components including the name and the suffix. The chosen domain name reflects the brand or the organisations, while the suffix generally represents the origin country of the organisations (Murphy & et. al., 2003). Correspondingly, Michelle can select suitable domain for her website and it is recommended to adopt shorter name for the same as it would be easier for the people to remember. For example, she can register the domain name as fancydress.co.uk. The next step involves the selection of web hosting company, which would be hosting the website of the outlet. Notably, there are two kinds of web hosting services that involve free and commercial hosting. Accordingly, Michelle can choose either of the alternatives for the purpose of hosting her website. It is worth mentioning that free hosting has certain limitations, as free hosting may require Michelle to host banners and advertisement other than her own outlet. At the same time, commercial hosting providers seek Michelle to pay on monthly or annual basis. Thus, it is recommended to Michelle to avoid free hosting providers as this kind of hosting often reduce the effectiveness of the website. One of the important decisions, which Michelle will be required to make is decision regarding the development of website. In this regard, she can either hire professionals for creating the website or she can do by herself. Since, Michelle has no idea about the e-marketing, it is recommended to hire professionals in order to ensure credibility of the website. Michelle is also required to select web analytics in order to measure the advertisement performance. Currently, there are numerous analytical tools and software that are available over the internet such as Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics and Web trends among others. Michelle can choose suitable analytical tools. In this regard, Google Analytics is recommended to Michelle because it is considered to provide more accurate results (Omidvar & et.al., 2011; Charlesworth, 2011). 3.2 Website Development Development of website requires creativity and innovation on the part of the developers. It is crucial that website of design is attractive and appealing to the visitors. Michelle should ensure that the website explicitly describes the products and services offered by her outlet as this information would impose significant impact on the views of the customers. The contents of the website should also be creative and must decorate with graphics and logos that reflect the product and the service quality. As stated earlier, in order to achieve these goals, it is vital for hiring professionals such as web designers who have adequate experience and creativity. Besides, special attention is required to place on aesthetics elements, site speed, simplicity and ease of navigation. The combination of these elements often provides unique web experience to the online visitors visiting the sites (Wen & et.al., 2001). . Once the website is developed, other tasks for Michelle would be submitting the site to popular search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo! in order to ensure its global presence. This will certainly facilitate the visibility of the site at the time when the people would search and create awareness about the site. Management of website is another major task, which needs to be ensured by Michelle. She can use own ‘Six Sigma System’ for the quality management of the website (Zu & et.al., 2008). Due to the increasing incidents of data breach and online fraud, the government of the UK and other nations of the world have legislated certain laws and regulations to ensure data privacy and secure transaction. Although the website of Michelle does not intends to sale product or services online or take orders online, it is crucial for her to comply with the laws and regulations governing the operations of the websites (Iqbal & et. al., 2013; Charlesworth, 2011). 3.3 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO is an effective process and widely used e-marketing strategy to drive internet traffic and attract customers. SEO strategy is considered to be the most effective and cost-efficient e-marketing strategy. There are usually two types of SEO including organic and paid. The major differences between the organic and paid listings can be identified in terms of their display locations. Paid listings are more effective than organic, thus it is recommended to Michelle to undertake paid listing. In order to reap the benefit of SEO strategy, Michelle will have to register with the search engine of the target market. Besides, she will also have to select appropriate keywords to describe her website as well as products or services such as fancy costume store. In this regard, she can also use the keyword, which is most applicable in the concerned business area. It is extremely important that contents of the website are attractive in order to reap the benefits of SEO. Notably, unattractive contents are not able to engage the users thereby reducing the chances of converting users into customers. Michelle can use both on-site optimization and off-site optimization. On-site optimization will require Michelle to place keywords within her website. However, it is crucial that the keywords are positioned strategically in different locations such as within the content or the web pages’ titles. On-site SEO is vital as it can enable the users to directly visit her website. Other vital options for Michelle can be to place the keywords strategically outside her website. In this regard, she can position the keywords in social media outlets and blog posts among others. This type of SEO serves as an important marketing strategy as it enables the users to find the website through various other outlets. Notably, Michelle can focus on both the types of SEO as her marketing strategy (Rehman & Khan, 2013; Torkaman & et.al., n.d.). 3.4 Online Advertising Online advertising is an effective e-marketing strategy, which has been long being adopted by marketers at the market place. There are different types of online advertising and each type of advertising has their own strengths along with weaknesses. Notably, advertising banners are the most commonly used online advertising strategy. Michelle, in order to execute the online advertising in the form of banner advertising, she will be required to purchase space in other outlets for a specific period of time. For this purpose, she will required to pay Cost Per Mille (CPM) for the agreed time period (Kireyev & et.al., 2013). On the other hand, Michelle can also opt for search engine advertising. In order to avail the benefits of search engine advertising, Michelle will require to pay out the selected publishers. In this regard, one of the popular systems, which is widely followed is pay per click. According to this system, Michelle will be required to pay for each click made on an ad. She can use Google’s AdSense for availing the benefit of this system (Rai, 2010; Ha, 2008). Similarly, another viable option for her is to opt for Affiliate advertising. Affiliate advertising involves moving towards third party for the purpose of advertising. With respect to Michelle, this type of advertising may not be feasible option for her as the size of her business to relatively small (Charlesworth, 2011). 3.5 Permission Marketing Permission marketing requires marketers to seek permission for the conduct of any marketing or advertising activity. The emergence of permission marketing is an effective medium of direct marketing. As an e-marketing strategy, Michelle can use e-mail as the medium of direct marketing. The process involved in permission marketing based on e-mail is simple to be executed and at the same time effective to draw the attention of customers towards the products and services offered by the marketers. Besides, the use of e-mail permission marketing is recommended to Michelle because this kind of marketing will facilitate her to build and maintain closer relationships with customers (Tezinde & et.al., 2002). Apart from using e-mail as direct marketing tool, it is also recommended to Michelle to use e-mail as a tool for distributing promotional messages. It will provide her with certain specific advantages such as low set-up cost as well as distribution costs. While executing permission marketing based on e-mail, there are certain important aspects that need to be strictly followed by Michelle for ensuring maximum effectiveness of this strategy. Accordingly, the length of messages as well as interactive features related to e-mail messages serve as a vital determinant for its effectiveness (Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty, 2012; Pavlov & et.al., 2008). 3.6 Social Media Marketing In recent times, it can be apparently observed that social media has gained its popularity by a considerable extent. Users use social media for the purpose of sharing their experience and sending messages. In this regard, Michelle can create an account as well as a community page within the social networking sites such as Facebook in order to promote the product and the services offered by her. Moreover, she can also use twitter account and update information about the latest collections of fancy dress costumes using hash tag (Chaffey, & Smith, 2013; Lopez, 2012). Currently, marketing through social media has accorded significant importance amid marketers particularly due to the increasing effectiveness of this kind of marketing as well as reduced costs associated with it. At the same time, marketing through social networking sites particularly through Twitter is quick and effective. As a strategy of social media marketing, Michelle can also take the advantage of viral marketing. Viral marketing generally involves communicating messages to someone who then share the same messages through their business or personal networks. This type of e-marketing strategy will significantly benefit Michelle in reaching large mass of customers within short period of time and attract their attention towards her products or services (Yang & et. al., n.d.; Miller & Lammas, n.d.). 4. Summary Michelle has used internet for both business and pleasure purpose in the past but now she intends to use internet for marketing her products and services. Unlike other business organisations, Michelle does not intend to sale her products online but she is willing to use internet for marketing purpose rather than concentrating on offline marketing. In this regard, various e-marketing strategies have been identified that can be applied for marketing her products and services. In this similar context, in the initial phase, she will be required to develop website strategies that will require her to select appropriate domain name for her website. Next, she will be required to select web hosting company. Michelle can use commercial hosting providers for her website. Subsequently, she would require to develop her website. It is crucial that the contents of her website are attractive and appealing to customers or the users. After developing the website, she can proceed with the selection of e-marketing tools and techniques that can be used for marketing her product and services. In this regard, she can use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for which she needs to select suitable keywords. Apart from SEO, she can also make greater use of banner advertising and affiliate advertising. E-mail marketing, also known as Permission marketing can also be used by her. The recent trend pertaining to e-marketing strategy involves the use of social media marketing such as Facebook and Twitter among others. Michelle can use social networking as an e-marketing strategy. Besides, the use of social media is highly recommended, as in the contemporary business environment, social media sites are the most widely used e-marketing strategy. Nonetheless, the above discussed e-marketing strategy is relatively cheap and effective than offline marketing strategy. Besides, budget required for the recommended e-marketing strategy is lesser. Thus, she can use all the above discussed e-marketing marketing strategies for marketing her products and services without spending considerable amount. References Becherer, R. C. & Halstead , D., 2004. Characteristics and Internet Marketing Strategies of Online Auction Sellers. Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 24-37. Chaffey, D. & Smith, P.R., 2013. Emarketing Excellence: Planning and Optimizing your Digital Marketing. Routledge. Chaffey, D., 2008. Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education India. Charlesworth, A., 2011. Internet Marketing: A Practical Approach. Routledge. Epstein, M. J. & Yuthas, K., 2007. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Internet Marketing Initiatives. Management Strategy, pp. 1-39. Ellis-Chadwick, F. & Doherty, N. F., 2012. Web Advertising: The Role of Email Marketing. Journal of Business Research, Vol. 65 No. 6, pp. 843–848. Ha, L., 2008. Online Advertising Research in Advertising Journals: A Review. Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 31-48. Iqbal, M. & et. al., 2013. A Legal Perspective of E-Businesses and E-Marketing for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES). International Journal of Managing Information Technology, Vol. No. 1 pp. 1-11. Kireyev, P. & et. al., 2013. Do Display Ads Influence Search? Attribution and Dynamics in Online Advertising. Harvard Business School, 1-30. Krishnamurthy, S., 2006. Introducing E-MARKPLAN: A Practical Methodology To Plan E-Marketing Activities. Business Horizons, Vol. 49, pp. 51-60. Lopez, K., 2012. Marketing via the Web and Social Media. United States Lactation Consultant Association, pp. 39-40. Miller, R. & Lammas, N., No Date. Social Media and Its Implications for Viral Marketing. Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, Vol. 11, pp. 1-9. Murphy, J. & et. al., 2003. The Use of Domain Names in E-Branding by the World’s Top Brands. Electronic Markets, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 222-223. Omidvar, M. A. & et. al., 2011. Analyzing the Impact of Visitors on Page Views with Google Analytics. International Journal of Web & Semantic Technology, Vol. 2, No. 1pp. 14-31. Pavlov, O. V. & et. al., 2008. Toward a Sustainable Email Marketing Infrastructure. Journal of Business Research, Vol. 61, No. 11, pp. 1191-1199. Rai, A., 2010. Role and Strategies of Internet Advertising in the Current Technological Scenario. International Journal of Computer Applications, Vo. 7, No. 4, pp. 9-16. Rehman, K. & Khan, M. N. A., 2013. The Foremost Guidelines for Achieving Higher Ranking in Search Results through Search Engine Optimization. International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, Vol. 52, pp. 101-110. Salehi, M & et. al., 2012. Dissimilarity of E-marketing VS Traditional Marketing. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 510-515. Torkaman, H. & et. al., No Date. Developing a Framework for Multi Channel E-marketing. Journal of Information Systems Research and Innovation, pp. 77-84. Tezinde, T. & et. al., 2002. Getting Permission: Exploring Factors Affecting Permission Marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 29-36. Wen, H. J. & et. al., 2001. E-Commerce Web Site Design: Strategies and Models. Information Management & Computer Security, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 5-12. Yazdanifard, R. & et. al., 2011. Internet Marketing: The New Era of Innovation in E-commerce. 2011 International Conference on Software and Computer Applications, pp. 192-197. Yang, T. A. & et. al., No Date. Social Networking as a New Trend in e-Marketing. University of Houston, pp. 1-11. Yannopoulos, P., 2011. Impact of the Internet on Marketing Strategy Formulation. International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 12, No. 18, pp. 1-7. Zu, X. & et. al., 2008. The Evolving Theory of Quality Management: The Role of Six Sigma. Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 26, pp. 630-650. Read More