Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ads by Google: Try Email Marketing Free Make Google Your Homepage Outsourced Marketing
Ads by Google: Try Email Marketing Free Make Google Your Homepage Outsourced Marketing
Ads by Google: Try Email Marketing Free Make Google Your Homepage Outsourced Marketing
A good e-marketing strategy is the most important aspect for the success of any kind
of business. This article will give you a fundamental understanding about an e-
business marketing strategy and an e-marketing plan.
Ads by Google
Try Email Marketing Free Learn Why 7-of-10 Businesses Choose Our Email
Marketing. www.ConstantContact.com/UK
Make Google Your Homepage Find What You're Looking For With Google
Search. Google.co.uk
Outsourced marketing Service sector marketing, design, PR, client care
www.conical.co.uk
There are many aspects that lead to the success of any business in the industry.
Marketing is one such significant aspect that makes a business grow. Nowadays,
due to the trend of Internet shopping, companies are adopting marketing strategies,
according to how potential consumers use the Internet. Let us know more about an
e-marketing strategy.
E-Marketing Strategy
In general terms, an e-marketing strategy consists of the steps taken and procedures
followed for marketing a brand through the web. The center of attraction in any e-
marketing strategy is the website of the company to which Internet users are to be
attracted for increasing sales. But firstly, the company's website needs to be in a
proper design, format, attractive, and one that will have a good impression on
prospective buyers.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
as an efficient tool for business generation. It is also a very good business marketing
technique for building good business relations with potential customers, as well as
prospective clients.
Online Advertising
Online advertising is a marketing method, that has a very substantial Return On
Investment (ROI) value. It consists of placing advertisements of products and
services on the company website, sites which are ranking on the first pages of the
search engine, and sites which are getting a considerable amount of traffic from
Internet users. Internet affiliate marketing is a very good example of online
advertising, which relates to paying your company's product advertiser as per the
sales generation.
Online Newsletters
You can even think of online newsletters as a decent way to pass on product
information for promoting your product and services. Businesses generally issue
online newsletters to regular customers for letting them know what new introductory
offers are available and which new products are likely to be launched. Unlike email
marketing, these online newsletters are issued at regular time intervals.
By Stephen Rampur
Published: 2/6/2010
Ads by Google
Digital Marketing Degree Study from Anywhere in the World! Master in Digital
Marketing at IE www.ie.edu/business
B2C Email Marketing 99.34% email delivered. 12+ years Online. Free support.
Zero risk. www.AWeber.com
Masters in Marketing & Advertising, 8 Specialisations, Top for Jobs, 100% Online
Course,Apply! StudyInterActive.org/MSc-Marketing
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
Build a suitable Domain name: The domain name of your website plays a major
role in web marketing. In case your website deals with the most-visited tourist
destinations, then it is advisable to give it a name like ‘touristspots.com’. Website
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
names should be relevant to the subject your website deals with. However, certain
theories recommend the use of easy-to-remember names. Take the example of
Google or Buzzle. These ‘short-n-easy-to-remember’ names have managed to
create a buzz in the Internet user community.
Use Keywords: Now that you have a website of your own, you need to make sure it
is visited by a large number of users. In order to increase the number of users
visiting your website and also to get it bookmarked as a favorite, you need to host
content that is most relevant to your business. For a website to receive higher search
engine ranking, it is important to use the most searched words and phrases in your
web content. Keyword research and SEO strategies help a website in ranking higher
than its competitors.
Connect to the Masses: For any of your marketing strategies to work, it is very
important for you to reach out to your customers over the web. The Internet offers
you an excellent communication platform. Email marketing is one of the most
effective Internet marketing strategies, whereby companies send emails to their
customers with intent to enhance customer relationship and keep the customers
informed about the company’s products and services. It is good to build a responsive
opt-in email list. Viral marketing is another effective web marketing technique that
uses existing social networks to achieve business promotion. Blogging and
participating in online forums can help you communicate with a wide customer base.
Article marketing, wherein articles on frequently searched topics are published on
websites, serves as an effective Internet marketing tool.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
effective way of targeting their customers, improving their sales and achieving an
overall business growth.
By Manali Oak
Ads by Google
Make Him Addicted To You Just Say This To Make Him Fall Madly In Love With
You HaveTheRelationshipYouWant.com
What Really Attracts Men 9 Dangerous Mistakes Women Make That Men Find
Totally Unattractive CatchHimAndKeepHim.com
Free Irish Dating Site Meet over 450,000 Irish Singles Totally Free & Quick to
Join. Try! www.AnOtherFriend.com
Garage Door Sale Garage Door Quotes, 50% off Order online or call 0800 404 80
11 www.garagedoorsale.co.uk
Cheap UK Car Insurance Fill in one quote to compare over 400 car insurance
prices www.CompareTheMarket.com
Your Name Is No Accident 27 Facts You Don't Know About Your Personality and
Future. But Should! Numerologist.com
Macmillan Tribute Create a tribute fund for a loved one and celebrate their life
Macmillan.TributeFunds.com
Geek Gadgets at Firebox™ Buy brilliant gadgets and games! Great gift ideas.
Same day dispatch www.Firebox.com/Gadgets
2009/03/24
eMarketing strategy is the plan that you devise and implement to market your products or
services in the online environment. Usually, it makes use of eMarketing tactics like Email
Marketing or Search Engine Optimisation. Of course, there are good strategies and there
are bad strategies. And, in an age where there are 1.3 billion people using the Internet, you
need to be pretty sure that yours is a good one. So here are some tips to help you plan a
winning strategy.
No matter how simple your objectives, a strategy is a good idea. (Image by WorldIslandinfo,
under CC)
There’s no point in trying to sell ice to an Inuit (someone should possibly look into it when
the polar ice caps have melted, though) and there’s no good reason to try and sell steak to a
vegetarian. The point: knowing your target market is the first rule of any successful
marketing strategy, on or offline. Admittedly this may be stating the obvious, but it is
nonetheless an integral and oft neglected aspect of strategy planning and implementation.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
If one of the greatest benefits of using online marketing tactics is their measurability, then it
is important to have something against which to measure your strategy’s success.
Predefining clear goals and desired outcomes will not only give your strategy much
needed direction and focus but, as time goes on, it will also ensure that you can monitor
whether your strategy is doing what it is supposed to.
3. Think Laterally
Once you have got these initial steps out of the way, you can cast your mind to finding
creative ways to formulate and implement your strategy. This is the fun part. There are a
wide range of eMarketing tactics available to you and innumerable ways to implement
them. Thinking laterally about your strategy from a variety of angles is important though.
It’s all too easy to redo what has been done before and while there is nothing wrong with the
tried and tested approach, one creative idea could be enough to take your strategy to new
heights.
4. Think Holistically
There are a huge range of eMarketing tactics available to you and implementing a fantastic
SEO strategy is useless if your Conversion Optimisation isn’t up to scratch or if your site is
built wholly with flash. When it comes to all things online, it is seldom one tactic that makes
for a fantastic strategy – it is rather the way in which they all work together and interact that
would make the difference.
You might think by this point that the planning part is over. The bad news is that you have a
long way to go. The good news is that more planning in the early stages of strategising
makes it easier for your strategy to be implemented and more successful in the long run. This
is the point at which you need to think through every aspect of your campaign, including how
you plan to measure and track it once it is launched. It is also important to evaluate the
ideas that you have generated in terms of your company’s needs and resources, bearing in
mind your competitors’ strategies, and the ways in which you can make yourself stand out
from the crowd.
Big ideas do not necessarily require big budgets. In fact, the most successful ideas are often
those that are also exceptionally simple. When it comes to thinking about the pennies and
pounds, the first thing is to ensure that you take each and every aspect of your strategy into
account, get accurate quotes and calculate a realistic total expenditure. Once you have done
this, it is necessary to evaluate whether the outcomes and benefits make the cost a feasible
one. In the same way as you wouldn’t pay one Gazillion dollars for a beaten up jalopy of a
car, some strategies are just not worth the budget that they require to implement.
There is no foolproof method for planning an eMarketing strategy that will meet your
objectives and launch your company into instant online success. With the foundations
properly laid however, there’s a good chance that your strategy will be a good one and, if
necessary, will be tweakable over time to ensure the best results.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
‘The key question is not whether to deploy Internet technology – companies have no
choice if they want to stay competitive – but how to deploy it.’
For many companies, the first forays into e-marketing or Internet marketing are not
the result of a well-defined, integrated Internet strategy; rather, they are a response
to competitors activities or customers demand.
After a site has been in existence for a year or so, marketing staff and senior
managers in a company will naturally question its effectiveness. This is often the
point at which the need for a coherent Internet marketing strategy becomes
apparent. As a result, the starting point used in this summary of approaches to e-
marketing strategy, is when a company that has an existing site and it is reviewing
the current site and its effectiveness with a view to future improvements.
The e-marketing strategy process
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
Chaffey (2002) notes that e-business or e-marketing strategy process models tend to
share the following characteristics:
In this article, we will use a four stage model for e-marketing strategy development.
The four stages are:
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
4. Strategy implementation
Includes devising and executing the tactics needed to achieve strategic objectives.
This includes relaunching a web site, campaigns associated with promoting the site
and monitoring the effectiveness of the site. These issues have been dealt with in
other articles.
We will now examine specific issues of strategic analysis and objective setting that
are related to e-marketing.
1. Strategic analysis.
- internal resources and processes of the company and a review of its activity in the
marketplace;
- immediate competitive environment (micro-environment) including customer
demand and behaviour, competitor activity, marketplace structure and relationships
with suppliers and partners.
- wider environment (macro-environment) in which a company operates including the
social, legal, economic, political and technological factors.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
In this section we will highlight the key aspects of the internal and external
environment that need to be assessed when developing an e-marketing strategy.
Internal resources
- Structure – what are the responsibilities and control mechanisms used to co-
ordinate Internet marketing across different departments and business units. We
return to this topic next month.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
Pertinent factors for the Internet include demand analysis, competitor analysis
intermediary analysis, channel structure. Porter (2001) has written extensively about
how the Internet has changed the dynamic of the marketplace and has reinterpreted
his often-quoted five forces model in the Internet era.
Demand analysis or online customer activity is a key factor driving e-marketing and
e-business strategy objectives. It assesses the current level and future projections of
customer demand for e-commerce services in different market segments. In a B2B
context customer activity can be determined by asking for each market:
- What % of members of the buying decision in these businesses have access to the
Internet?
- What % of customers with access to the Internet are not prepared to purchase
online, but choose or are influenced by web-based information to buy products
offline?
- What are the barriers to adoption and the facilitators amongst customers and how
can we encourage adoption?
Resources for assessing the ratio of ‘Access : Choose : Buy’ online have been
reviewed in WNIM 5 and 6.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
organisation and its competitors for their different channels by trying to answer these
questions:
1. Business contribution
How does Internet marketing contribute to the bottom line? What is the online
revenue contribution (direct and indirect), costs and profitability?
2. Marketing outcomes
How many marketing outcomes are achieved online? For example, what proportion
of leads, sales, service contacts occur online? How effective is online marketing at
acquiring, converting and retaining customers?
3. Customer satisfaction
What are the customers’ opinions of the online experience and how does this affect
their loyalty?
This assesses how different customer segments interact with web site content and
assesses how the actions they take are influenced by usability, design, content,
promotions and services.
5. Site promotion
How effective are the different promotional tools such as search engines, e-mail,
direct marketing and advertising at driving quality traffic to the web site? Measures
include attraction efficiency, referrer efficiency, cost of acquisition, reach and the
integration between tools. Analysis of the use of intermediaries to build and service
business is also important here.
It can be suggested that of the different Social, Legal, Economic, Political and
Technological characteristics of the macro-environment, the three most significant
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
factors described in more depth in chapter 3 are legal constraints – What are the
legal limitations to online promotion and trade such as data protection and taxation,
ethical constraints such as privacy and technological constraints – what is the
current availability and usage of technology to access the Internet and offer
distinctive services and how is this likely to vary in the future?
2. Strategic objectives.
Smith and Chaffey (2001) suggest there are five broad benefits, reasons or
objectives of e-marketing. This framework is useful since it presents a
comprehensive range of objectives. Marketers will decide whether all or only some
will drive e-marketing:
Sell – Grow sales (through wider distribution to customers you can’t service
offline or perhaps through a wider product range than in-store, or better
prices)
Serve – Add value (give customers extra benefits online: or inform product
development through online dialogue and feedback)
Speak – Get closer to customers by tracking them, asking them questions,
conducting online interviews, creating a dialogue, monitoring chat rooms,
learning about them
Save – Save costs - of service, sales transactions and administration, print
and post. Can you reduce transaction costs and therefore either make online
sales more profitable? Or use cost-savings to enable you to cut prices, which
in turn could enable you to generate greater market share?
Sizzle – Extend the brand online. Reinforce brand values in a totally new
medium. The Web scores very highly as a medium for creating brand
awareness, recognition and involvement.
Specific objectives should be created for each of the 5Ss. Consider Sales – a typical
objective might be:
‘To grow the business with online sales e.g. to generate at least 10% of sales online.
Within 6 months.’
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
or
The key objective for e-marketing is the online revenue contribution. This is a
measure of the extent to which a companies online presence directly impacts the
sales revenue of an organisation. Online revenue contribution objectives can be
specified for different types of products, customer segments and geographic
markets.
Companies that can set a high online revenue contribution objective of say 25% for 2
years time will need to provide more resource allocation to the Internet than those
companies who anticipate a contribution of 2.5%. Cisco Systems Inc
(www.cisco.com) maker of computer networking gear, is now selling around 90% of
its 20 billion dollars sales online. This was achieved since senior executives at Cisco
identified the significance of the medium, setting aggressive targets for the online
revenue contribution and resourcing the e-commerce initiative accordingly.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
We have looked at the first two parts of a strategy process, key issues for these are:
2. Objectives setting. The 5 S s of Sell, Speak, Serve, Save and Sizzle. The direct
and indirect online revenue contribution.
References
Porter, M. (2001) Strategy and the Internet. Harvard Business Review. March 2001,
62-78.
Note: This article is one of a series originally written between 2000 and 2003 for The
Chartered Institute of Marketing What's New in Marketing Newsletter. Many of the
concepts remain valid, but some more recent concepts such as Web 2.0 and social
networks aren't referenced.
Mahesh atthe
E Marketing strategy
Mahesh atthe