Answer To: LPC DMKT5008 Digital Marketing Summer 2018 Coursework Brief Handout: June 2018 Deadline for...
Soumi answered on Aug 04 2020
MARKETING MANAGEMENT: DIGITAL MARKETING
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
1. Differences between Digital and Targeting Marketing and reasons for Clintons to invest in digital marketing 3
Digital Marketing 3
Traditional Marketing 3
Key differences between Traditional and Digital Marketing 3
Significance for the Clintons to move towards Digital Marketing 5
2. Explanation of how website optimisation techniques can be used by Clintons to improve performance 5
3. How Clintons can use digital marketing technique such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC), to improve their website visibility as compared to their competitors 7
Steps to create an effective SEO strategy 7
Steps to set up a Pay-Per-Click campaign 7
Benefits of Pay-Per-Click campaign 8
Digital Marketing Laws and Guidelines 8
4. Using digital marketing techniques such as Online Display, Video Advertising and Social Media Marketing in attracting new and retaining old customers 9
Video Marketing 9
Social Media Marketing 10
5. Explaining how digital marketing techniques such as Content and Email marketing can be used by the Clintons, to improve their performance 11
Content Marketing 11
E-mail Marketing 11
6. How Clintons can use website Analytics to improve their performance 12
Conclusion 13
References 14
Introduction
This report explains the principles of digital marketing and the ways, in which it is different from traditional form of marketing. It explains various concepts of digital marketing such as website optimisation techniques, website analytics, display, video, content, email marketing, search engine optimisation, pay-per-click and social media marketing. With the discussion of these concepts from the view point of digital marketing manager of Clintons cards company, which is contemplating to move into the arena of digital marketing, it attempts to demonstrate practical applications of these concepts.
1. Differences between Digital and Targeting Marketing and reasons for Clintons to invest in digital marketing
It is a well-known fact that in real life things changes due to natural evolution. With the rapid technological advancement and introduction of internet, present era is characterised as a digital era. Same evolutionary changes have occurred in the field of marketing, where it has changed from traditional methods such as newspaper or magazines advertisement to more engaging manner in the form of social media, video among many other mediums. Hence, it is important to understand the differences between them and then analyse reasons for Clintons to invest in digital marketing.
Digital Marketing
With technological advancement, came the evolution in marketing in the form of digital marketing. It uses electronic media and channels in different forms such as YouTube videos, social media, mobile, email marketing. It utilises various website optimisation techniques such as search engine marketing and pay-per-click advertising (Hollimen, 2014).
Traditional Marketing
It refers to the style of advertising, campaigning, marketing in which companies have been investing over the years and has achieved definite success. Methods under traditional marketing include advertising through flyers, newspaper advertisements, magazines print ads, billboards, television or radio broadcast. This form of advertising was easy to place and establish, as there were very limited channels and same message can be broadcast for everyone.
Key differences between Traditional and Digital Marketing
Both the forms of marketing have their own pros and cons. Traditional is generally a one-way form of communication, where the information flows from the marketer to the potential customers, where marketers had very limited knowledge about the customer’s opinions and reviews, which made it difficult for firms to update their message accordingly. However, as Stephen (2016) mentioned, with the introduction of two-way communication through digital marketing, firms can get regular updates about their products or services. Presently, they are able to better target their message to the right customers, which in a way has reduced their budget expenses and plan their commercials according to the customers’ preferences.
One of the major benefits of traditional marketing as mentioned by Cooley (2018), is that firms can easily reach local customers, as flyers can be delivered to as many customers mailbox, similarly single radio or television advertisements could be heard or watched by millions at any particular time. Secondly, audience can carry hard copy and same advertisement can be read or browsed over and over again by a greater number of people. On the other hand, it also has many disadvantages such as limited interaction between marketer and customers, it is costly to print and advertise on the radio or television, and it is difficult metric to measure the performance of the television or billboard advertisement.
Some of these issues can be easily resolved through digital marketing, as marketers here can target not only local population but also national and international audience easily. Secondly, audience can choose the medium through which they would want to receive content, for example, some like to blog another person may like to watch YouTube or may like to read it on mails through mobile or laptops. In the digital sphere, audience can be targeted, so that information related to gym can be delivered to those who are concerned for their health or gym enthusiasts. Thirdly, as mentioned by Yasmin et al. (2015), this form of marketing is far too cost efficient, as compared to traditional marketing, for example, it hardly costs anything to write and distribute the emails or social media text posts. Fourthly, digital marketing provides better metric to measure the results, as one can review how many people visited the website and how many of them actually purchased the products they were looking for. With the use of Web analytics, one can easily compare and quickly adapt to improve performance. It captures various information about the customer such as their demographic profile, interests among others, and use this information to better target our products or services to the customer.
This platform provides level playing field to the new companies’ with already established firms, as one with more creative and potent content on the website is likely to win the war and can easily outwit the financially strong player from the customer’s mind-set. As Todor (2016) mentioned, it also provides additional touch point for the customer with the company, so a well-built interactive website can also help in building the brand and adding significant value to it. It provides real time results, as with the touch of a button, marketers can analyse the metric details such as number of visitors to website, conversion rates and make quick changes, if the results are below expectations.
In spite of number of benefits of digital over traditional marketing, one cannot neglect the benefits of latter one, therefore, a balanced combination of them must be introduced. For example, leading firms such as Apple, Samsung or Coca Cola, do advertise through traditional means such as television ad or newspaper ads, in spite of their huge presence across digital marketing world.
Significance for the Clintons to move towards Digital Marketing
Clintons must certainly be a part of this evolution of change towards digital, considering other competitor firms have already pursued this approach. Clintons must realise that more and more people are available on mobile phones and remain connected through social media platforms, therefore they must also be available on such platforms in order to remain relevant and gauge the customer reviews and preference. However, as argued by Hollimen (2014), they must continue to invest in traditional methods and attempt to maintain balance with digital means, as there is still significant population which is not tech savvy and prefer to purchase through traditional means only. Clintons must realise that today customers’ preferences are changing and many of them prefer personalised e-cards over paper cards. In order to maintain their market and cater to maximum segment of the population, they must certainly balance their budget between the traditional and digital forms of marketing.
2. Explanation of how website optimisation techniques can be used by Clintons to improve performance
Website is the platform where viewers can get all the information about the company as well as all the products and services offered by them. Firms put special emphasis to make their websites look original, unique and engaging. For Clintons, website optimisation means giving visitors the smooth, simple and insightful manner to browse through all the products and ultimately convert it into a purchase. This optimisation must allow the website to run on different platforms such as mobile, laptops, tablets among others. Website developer must follow following rules for better optimisation. Firstly, as mentioned by Lamberton and Stephen (2016), it is important to understand and know the customers, who are likely to visit the website for purchase or other purposes. This can be done by creating a customer journey map, using different personas of potential customers. Secondly, the content of the website must use certain keywords repeatedly, which will aid in pushing up the position of website link in the search results. This is a feature of search engine optimisation and is essential to beat the competitive websites during search results. Additionally, clear font, colour, images, blinkers, videos, tabs are some of the visible and vital elements of any website.
Thirdly, Clintons must create a strong link-profile, which means that if our website is referenced by some other valuable organisation’s blog or website, then that will elevate website position in the search results. This can be done by writing blogs in prominent websites where several indirect references for Clintons must be given. As mentioned by Park et al. (2015), all the content on the website must regularly be updated as search engines such as Google do analyse which are the websites which are more updated and show them at higher position in the search results. On the websites, page titles and meta-descriptions are key for page search engine optimisation. Page title is the information for the browser that gets displayed on the browsers’ tab. Adding modifiers such as...